The Rover by Aphra Behn

Helo regards...

In this Blog we learn about The Rover, in full The Rover; or, The Banish’t Cavaliers, comedy by Aphra Behn.

First we throw some light on this play.

Aphra Behn:-

was an English playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a probable brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. She wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her into legal trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart line, she declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming poem to the new king William III. She died shortly after.

About Play:-

The Rover or The Banish'd Cavaliers is a play in two parts that is written by the English author Aphra Behn. It is a revision of Thomas Killigrew's play Thomaso, or The Wanderer (1664), and features multiple plot lines, dealing with the amorous adventures of a group of Englishmen and women in Naples at Carnival time.According to Restoration poet John Dryden, it "lacks the manly vitality of Killigrew's play, but shows greater refinement of expression." The play stood for three centuries as "Behn's most popular and most respected play."

The play was later adapted by Mr. John Phillip Kemble in 1790 in a production called Love in Many Masks.[2] Kemble's version featured three acts instead of the normal five. This was not the only abbreviation applied to Behn's original work. The final cut of Kemble's piece saw most of the plot that was pertaining to sex, removed. Hellena's speech on rape and unwanted marriage was left out, and the part of the plot relating to the near rape of Florinda by Willmore is only implied.[3] Even though this version of Aphra Behn's The Rover was much more polite and politically correct, it still received criticism that "the ideas are constantly indelicate, and the language frequently gross."[3] This resembled the reception that Behn's Rover received as well, and resulted in The Rover disappearing from the stage until the late 1970s.

Here I selected two articles of two different writers on this play:-

1)Aphra Behn's The Rover engages with the social, political and sexual conditions of the 17th century, as well as with theatrical traditions of carnival and misrule. Elaine Hobby introduces Behn's play and explores how it was first performed and received.

This Article is written by:- Eliane Hobby

Published:- 21 Jan 2018

                           According to Eliane HobbyThe Rover, was probably also the most successful in her own time. It was often revived and many times reprinted in the first half of the 18th century. Set at carnival time in Naples in 1656, the play presents its 1677 audience with the imagined exploits of a group of ‘banished Cavaliers’. Taking its audience back to the world of Royalist continental exile, the play would have sparked ever-ready memories of the civil wars of the 1640s, which had resulted in the execution of Charles I in 1649. At that time, many of the king’s supporters – the Cavaliers – had fled to continental Europe. Interwoven with this, the play explores the attempts of its heroines to exert some control over their destinies.  

                        In this article writer try to explain some themes like:-

1)Gender and sexuality

2)Theatre and entertainment,

3) politics and religion

4) satire and humor.

                          Writer explainl about Libertinism and Marriage in very accurately and affectively. Eliane says that The play’s representative Italians are the ‘Jilting Wench’ Lucetta, who strips and robs Blunt and dumps him in the sewer, and the fabulously beautiful Angellica Bianca, a famous courtesan from the Venetian Republic who is much fought over. The men’s desire for these Italian women echoes a widespread Restoration libertine commitment to indulging the senses and rejecting marriage.

Here, the play’s most powerful voice is that of Angellica, who sees prostitution as a better choice than marriage. When the rakish Willmore remonstrates with her for charging for sex, she points out to him that men routinely have sex for money: when a man marries he gets his wife’s dowry.

                   After he talk about Restoration masculinity in this play. According to him Most of the play’s men, by contrast, are in constant conflict with one another. Simmering aggression is manifested both in verbal jousting – for instance, the ridicule that Blunt so fears – and in sword fighting. The problem that men were only too inclined to defend their ‘honour’ through duelling was indeed a frequent concern in the 1670s. There had been yet another parliamentary discussion of how to stop duels as recently as October 1675. 

       He also says about carnival, disguise and misrule in play.In its setting during the Naples carnival, The Rover uses a long-standing theatrical tradition, in which a topsy-turvy world can reveal and temporarily challenge the norms of the everyday. Through the disguises in which the Spanish sisters and their cousin venture onto the streets, Florinda can arrange an elopement with her beloved Belvile, and Hellena and Valeria can find their love-matches.

In this article writer also says about Reception of The Rover and Behn as the first professional female playwright.

And than I selecte this article:-

2)Aphra Behn's The Rover: Evaluating Women's Social and Sexual Options:-

By:- Ellen T. Goodson

In this article writer talk about a hedonistic lifestyle of parties, sex, and extravagant spending.Between the categories of “virgin” and “whore” lay a void, not a spectrum; one could give “the whole cargo or nothing” (Behn 164).

Performed in 1677, Aphra Behn’s play, The Rover, speaks to this double standard, which limited her female peers’ sexual desires to the realm of convent, brothel, or home. Set loose in the topsy-turvy world of Carnival, her characters demonstrate the active, complicated game required of women seeking to secure personal happiness. The dangers of the chase and the play’s tidy conclusion, on the other hand, suggest at how ladies neither could nor should stray too far into the masculine roles of wooer and possessor. Late Stuart society, Behn seems to lament, offered no place to the sexually free, libertine woman.

Written seventeen years after Richard Cromwell left England, The Rover responds to these vestiges of Puritan belief in English society. In her epilogue, Behn mocks the strait-laced prudishness that would turn humor into a form of sinful self-pleasure: “The devil’s in’t if this [play] will please the nation / in these our blessed times of reformation” (Behn 242). She disparages judgmental leaders, who “damn everything that maggot disapproves,” want to censor theatre, “and to dull method all our sense confine” . Her derision places under public scrutiny the validity of Puritan disapproval. If an audience member doubts the sect’s condemnation of one aspect of society, other frowned-upon practices might be thrown into question. Accusing the Puritan voice of restricting the audience’s sense encourages the public’s examination of normative understandings of the English culture, specific.

Conclusion:-

 In sum up we can see that Aphra Behn's writings (poems and plays) revealed the immoral behaviour of the men of her time. The men of the day, with witty language, used to cover-up their debauched and lascivious (immoral) behaviour. To counter such culture of the civilized nobility of the time, she might have drawn equally immoral women characters. Not only the female characters, even her own life was an example.

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