In his 1972 book Gay Talk, writer Bruce Rodgers traces the term camp to 16th century British theatre, where it referred to men dressed as women. [ 5][ 23] Camp may have derived from the gay slang Polari, [ 24] which borrowed the term from the Italian campare,[ 25][ 21] or from the French term se camper, meaning "to pose in an exaggerated fashion". [ 26][ 27] A similar sense is also found in French theatre in Moliere's 1671 play Les Fourberies de Scapin.