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DC-1
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Lesson: THE ROVER: APHRA BEHN

Lesson Developer: Catherine Thomas

Department of English

Jesus and Mary College

University of Delhi

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Life and Times

Aphra Behn‟s portrait by Mary Beale (1633-1699)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aphra_Behn_by_Mary_Beale.jpg

Aphra Behn was a prominent woman writer of the Restoration age. The year 1640 is

generally accepted as Behn‟s birth year. However, her life history remains an enigma as

details of her early life and family background have not been sufficiently documented.

Biographers have repeatedly tried to re-construct her life and speculate upon the various

factors that led to her emergence as a professional writer. Because of the scarcity of reliable

sources, many commentators depend on seventeenth-century anecdotes, literary

references, and anonymous biographical accounts, as well as Behn‟s own literary works to

construct an account of her life.

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Aphra Behn died in April 1689, just after the coronation of William and Mary,

marking the end of the Restoration Age. The publishers of her works tried to capitalize on

the fascination that the readers had for the writer‟s private life. So, when Behn‟s last

comedy, The Younger Brother, was published in 1696 it was prefaced by a brief biographical

note, „An Account of the Life of the Incomparable Mrs. Behn‟ 1. Critics attribute the

authorship to Charles Gildon, who shared a brief acquaintance with Behn for the last three

years of her life and also had access to the manuscripts she left behind after her death.

According to the note, Behn‟s maiden name was Johnson, „a Gentleman of a good Family in

Canterbury in Kent‟2, and claimed that she travelled to Surinam with her family in her

youth. It also mentions her husband, „Mr Behn, an Eminent Merchant‟ (although Behn

herself never mentioned a marriage or a husband in any known source), and her spying

missions in Flanders. It also describes her later life which “found her Circumstances much

below her Desert; and after a tedious Sickness, and several years foregoing Indisposition,

she dy‟d soon after the Revolution” (qtd. in Spencer 13).

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http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:zas918neb

Around the same time, Samuel Briscoe, a colleague of Gildon commissioned „The Life

and Memoirs of Mrs Behn Written by One of the Fair Sex‟ as an introduction to her collected

works Histories and Novels (1696). Gildon wrote the „Epistle Dedicatory‟ and perhaps was

also the author of this slightly longer biographical note, interspersed with fragments of

letters written by Behn (possibly not genuinely hers)3. Spencer argues that the „Memoirs‟

were responsible in constructing Behn as “an example of the amorous woman who writes”

(43).

The memoir had mentioned how Behn‟s father was appointed “Lieutenant General of

many isles, besides the continent of Surinam” (Memoirs 2) by his relative Lord Willoughby,

thereby emphasizing her high birth. Interestingly, Anne Finch, the Countess of Winchilsea

spoke of Behn as the daughter of “a Barber, who lived formerly at Wye a little market town

(now much decayed) in Kent” (qtd. in O‟Donnell 1) in the manuscript of her poem „The

Circuit of Apollo‟. Also, Colonel Thomas Colepepper, recorded in his manuscript „Adversaria‟

that Behn‟s mother had been his wet-nurse4. These independent testimonies in a way

challenge the “social respectability of the „Memoirs‟” (Todd 25).

However, Behn‟s image as invented by Gildon and co. was carried forward into the

eighteenth century. The Restoration age was now seen as a period of capricious rule, excess

and libertinism, which meant that Behn‟s plays lost their popularity; moral disapproval had

forced her out of the literary repertoire. In the nineteenth century, Behn was “routinely

condemned … [for being] the antithesis of the morally and spiritually superior woman”

(Todd 3).

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Vita Sackville-West‟s Aphra Behn: The Incomparable Astrea (1928)

http://www.examiner.com/slideshow/dc-s-folger-celebrates-shakespeare-s-sisters-with-

exhibit-play-and-book#slide=3

Things started changing for better around the early twentieth century 5. Montague

Summers, an eminent Restoration scholar produced a six-volume edition of Aphra Behn‟s

works, with a biographical and critical introduction. It generated a renewed interest in Behn

scholarship. The Bloomsbury members, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, recognized

her particular significance for women writers. Sackville-West‟s short biography, Aphra

Behn: The Incomparable Astrea was published in 1927. According to Sackville-West, Behn

“followed the dictates of inclination rather than of conventional morality” (qtd. in Todd 5).

She was a hack writer who was bound by her need to earn her livelihood through writing,

which meant that she more than often compromised on quality. On a similar note Woolf‟s A

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Room of One’s Own (1929), chapter 4 lauds Behn for making a profession out of writing,

not for what she wrote:

Mrs Behn was a middle-class woman… forced by the death of her husband

and some unfortunate adventures of her own to make her living by her wits.

She had to work on equal terms with men. She made, by working very hard,

enough to live on. The importance of that fact outweighs anything that she

actually wrote… for here begins the freedom of the mind, or rather the

possibility that in the course of time the mind will be free to write what it

likes. (30)

Post-1940s, several biographical studies on Behn have been published – George

Woodcock‟s The Incomparable Aphra (1948), Maureen Duffy‟s The Passionate Shepherdess:

Aphra Behn (1971), Angeline Goreau‟s Reconstructing Aphra: A Social Biography (1980),

and so on. Since most studies of her life rely heavily on conjecture what emerges is a very

complex and at times, a paradoxical representation of the author‟s private and public life.

How Behn became a writer and a playwright is unknown. What we do know is that

her literary career spanned the last nineteen years of her life, and apparently made her

financially independent. She was a prolific writer and wrote several plays, poems, fictional

prose narratives, and translations. Most of her career decisions can be explained by the

socio-political changes and the state of the theatrical and literary world of her time.

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A portrait of Charles II (1653) by Philippe de Champaigne

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_II_(de_Champaigne).jpg

Behn grew up in an England steeped in religious and political tension. The year 1642

marks the beginning of the English Civil War which took place between the king‟s forces

(known as Royalists or Cavaliers) and the Parliamentarians (known as Roundheads). The

conflict ended with Charles‟s defeat, trial and beheading in full public view in1649. The

kingdom was now under the lordship of Oliver Cromwell and his parliamentary forces, as the

cavaliers and supporters of Charles II joined him in his exile.

Much triumphant rhetoric and ostentatious rejoicing accompanied the restoration of

Charles II to the throne in 1660. The puritans had banned the staging of plays in September

1642, deeming it “sinful”. The collapse of monarchy affected the patronage relationships.

Cavalier poets (a group of English gentlemen poets, called Cavaliers because of their loyalty

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to Charles I during the English Civil Wars) suffered because of their staunch royalism.

Robert Herrick lost his position as the vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire, Richard Lovelace

was imprisoned and Sir John Suckling fled from England and presumably died in exile.

„Cromwell's soldiers breaking into the house of a Royalist‟, by J. Williamson for the

book More Pictures of British History by E.L.Hoskyn (1914)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Cavalier.jpg

The Restoration age not only witnessed the reinstatement of monarchy and the royal

court, but also the professional theater. The theatre regained its popularity as the nation

was weary of both the rigors of Puritan rule and the instability in governance following

Cromwell‟s death (Daiches 537). Charles II himself took a keen interest in drama and in

1660, granted play-staging rights to Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant for the King‟s

Company and the Duke's Company respectively. The new roofed theatres in Drury Lane and

Dorset Gardens were splendid, brick constructions, much grander than theatres earlier in

the century.

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(The intricately decorated Dorset Gardens playhouse in 1673, with one of the sets for

Elkannah Settle‟s The Empress of Morocco) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Settle-

Morocco.png

According to Derek Hughes, the theatres had an elaborate stage design “with a

proscenium arch, and realistic sets made of painted wings, borders and shutters”. Change of

scenes was indicated by “sliding moveable backdrops along grooves in the stage” and there

were machines that created exciting new possibilities. There was also an increased use of

music and spectacle (12). An important characteristic of Restoration theatres was the

forestage, a front protrusion of the stage that extended into the audience space, which was

used by actors to deliver prologues to create a sense of involvement with the audience.

Since the stage performances were strictly controlled by the monarch and the court,

the nature of the Restoration audience was more dominated by royal and aristocratic tastes.

Cavaliers, who had spent their exile in France and become experts in French wit and

gallantry, largely influenced the literature of the times. Although the audience comprised

many gentlemen and noblemen, it also included a segment of upwardly mobile middle-class

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types such as Samuel Pepys, who was a regular at theatrical performances. People came to

the theatre not only see plays but also to socialize, and in fact, those watching would often

shout out witticisms or even climb onto the stage.

Restoration theatre is characterized by its rich variety of dramatic forms and its

complex representations of the political and social events of the time. To ensure the

economic survival of the two theatres, the companies played safe by producing revivals and

adaptations of pre-Restoration and older plays such as Shakespeare‟s King Lear6, Ben

Jonson‟ s Bartholomew Fair and Fletcher‟s Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, before any new

plays could be staged. The playwrights also derived plots from French and Spanish sources.

The works of the French playwright, Moliere, were routinely incorporated into several

English plays including John Caryll‟s Sir Salomon (1669), Thomas Betterton‟s The Amorous

Widow (1670), and Dryden‟s Amphitryon (1690). Playwrights including Dryden, Thomas

Otway, and Elkanah Settle popularized what is now termed as Heroic drama. John Dryden

defines it in the Preface to The Conquest of Granada (1672) as “an imitation, in little, of an

heroic poem; and consequently… love and valour ought to be the subject of it” (qtd. in

Abrams 143).

However, it is the comedies that help us contextualise the larger corpus of Behn‟s

work. Critics have often defined the Restoration comedies as „comedies of manners‟

represented by the plays of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve, drawing attention to their

employment of witty language, artificiality and elegance, thereby acknowledging the

influence of court culture and libertinism7 which flourished under Charles II. John Wilmot,

the Earl of Rochester8 exemplified the creed of a libertine and rake in his life as well as his

writings. He was known for his wit, fierce intelligence and became a model for the rakish

protagonist of comedy such as Dorimant, in Sir George Etherege‟s The Man of Mode (1676).

What is also interesting is that comedy which in Aristotlean dictum was meant to deal with

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low life, restoration dramatists created a new kind of comedy wherein according to Dryden,

“Gentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each other” 9.

Portrait of John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester by Peter Lely (1618-1680)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Wilmot.jpg

A major development that influenced restoration drama was the introduction of

actresses to play women‟s roles. During the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, women‟s

roles had been played by male performers, usually young boys. Though women had

performed in court masques and in private performances10, these performances by women

were frowned upon, especially by the Puritan regime. So when King Charles II decreed in

1660 that actresses should play women‟s roles so that plays would be “useful and

instructive representations of human life” (qtd. in Fiske 73), it was indeed a significant

innovation in staging.

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Although Restoration actresses were introduced as agents of morality, they were

soon blamed for introducing immorality to the theatre. They were often thought of as

sexually available and morally compromised simply by their association with theatre and

public exhibition11. The appearance of women on stage created a highly sexualised and

voyeuristic theatrical performance. Many Restoration actresses were mistresses of courtiers,

the most famous example being Nell Gwyn, who was a long-time mistress of Charles II.

Several were estranged from their families, and acting was a means of earning their

livelihood, although their income was quite meagre. Additionally, the roles they played

would often end up typecasting and limiting them to stereotypical characterizations, thereby

affecting their public personae.

Portrait of Nell Gwyn (1675) by Peter Lely http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nell_Gwyn

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The problematic position of the restoration actress lays bare the contradictory

attitudes to women in the restoration age, especially those associated with the public space.

Libertinism, although opened up a new freedom to assert sexual desire, sanctioned desire

for the male but not the female. Women could become actresses but were deemed immoral

because their job involved displaying their bodies, just like prostitutes. Aphra Behn‟s

position as a woman writer had implications through her association with the “public

women”. The fact that she was making her writing public, or selling it was tantamount to

selling herself, and thereby invited public criticism for behaviour which was acceptable for

men.

Let us now briefly chart the scope and extent of Aphra Behn‟s literary career. Behn

was a royalist and developed strong social and professional connections with members of

the English court. It is likely that Behn had a close association with Thomas Killigrew as he

was also one of the officials of the king‟s government with whom she corresponded during

and after her spying mission in Antwerp. Yet her earliest work was accepted by the Duke‟s

Company. Her first staged work, The Forc’d Marriage (1670) was quickly followed by The

Amorous Prince (1671). These early plays were tragicomedies, a form that had gained wide

popularity among Restoration audiences.

Tragicomedy is a form of drama which incorporates both tragic and comic elements. It

represented a genre, in which a serious action with a potential tragic outcome is averted

through an unforeseen reversal of circumstance, leading to a happy ending. Francis

Beaumont and John Fletcher collaborated on several plays from about 1606 to 1613,

thereby initiating a mode of tragicomedy that employs a romantic and fast-moving plot of
In 1672 she probably edited The Covent Garden Drolery, a compilation of verse,
love, jealousy, treachery, intrigue, and disguises, and ending in a melodramatic reversal of
popular songs, prologues, and epilogues from the theatre. She included some of her own
fortune for the protagonists, who had hitherto seemed headed for a tragic catastrophe.
poems in the collection. Her third play, The Dutch Lover, is on the lines of comedy of

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intrigue, with complicated conspiracies and stratagems dominating the plot. However, the

play was unsuccessful and Behn responded to its failure with a defensive and witty preface

stating that on the night performance, an obnoxious man spread the word around “that they

were to expect a woful Play, God damn him, for it was a woman‟s”12. It is to be noted that

Behn establishes herself as a self-assured woman writer who refuses to adopt an apologetic

stance. After The Dutch Lover, Behn wrote nothing for the stage for almost three years. In

1676, a tragedy, Abdelazar, was performed, and her next play was city comedy, The Town

Fopp (September, 1676). In March 1677, one of her most successful plays, The Rover was

staged. By this time, Behn was now an established playwright and in the next few years a

succession of her comedies were staged.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was one of the most influential thinkers of the Restoration.

In his work Leviathan, Hobbes states that Man‟s desires can never be satiated since he

has “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death”

(Chapter XI), because of which he is always in a state of competition and hostility with

others. Man entered into civil society in civilization to escape from his natural propensity to

savagery. His materialistic account of human consciousness, that human motivation is

driven by the need to dominate and establish ownership served the libertine poets and

dramatists as a way of interpreting human conduct.

It is quite clear that the genre and content of Behn‟s writing was embedded in the

politics as well as changes in the literary market of her time. Despite Charles II‟s initial

popularity, the court had been steadily gaining a reputation for licentiousness and

decadence. Charles II‟s well-publicised sexual adventures, his complete disregard of the

parliament, his close association with Catholicism, created a sense of anxiety that he would

lead the nation back to Catholicism. Such fears were elevated in 1673 when it became clear

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that, in the absence of any legitimate sons, the heir apparent would be Charles II‟s brother

James, who was a Catholic. Adding fuel to the fire was the emergence of the so-called

Popish plot, later discovered to be a fictitious conspiracy concocted by Titus Oates,

according to which the Jesuits were planning the assassination of King Charles II in order to

bring his Catholic brother to the throne. The plot precipitated anti-Catholic sentiment and

led to the Exclusion Bill Crisis of 1679 – 82. The crisis engendered the political terms „Whig‟

(supporters of greater parliamentary powers) and „Tory‟ (supporters of the monarchy),

representing the two opposing political parties or factions in England.

The appellations „Whig‟ and „Tory‟ were originally terms of abuse introduced in

1679 during the heated struggle over the Exclusion Bill to exclude James, Duke of

York (later known as James II), from the succession. „Whig‟ was a colloquial

Scottish term for Presbyterian rebels and connoted nonconformity. „Tory‟ was an

Irish term representing papist outlaws and was applied to those who supported the

hereditary right of James despite his Roman Catholic faith. These nicknames

stayed on and were appropriated by the respective group.

During this period of extensive political ferment, Behn was most active as a political

dramatist. She wrote almost nine plays in a span of three years, including The Feigned

Courtesans (1679), The Rover II (1681), The False Count (1681), The Roundheads (1681),

and The City Heiress (1682), all of which to a greater extent supported the monarchy and

identified parliamentary democracy as a form of mob rule. With Charles II‟s death and

James II‟s accession in 1685, her plays turned increasingly royalist and pro-James. The two

theatre companies had merged in 1682 to form the United Company, reducing the overall

number of plays commissioned. The growing opposition to monarchy resulted in fewer

commissions for an overtly royalist playwright. As a result, she hardly wrote anything for

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the stage in this period and turned her attention to other marketable literary forms such as

fiction, translation, and poetry.

King William III and Queen Mary II Enthroned, Ceiling of the Painted Hall by Sir

James Thornhill (1675-1734) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_and_Mary.jpg

James II‟s increasing disregard for the political opposition to Catholicism and

appointment of his Catholic supporters to key governmental roles, and the subsequent birth

of a male heir, prompted many aristocrats to turn to his eldest daughter Mary and her

husband, William of Orange to assume the monarchy. James II fled with his family marking

what is known as „The Glorious Revolution‟. Aphra Behn presumably died a few days after

William and Mary‟s coronation, but her literary reputation was such that the play that was

performed at the court to celebrate William‟s first birthday as king was The Rover (4

November 1690)13.

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Thomas Killigrew, by Sir Anthony Van Dyck (died 1641)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Killigrew_by_Sir_Anthony_Van_Dyck_cropped.jpg

The Rover (1677)

The staging of The Rover; or, The Banish’t Cavaliers led to charges of plagiarism,

since Aphra Behn had drawn heavily from Thomas Killigrew‟s Thomaso, or, The Wanderer,

which was written in the 1650s but remained an unproduced play. Thomaso is based on the

personal experiences of Killigrew and his fellow cavaliers who were in exile during the

Interregnum. The protagonist is also an exiled cavalier who courts the rich and virtuous

Serulina, and rescues her from a forced marriage arranged by her brother. The play also

follows Thomaso‟s adventures as he pursues the famous courtesan, Angellica Bianca, and

two other courtesans, Saretta and Paulina. The play has a sub-plot where a prostitute

Lucetta along with her accomplices trick and rob the Essex fool Edwardo. He eventually

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revenges himself by having Lucetta‟s face mutilated, and tries to rape Serulina when she

takes refuge with him, as he now sees all women as his enemies.

It is clear that Behn borrows a lot of ideas for plot, setting, and action from

Thomaso. However, she also alters it in significant ways. To begin with, she splits the

character of Thomaso into two – the romantic Belvile, and the rakish Willmore. The heroine

Serulina is also split into two characters, sisters who offer resistance to the paternal orders

of their absent father and brother, Don Pedro. This bipartite division is significant because

through them Behn represents the social categories within which women are placed – wife

and nun. These social designs do not acknowledge women‟s agency but are arranged by

fathers or brothers for their own political or financial benefits. Hellena describes Florinda‟s

future role as a wife “as a worst confinement than a religious life” (Act 1.i 9), and

recognizes that she will have to submit to a husband (who is likely to impotent because of

his old age) “all for a jointure” (10). Her own fate to be a nun is represented with images of

imprisonment such as the grate (barred windows) and the cell.

Women and Marriage – The system of primogeniture authorized the inheritance of family

estates to the eldest son. In Behn‟s lifetime, the women were entitled to portions or smaller

shares of family property under the modified primogeniture system. A woman through her

marriage gave away her portion as a dowry, but would gain a jointure, a provision of land

or income to be settled on the wife should she be widowed. Unfortunately, families often

weakened their estates by over-spending, and by the end of the seventeenth century, the

value of women fell by almost fifty percent since there were thirteen women to every ten

men (Diamond 519). Arranged marriages were negotiated by families to advance

themselves economically and socially. Don Pedro wants Florinda to marry old (and

possibly impotent) Don Vincentio because of his wealth and the possession of an ancient

estate as well as for the jointure he shall provide. Women had exchange value not only

because of their dowry but also

Institute for theLearning,
of Lifelong possibility of providing
University of Delhia male heir. In such a

scenario, marriage for love became extremely improbable.

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rover_1_behn.mp3

The Rover is set in Naples during carnival time, a period characterized by the inversion of

normal identities and the official order. The carnival setting was used by earlier by

playwrights to build a contrast between the world of exuberance and festivity and, the

oppressive laws and customs. The conversation between Florinda, Hellena and Callis,

centers on the licence and opportunities provided by the Carnival. The young women

including their cousin Valeria decide to join the carnival celebrations, in disguise, dressed as

gypsies. Participation in the carnival, with its masks and anonymity, is not only celebratory

but also provides women with opportunities to escape from patriarchal authority that

continuously imposes its designs on them. Florinda wants to marry her lover Belvile, as

opposed to marrying Don Vincentio or Don Antonio (both marriages arranged for her by her

father and brother, respectively) and Hellena, wants to avoid the confinement of a nunnery.

The disguise gives them opportunities to meet the men they will marry at the end of the

play. Their discourse is also coloured in the language of the rake heroes as Hellena

proclaims, “let‟s ramble” (Act 1.i). She is aware that carnival will also provide her with

opportunities of sexual discovery.

The Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) developed the idea of the carnival or the

„carnivalesque‟ in his study of the seventeenth-century prose satirist, Francois Rabelais.

The concept is derived from the practice of medieval carnival when the people would enjoy

a holiday from their labours and in the process ridicule the authorities of church and state.

Carnival was also considered a period of indulgence focusing on the pleasures of the body

vis-à-vis eating, drinking and promiscuous sexual activity. However, it is debatable as to

how farrover_2_behn.mp3
The Rover operates within the carnivalesque mode in the Bakhtininan sense, since

the liberating potential of the carnival for women is repeatedly thwarted by the attempts

made by men to reinstate patriarchal domination and social authority.

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Although the carnival provides women with the freedom to venture outside domestic

captivity, yet in doing so they enter a different system of domination. The city spaces often

manifest the darker side of male license. Willmore describes himself as “a rampant lion of

the forest” (Act 1.ii), and any woman out on the streets during the carnival is assumed by

him to be undoubtedly available for sex. Florinda is raped almost thrice in the play: the

drunken Willmore comes across Florinda when she is waiting for Belvile in the garden at

night and argues that since her garden gate was open, she must have meant to lure him in

(Act 3.v). At this point she is rescued by Belvile and Frederick. Later, in a bid to escape

from her brother she runs into a house where only Blunt is present. He is bitterly angry at

his betrayal by Lucetta, and is determined to beat and rape the next woman he sees (Act

4.v). Frederick too decides to join Blunt in “matters of revenge that has double pleasure in

it” (84). Florinda tries to prove her identity as a respectable woman by offering him a

diamond ring (a marker of her social status), which makes Frederick pause, since he does

not want to be arrested for raping “a maid of quality” when they only meant to “ruffle a

harlot”. The threat turns into that of a gang-rape in Act 5.i when nearly all the male

characters including Florinda‟s brother, Don Pedro, gather in the house and “draw cuts” to

decide who may have her.

What becomes increasingly clear through these “failed” rape attempts on Florida is

that the carnival is not an innocuous escape from the strictures of law, but can transform

into a dark and violent space, as the boundaries between “woman of quality” and

“prostitutes” become blurred. It exposes the sexual double standards by which women are

judged by men. Once the signs which define a woman‟s social identity are obliterated, she

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becomes an object of male aggression – the prostitute. Interestingly, it is Angellica Bianca,

the famous courtesan who explicitly draws attention to the parallels between the economic

rover_3_behn.mp3

position of the wife and the prostitute. In Act 2.ii, Willmore admonishes her for being

complicit in a system that commodifies love and beauty (37). Angellica retorts by reminding

Willmore that he too is “guilty of the same mercenary crime” and that “when a lady is

proposed to you for a wife, you never ask, how fair, discreet, or virtuous she is, but what‟s

her fortune” (38). According to Elin Diamond, The Rover “thematizes the marketing of

women in marriage and prostitution” (519).

Angellica is first mentioned in the play by the cavaliers as the former mistress of the

dead Spanish general who is open for sale (Act 1.ii 24). In Act 2.i her actual appearance is

preceded by her signs, the pictures that advertise her as a commodity. She is looking for a

man rich enough to pay her a thousand crowns a month. Through this representation Behn

highlights the mercenary nature of both – the relationship between courtesan and protector

and that between husband and wife. Angellica‟s position allows her a certain level of agency

in choosing her purchaser, unlike the young women in the play who are denied any voice in

their destinies.

Surprisingly, the song heard from Angellica‟s chamber before she makes her first

appearance is about a shepherdess Caelia who was “taught” by “kind force… how to yield”

to Damon, an allusion to feminine submission to masculine control (Act 2.i 31). The song is

significant because it shows that any attempt on Angellica‟s part to escape from the

economics of prostitution is going to be futile. Her attraction to Willmore is evident when

she recognizes that he has “a power too strong to be resisted” (Act 2.ii 40) and it

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encourages her to sidestep the usual exchange of money for sex in favour of free (romantic)

love which Moretta labels the “disease of our sex,” (Act 2.i 29).

rover_4_behn.mp3

While the other characters engage with the licensed transgression of carnival,

Angellica remains outside its scope of action. She tries to achieve a reversal of authority

when she offers herself to Willmore, and also gives him money, believing that she can

control the marketplace. However, after gaining his prize, Willmore shifts his attention to

the pursuit of Hellena, whom he had met in her gypsy disguise, and eventually marries her

(for her wit, fortune and virginity) in spite of his disregard for the institution of marriage,

something he would not do for the prostitute Angellica. Therefore, she inhabits a tragic

space in the play, and her belief that “all men were born my slaves” (Act 5.i 96) is

discovered by her to be just an illusion or “fancied power”. The others are assimilated into

the social order, as the play ends with three marriages, but she remains an outsider and is

ultimately written out of the play before the questions she has raised can be fully resolved.

Only two women characters manage to exploit the carnivalesque space without

putting themselves in serious danger. One of them is Lucetta, the other prostitute in the

play who robs and humiliates Blunt, and is the polar opposite of Angellica in the play. In

fact, Lucetta‟s deception of Blunt corresponds to and is interwoven with Willmore‟s

subjugation of Angellica. Blunt, unlike the other cavaliers Blunt is a curious combination of

the would-be gallant or fop, a staple of Restoration comedy and the country fool. He

describes himself as “a dull believing English country fop” (Act 3.iv 55). Fop characters

appeared in many Restoration comedies, including Sir Fopling Flutter in Etherege‟s The Man

of Mode (1676) and Behn‟s The Town Fopp (1676). As a stock character the fop was

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laughed at his unsuccessful attempts to behave like the hero(es) of the play. Blunt being a

country gentleman lacks the urban sophistication and witticisms of his friends. He is easily

flattered and when Lucetta glances his way, he concludes that he must have beauties which

rover_5_behn.mp3

his “false glass at home did not discover” (Act 1.ii 20). He mistakes Lucetta for a rich

wife who loves him.

The Rover repeatedly draws our attention to the ways in which men exercise control

over women. Women are subjected to various forms of confinement and oppression,

whether inside their houses or outside. However, the Lucetta-Blunt affair reverses the

power politics14 (even if momentarily so) as she entraps Blunt in her room; he is stripped

and plummeted through a trapdoor into the main sewer. This humiliation enrages Blunt,

who is now ready to unleash his anger and hatred on all women, to be “revenged on one

whore for the sins of another” (Act 4.v 83).

The Restoration hero was lively and quick-witted in conversation and exhibited a certain

level of Hobbesian skepticism, even cynicism in his attitude towards himself and his fellows.

Dale Underwood in his book Etherege and the Seventeenth Century Comedy of Manners

draws a correlation between the „Machiavellian hero‟ of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama,

and the rake or libertine of the Restoration comedies (76-79).While the „Machiavel‟ is aware

of an absolute, divinely sanctioned standard of morality (which he vehemently rejects), the

Restoration hero reacts against the rigid standards of Puritan morality. The rake hero exists

outside the structures and mores of organized society and seeks liberty and pleasure. He

often critiques the institution of marriage because it restrains sexuality within its mercenary

systems. However, in most comedies, including The Rover, the heroine manages to

convince him to marry her despite

Institute his distrust
of Lifelong of marriage
Learning, asDelhi
University of an institution. The political

failures and libertine excesses of King Charles II and the court altered perceptions about the
 24

Thomaso is set in Madrid, and reflects the cultural milieu in which it had been

written. A sense of honour and brotherhood defines the exiled Cavaliers, and they are

represented as guardians of the political and religious order. Helen Burke 15 states that the

play unfolds as “a royalist allegorization of the Restoration” wherein Thomaso “assumes his

long deferred leadership role as the husband of the „bright Serulina‟, the virgin who stands

for the captive nation” (120). Behn is writing after a gap of several years and at a time

when the restored monarchy was being increasingly viewed with suspicion. On the one

hand, she evokes a bygone era with nostalgic distance, and the libertine cavaliers are

romanticized16. But on the other hand she also reveals the injustices directed towards

women through patriarchal codes of male heroism, through an ambivalent portrayal of the

cavalier hero.

This ambivalence is captured through the perspective of the women characters in the

play, especially Hellena, the other woman in the play who manages to successfully negotiate

the dangers of the carnival space. She first appears as a gypsy but later dresses up in men‟s

clothes, following the convention of comedies where the heroine adopts a male disguise.

She approaches Willmore and Angellica as a young man and when Angellica asks her about

her whereabouts, she fabricates a story about “a young English Gentleman” who first

seduced and then heartlessly abandoned a young woman” (Act 4.ii) (73). On hearing the

tale Angellica becomes certain that Willmore is the “false man” who has “charms in every

word”. During the course of the play, he does not assume any physical disguise. His false

and seductive language serves as a convincing mask or disguise in the carnival.

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Detail from William Hogarth‟s „A Rake‟s Progress‟

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Hogarth_027.jpg

Through the portrayal of cavalier infidelity, Behn prompts us to view the cavalier

hero with contempt, and not simply with admiration. Burke argues that “the object of

Behn‟s desire and resentment was not an individual cavalier but the system of male

aristocratic privilege that the cavalier hero represented” (121). As a woman playwright,

Behn desired the same privileges that her male colleagues enjoyed, but were denied to her

because of her gender. She frequently argues against the double standards applied in

judging her writing. In the „Preface‟ to The Lucky Chance she writes:

All I ask, is the Privilege. . . to tread in those successful Paths my

Predecessors have so long thrived in. . . If I must not, because of my Sex,

have this Freedom, but that you will usurp all to your selves; I lay down my

Quill, and you shall hear no more of me.

Critics have suggested that in The Rover Behn identifies her position with that of

Angellica Bianca, with whom she also shares her initials, AB. Elin Diamond states that the

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signs “may. . . constitute Behn's authorial signature” (536). In the “Postscript” to The

Rover, where she argues against the charges of plagiarizing Killigrew‟s Thomaso, she

declares that “the only stolen object is the sign of Angellica,” a reference to the three

portraits of Angellica. The parallels drawn between the prostitute and the woman playwright

allowed Behn to highlight the simultaneous liberty and confinement the stage to offered

women.

Timeline

1632 Birth of John Locke

1640 Birth of Aphra Behn (?)

1642 Theatres closed; English Civil War begins

1648 Civil War ends

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1649 Charles I of England beheaded.

1650 Cromwell crushes Irish rebellion

1651 Hobbes‟s Leviathan

1660 Restoration of Charles II; Royal Society founded

1663 Behn said to have visited Surinam

1665 Outbreak of plague in London

1666 Great Fire of London

1667 Birth of Jonathan Swift; John Milton‟s Paradise Lost

1670 Behn‟s first play The Forc’d Marriage performed on stage

1671 The Amorous Prince performed

1672 The Covent Garden Drolery, a collection of verse edited by Behn

1673 The Dutch Lover performed but soon deemed a failure

1676 Abdelazer, Behn‟s only tragedy was performed; The Town Fopp

(September)

1677 The Rover I performed

1678 The Feign’d Curtezans performed; John Bunyan‟s Pilgrim’s Progress

1681 The Rover II staged; Dryden‟s Absalom and Achitophel

1682 Behn‟s The City Heiress staged

1685 Death of Charles II; James II becomes king

1686 The Lucky Chance staged

1688 Birth of Pope; James II deposed; Glorious Revolution; Behn‟s

Oroonoko

1689 Accession of William III and Mary II; Death of Aphra Behn

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Notes

1
Citation- The Secret Life of Aphra Behn by Janet Todd, 12 – 13
2
Citation- Aphra Behn’s Afterlife by Jane Spencer, 32 – 33
3
See Robert Adams Day, „Aphra Behn‟s First Biography‟, Studies in Bibliography, for a
discussion of the differences between the various versions of the early biographical
accounts.
4
See Maureen Duffy‟s The Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn for a detailed
discussion of Colpepper's memoir.
5
This review of post twentieth century scholarship on Behn is based on Janet Todd‟s
„Introduction‟ (pp. 4-6) to New Casebooks: Aphra Behn.
6
Nahum Tate‟s adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear, The History of King Lear (1681)
has a happy ending with Edgar marrying Cordelia, and Lear regaining his throne (similar
to Charles II restoration).

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7
Charles II king was infamous for his several mistresses and illegitimate children. There
was a widespread moral disapproval of these developments, since his promiscuity was
seen as a sign of political irresponsibility.
8
The Libertine (2004) is a British film starring Johnny Depp which is a based on the life
and times of the Earl of Rochester.
9
Citation – “Defence of the Epilogue” (1673) by John Dryden.
Accessed online < http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15349/15349-h/15349-
h.htm#page_211 >
10
Queen Henrietta Maria, King Charles I‟s wife, had performed in court masques.
11
See “‟Playhouse Flesh and Blood‟: Sexual Ideology and the Restoration Actress” by
Katharine Eisaman Maus for an interesting discussion on actresses in Restoration
drama.
12
Citation – “An Epistle to the Reader”: The Dutch Lover by Aphra Behn. Accessed
online <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21339/21339-
h/files/dutch.html#dutch_commnote1>
13
Citation – The Theater of Aphra Behn by Derek Hughes, p.193
14
Although she played a leading role in the set-up, the loot is managed by her lover,
Phillipo.
15
See Helen M Burke‟s essay “The Cavalier Myth” for a detailed comparison drawn
between Killigrew‟ Thomaso and Behn‟s The Rover
16
The central character Willmore became so popular with the audience that Behn wrote
a sequel, The Rover II, in 1681.

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Bibliography

Beach, Adam R. “Carnival Politics, Generous Satire, and Nationalist Spectacle in

Behn‟s The Rover.” Eighteenth-Century Life 28.3(2004): 1-19. Project Muse. Web. 10

February 2014.

Brown, Laura S. “The Divided Plot: Tragicomic Form in the Restoration”. ELH

47.1(1980): 67-79. JSTOR. Web. 10 February 2014.

Burke, Helen M. “The Cavalier myth in The Rover.” The Cambridge Companion

to Aphra Behn. Eds. Derek Hughes and Janet Todd. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2004. Print. 118-134.

Carlson, Susan. “Cannibalizing and Carnivalizing: Reviving Aphra Behn‟s The

Rover.” Theatre Journal 47.4, Eighteenth-Century Representations (1995): 517-539.

JSTOR. Web. 10 February 2014.

Day, Robert Adams. “Aphra Behn‟s First Biography.” Studies in Bibliography

22(1969): 227-240. JSTOR. Web. 10 February 2014.

Diamond, Elin. “Gestus and Signature in The Rover.” ELH 56.3 (1989): 519-541.

JSTOR. Web. 10 February 2014.

Duffy, Maureen. The Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn: 1640-89. London:

Methuen, 1989. Print.

Hughes, Derek and Janet Todd, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.

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Maus, Katharine Eisaman. “ „Playhouse Flesh and Blood‟: Sexual Ideology and

the Restoration Actress.” ELH 46.4 (1979): 595-617. JSTOR. Web. 10 February 2014.

Pacheco, Anita. “Rape and the Female Subject in Aphra Behn‟s The Rover.” ELH

65.2 (1998): 323-345. JSTOR. Web. 10 February 2014.

Pearson, Jacqueline. Gender and Narrative in the Fiction of Aphra Behn. The

Review of English Studies, New Series 42.165 (1991): 40-56. JSTOR. Web. 10

February 2014.

Spencer, Jane. Aphra Behn’s Afterlife. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Print.

Szilagyi, Stephen. “The Sexual Politics of Behn‟s Rover: After Patriarchy”.

Studies in Philology 95. 4(1998): 435-455. JSTOR. Web. 10 February 2014.

Todd, Janet, ed. Aphra Behn: New Casebooks. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999.

Print.

---.The Secret Life of Aphra Behn. London: André Deutsch, 1996. Print.

For Audio: https://archive.org/details/rover_1305_librivox

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