A Critical Old-Spelling Edition of Aphra Behn's "The City Heiress"
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University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Fall 1985 A CRITICAL OLD-SPELLING EDITION OF APHRA BEHN'S "THE CITY HEIRESS" WILLIAM ROBERT HERSEY University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation HERSEY, WILLIAM ROBERT, "A CRITICAL OLD-SPELLING EDITION OF APHRA BEHN'S "THE CITY HEIRESS"" (1985). Doctoral Dissertations. 1459. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/1459 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This reproduction was made from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. 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Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8527885 Hersey, William Robert A CRITICAL OLD-SPELLING EDITION OF APHRA BEHN’S "THE CITY HEIRESS" University of New Hampshire Ph.D. 1985 University Microfiims International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Copyright 1985 by Hersey, William Robert All Rights Reserved A CRITICAL OLD-SPELLING EDITION OF APHRA BEHN'S THE-CITY HEIRESS BY William R. Hersey B.S. Ed. Lowell State College, 1961 M.A. Boston College, 1966 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English September, 1985 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED c 1985 William R. Hersey This dissertation has been examined and approved. n / /u .U :a v u \ > rtij Dissertation director, Michael V. DePorte, Professor of English ■-/ ____________________ Janet Aikins, Associate Professor of English i r\ I j ___________ \ »v-V'V\ iA— V - 4 1 ^ Ql-V/Y\ I CJolXl_______________________ Thomas A. Carnicelli, Professor of English Robert C~. Gilmore, Vrofessor oT History Marc Schwarz , A s s o c i a fe”e Professor of History () ! Q £ .T Date5 7 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Although this dissertation owes much to committee members, librarians, and teaching colleagues, I would like to acknowledge the considerable assistance of three people in particular. Ms. Joan Ellis, Reference Librarian and Coordinator, Alumni-Lydon Library, at the University of Lowell, found the time and money to acquire copies of the first and second editions for me. Mr. Hugh Amory, Cataloguer of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, saved me considerable anxiety and corres pondence because of his insight and resourcefulness. My greatest debt, however, is to my advisor, Dr. Michael DePorte, for his patience, support, and acumen. Without his understanding and guidance, this project could not have been completed. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT......................................... iv ABSTRACT.................................................. vi SECTION................................................... PAGE I. INTRODUCTION...................................... 1 Aphra Behn's Reputation and the Problem of Her Biography................................ 1 Writing for the Theater....................... 17 The Restoration Theater....................... 25 Aphra Behn: Conventional and Unconventional.................................. 34 Behn's Assertive Women........................ 50 The City Heiress: Behn's Definitive Statement About Women......................... 71 The City Heiress and Dramatic Social Satire............................................ 82 II. A NOTE ON THE TEXT.............................. 119 III. THE TEXT........................................... 129 IV. TEXTUAL NOTES.................................... 306 V. APPENDICES........................................ 321 Appendix A: Actors and Actresses.......... 322 Appendix B: Chronology....................... 326 Appendix C: Behn's Portrait of Shaftesbury...................................... 328 VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................... 335 v ABSTRACT A CRITICAL OLD-SPELLING EDITION OF APHRA BEHN'S THE CITY HEIRESS by William R. Hersey University of New Hampshire, September 1985 This edition offers a critical old-spelling text of Aphra Behn's The City Heiress. The first section of the critical introduction examines the problems created by Behn's early biographers and attempts to establish the reasons for her being such a mysterious figure in English literature. The introduction also provides a background of the Restoration theater, defines the nature of the Restoration audience for which Behn wrote, and shows how her comedy is both similar to and significantly different from that of her contemporaries. A discussion of a number of Behn's plays demonstrates that just as Behn becomes more assertive in responding to her critics, so, too, do her heroines to being dominated by men. The introduction then focuses on The City Heiress, a comedy most noted for its satire of the Whigs and its caricature of The Earl of Shaftesbury, but more important vi as Behn's most definitive statement about women. In this play, employing what Laura Brown calls "dramatic social satire," Behn reverses the comic resolution one usually finds in Restoration comedies, in which the actions of the libertine are vindicated, and instead rewards the female with whom she shares such qualities as intelligence and the capacity to love. The next section of the dissertation, A Note on the Text, is an explanation of my principles of editing. The critical old-spelling text of the play is based on a collation of ten copies of the first edition and six of the second from libraries in the United States and Great Britain. It follows the substantives and accidentals of the 1682 quarto very closely. The text is followed by textual notes that record all substantive emendations to the first edition and the second edition's departures from the first edition. The appendices provide a brief biography of the actors and actresses, a chronology of Behn's plays, and a discussion of Behn's portrait of the Earl of Shaftesbury. vii I. INTRODUCTION Aphra Behn"s Reputation and the Problem of Her Biography During her lifetime, Aphra Behn was a recognized literary figure, both attacked and praised. Since her death in 1689, she has elicited the antagonism of those who disapprove of her personal life and the approval of those who admire the resolution with which she pursued her career in the theater. Both extreme viewpoints have tended to overshadow her literary achievements. In a typical lampoon of the time, the Duke of Buckingham in a "Trial of the Poets of the Bays" contends that the poetess Afra claims the laurel "for the plays she had writ and the conquests she had won."^ An anonymous poem, in 1687, two years before her death, gloats over "her poverty, and pox" which plague "the pain-ridden, dying lewd harlot." Pope's succinct dismissal of her typifies the general attitude of the century: "the stage how loosely does Astrea tread / Who fairly puts all 1. Cited in George Woodcock,The Incomparable Aphra (London: Boardman), pp. 173-174. 2. Cited in Robert Phelps, ed., Selected Writings of the Ingenious Aphra Behn (New Y o rk: Grove Press , 1950) , p~. T Y 1 2 characters to bed." Such negative appraisal is also typical of the nineteenth century. For example, John Doran, the Victorian dramatic historian, spoke for his contemporaries when he said: Her opportunities for good were great, but she abused them all. She might have been an honor to woman hood — she was its disgrace.... To all...male writers she served as a provocation and an apology.