“The Libertine” is a fierce, intelligent, and compelling account of John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester (1647-80). It is also infuriating, not so much for what it is, as for what it could have been. Perhaps this is inevitable. In the course of his brief, brilliant, dark shambles of a life, Rochester was a poet, a satirist, a wit, a lampoonist, a classicist, a thug, a drunk, a bully, a brawler, a hero, a coward, a lecher, a prankster, a kidnapper, a pimp, a penitent, a politician, an atheist, a jailbird, a courtier, an exile, and, curiously, an occasional [...]