DOCSLIB.ORG

Princes, Power, and Politics in the Early Plays of Aphra Behn

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Princes, Power, and Politics in the Early Plays of Aphra Behn CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository PRINCES, POWER, AND POLITICS IN THE EARLY PLAYS OF APHRA BEHN by JESSICA KATE BENTLEY PIRIE A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English Literature College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham February 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract My thesis explores Aphra Behn’s early plays and their portrayal of monarchical power within the political contexts of Charles II’s reign. The plays are studied chronologically, beginning with The Young King – which Behn claimed she wrote in c.1664 – and continuing through the first four of her works performed on the Restoration stage: The Forc’d Marriage, The Amorous Prince, The Dutch Lover, and Abdelazer. These works have been largely neglected by previous Behn studies, dismissed as experimental forerunners of her better-known works, like The Rover. By contrast, this thesis argues that these plays contain complex analogies of the political concerns and events troubling Charles II’s reign. Behn is popularly remembered as an ardent monarchist and staunch supporter of the Stuart crown. However, these plays chart Behn’s increasingly questioning, troubled perception of Restoration politics. In them, she explores with progressively irreverent criticism the problematic nature of the divine right and absolute rule. She dramatizes the court’s rapacious reputation, queries popular sentiments regarding the Third Anglo-Dutch War, and confronts the looming Succession Crisis while constantly asking what it is that makes a king a rightful ruler. Ultimately, Behn’s early plays reveal her royalism was once far more conditional than how it is remembered. Dedicated to my mother and father. Acknowledgments I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr Gillian Wright and Professor Richard Cust for their unwavering support, confidence and patience in supervising this thesis. Their willingness to share their vast knowledge and valuable time with me was inspiring and invaluable. I would also like to thank Gillian for welcoming me into the Aphra Behn Europe Society. My thanks go to that organisation as well, for allowing me to present papers based on this thesis to their biennial conferences, and the wonderfully helpful, expert feedback and advice I received there. Among the many established academics who have so graciously helped me in my research, Dr Mel Evans kindly discussed her most recent research into the problematic dating of The Young King with me. Similarly, Dr Timothy de Paepe and Professor Hubert Meeus contributed their knowledge of Antwerp’s mid-seventeenth-century theatre companies. Dr Jules Whicker also provided an invaluable contribution to my comparison of The Young King to La vida es sueño, answering my many questions about the original Spanish text. I also owe a great debt to my family and friends; in particular my parents (for everything they have done for me) and my sister Lorna Hawes, who kindly proof-read this thesis for me in its final drafts. Finally, I wish to thank James, Cloé and Xavier Minogue for always making space for me to work in their home, and for all the love, support and cups of tea they brought me whilst I did. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One 23 Of Gods and Kings: The Influence of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura on The Portrayal of Kingship in The Young King. Chapter Two 67 Of Kings and Men: Men’s Bodies and the Body Politic in The Forc’d Marriage and The Amorous Prince. Chapter Three 125 The Boor and the Whore: Foreign and Domestic Policy in The Dutch Lover. Chapter Four 175 The Many Faces of Abdelazer: Race, Religion and Politics in The Moor’s Revenge. Conclusion 241 Bibliography 250 Note on Textual Conventions Unless otherwise stated, references to Aphra Behn’s plays and poetry are taken from Janet Todd’s The Works of Aphra Behn. In citing other Early Modern dramatic works, I have consulted the most modern and reliable scholarly editions, where ones are available. Otherwise, quotations from Early Modern works come from their first editions and have been sourced from Early English Books Online [EEBO]. These quotations retain original spellings and capitalisation. In my footnotes, I abbreviate the five plays by Aphra Behn which I refer to most frequently as the following: The Young King – YK The Forc’d Marriage – FM The Amorous Prince – AP The Dutch Lover – DL Abdelazer – Abd INTRODUCTION ‘Your Majesty’ The Hague. 4 February 1649. Miles from his family, home and crown, Charles Stuart learned he was now King of England, Scotland and Ireland. His beloved father, Charles I, had been publicly executed the week before.1 There are two accounts of how Charles’s exiled court of loyal followers broke the news to him. In the first, Charles was in a crowded room; in the second, Stephen Goffe – royalist agent and Catholic chaplain – stood before him and pronounced him king with a chillingly expedient, ‘Your Majesty’.2 In both versions, Charles’s response was to burst into tears. As Ronald Hutton writes, ‘The whole weight of ideals, loyalties, responsibilities, and dilemmas which had confounded and killed his father had just crashed on to his eighteen-year-old shoulders’.3 Charles II’s preparation for the throne had been an adolescence of battles and banishment. At this grief-stricken moment of succession, his once close family was scattered across Europe. Whilst Charles wept for his father in The Hague, his widowed mother and fifteen-year-old brother James were exiled in St Germain. His sister and youngest brother were still in London, prisoners of the very men who had murdered their father. Stephen Goffe’s own brother, William, was one of those regicides.4 As this moment in history epitomises, the Civil War and execution of Charles I had divided families and politics. England stood on the brink of an uncharted and blood-stained political landscape. When Charles I’s decapitated head struck the deck of the execution platform, kingship as 1 Historical information for this thesis largely taken from Antonia Fraser, King Charles the Second (London: W&N, 2002); Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms, 1660–1685 (London: Penguin, 2006); Ronald Hutton, Charles II: King of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1991); and John Spurr, England in the 1670s: ‘This Masquerading Age’ (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2000). 2 Hutton, Charles II, p.33. 3 Ibid. 4 Charles Spencer, Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I (London: Bloomsbury, 2015) p.50. 1 a concept was also severed from the political body. No British monarch had ever been, or has since been, deposed in such a way. Kings had been murdered by their rivals in private or slaughtered on the battlefield. Queens had been executed at the orders of other queens. In the last two hundred years, Richard III, Lady Jane Grey and Mary Queen of Scots had all met bloody ends to facilitate or protect another monarch’s reign. However, no British king or queen had ever been publicly executed by their subjects as a step towards abolishing the monarchy. No matter how contested its occupancy, the throne itself had always stood. The nature of kingly power had been dramatically, violently and irreversibly changed. As Charles II faced what would be a decade-long fight for his throne, the future poet, novelist and playwright Aphra Behn was growing up in obscurity, probably somewhere in the Kentish countryside. Little is known about her childhood, but Janet Todd imagines at the Restoration in May 1660 she might have been ‘one of the maidens who strewed herbs along the leisurely royal route through Kent and wondered at the height and swarthiness of the new King’.5 Behn’s early plays, the focus of this thesis, demonstrate a fascination with the concept of monarchy. On 4 February 1649, Charles was thrust to the threshold of a new world, a world in which he was both king and not a king. Aphra Behn’s early plays are all about such moments, the moment where a prince becomes a king, or a boy becomes a man. 5 Janet Todd, Aphra Behn: A Secret Life (London: Fentum Press, 2017) p.3. Behn’s birth and family evaded church and tax records and therefore we do not know a lot for certain about her life prior to her playwriting career. In 1696, a posthumous publication of her play The Younger Brother included ‘An Account of the Life of the Incomparable Mrs Behn’. Later the same year a collection of works called The Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs Behn was also published, beginning with an account of ‘The Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn. Written by One of the Fair Sex’. After her death, her self-proclaimed foster brother Colonel Thomas Colepepper included some details of her life in his manuscript ‘Adversaria’. The poet Anne Finch made a jibe about Behn’s lowly background as the daughter of a barber from a decaying little Kentish town in the marginalia of her manuscript poems ‘The Circuit of Apollo’.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Rover by Aphra Behn
    By Shailesh Ranjan Assistant Professor Dept. of English, Maharaja College, Ara. About the Author Aphra Behn was one of the first English professional writers wrote plays, poetry, short stories and novels. Little information is known about her early life. She was born in about 1640 near Canterbury, England.Her family were Royalists, connected with powerful catholic families and the court. She may have been raised Catholic and educated in a convent abroad. 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. •After her return to London she started her writings. •She wrote under the pastrol pseudonym Astrea. •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. Her grave is not included in the Poets Corner but lies in the East Cloister near the steps to the church. •Virginia Woolf writes about her in her famous work ‘A Room of One’s Own’ - “ All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn which is , most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” • She challenged with expressing herself in a patriarchal system that generally refused to grant merit to women’s views.Women who went against were in risk of being exiled from their communities and targeted to be involved in witch hunts.
    [Show full text]
  • The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 0521820197 - The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd Frontmatter More information The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Traditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn has now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration. During the 1670s and 1680s, she provided more plays for the stage than any other author, and greatly influenced the development of the novel with her ground- breaking fiction, especially Love-Letters between a Noble-Man and his Sister, and Oroonoko, the first English novel set in America. Behn’s work straddles the genres: beside drama and fiction, she also excelled in poetry and she made several important translations from French libertine and scientific works. The chapters in this Companion discuss and introduce her writings in all these fields and provide the critical tools with which to judge their aesthetic and historical importance. The book also includes a full bibliography, a detailed chronology, and a description of the known facts of her life. The Companion will be an essential tool for the study of this increasingly important writer and thinker. derek hughes is Professor of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen. In addition to many articles on Restoration drama and its back- ground, he has published Dryden’s Heroic Plays (1980), English Drama, 1660– 1700 (1996), and The Theatre of Aphra Behn (2001). He was the general editor of the six-volume Eighteenth Century Women Playwrights (2001), and has just completed an edition of early modern texts concerning slavery and America, which includes Behn’s and Southerne’s versions of Oroonoko.
    [Show full text]
  • The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 0521527201 - The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd Frontmatter More information The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Traditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn has now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration. During the 1670s and 1680s, she provided more plays for the stage than any other author, and greatly influenced the development of the novel with her ground- breaking fiction, especially Love-Letters between a Noble-Man and his Sister, and Oroonoko, the first English novel set in America. Behn’s work straddles the genres: beside drama and fiction, she also excelled in poetry and she made several important translations from French libertine and scientific works. The chapters in this Companion discuss and introduce her writings in all these fields and provide the critical tools with which to judge their aesthetic and historical importance. The book also includes a full bibliography, a detailed chronology, and a description of the known facts of her life. The Companion will be an essential tool for the study of this increasingly important writer and thinker. derek hughes is Professor of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen. In addition to many articles on Restoration drama and its back- ground, he has published Dryden’s Heroic Plays (1980), English Drama, 1660– 1700 (1996), and The Theatre of Aphra Behn (2001). He was the general editor of the six-volume Eighteenth Century Women Playwrights (2001), and has just completed an edition of early modern texts concerning slavery and America, which includes Behn’s and Southerne’s versions of Oroonoko.
    [Show full text]
  • Lady Libertines, Female Fops, and Lady Julia Fulbank: Aphra Behn's Extraordinary Female Characters
    Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Theses and Dissertations 2011-06-16 Lady Libertines, Female Fops, and Lady Julia Fulbank: Aphra Behn's Extraordinary Female Characters. Sarah Audine Amundsen Brigham Young University - Provo Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Amundsen, Sarah Audine, "Lady Libertines, Female Fops, and Lady Julia Fulbank: Aphra Behn's Extraordinary Female Characters." (2011). Theses and Dissertations. 2653. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2653 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. i LADY LIBERTINES, FEMALE FOPS, AND LADY JULIA FULBANK: APHRA BEHN‘S EXTRAORDINARY FEMALE CHARACTERS. By Sarah A. Amundsen A Thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Megan Sanborn Jones, Chair Darl Larsen Eric Samuelsen Department of Theatre and Media Arts Brigham Young University June, 2011 Copyright © 2011 Sarah A. Amundsen All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT LADY LIBERTINES, FEMALE FOPS, AND LADY JULIA FULBANK: APHRA BEHN‘S EXTRAORDINARY FEMALE CHARACTERS. Sarah A. Amundsen Department of Theatre and Media Arts, BYU Master of Arts Aphra Behn has, throughout her life and subsequent years, been both demonized as a writer of bawdy and licentious plays and poetry as well as being hailed as the forerunner of female writers.
    [Show full text]
  • Princes, Power, and Politics in the Early Plays of Aphra Behn
    PRINCES, POWER, AND POLITICS IN THE EARLY PLAYS OF APHRA BEHN by JESSICA KATE BENTLEY PIRIE A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English Literature College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham February 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract My thesis explores Aphra Behn’s early plays and their portrayal of monarchical power within the political contexts of Charles II’s reign. The plays are studied chronologically, beginning with The Young King – which Behn claimed she wrote in c.1664 – and continuing through the first four of her works performed on the Restoration stage: The Forc’d Marriage, The Amorous Prince, The Dutch Lover, and Abdelazer. These works have been largely neglected by previous Behn studies, dismissed as experimental forerunners of her better-known works, like The Rover. By contrast, this thesis argues that these plays contain complex analogies of the political concerns and events troubling Charles II’s reign. Behn is popularly remembered as an ardent monarchist and staunch supporter of the Stuart crown.
    [Show full text]
  • Versions of Blackness: Key Texts on Slavery from the Seventeenth Century Derek Hughes Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-86930-0 - Versions of Blackness: Key Texts on Slavery from the Seventeenth Century Derek Hughes Frontmatter More information versions of blackness Aphra Behn’s short novel Oroonoko (1688) is one of the most widely studied works of seventeenth-century literature, because of its powerful representation of slavery and complex portrayal of ways in which differing races and cultures – European, Black African, and Native American – observe and misinterpret each other. This volume presents a new edition of Oroonoko, with unprece- dentedly full and informative commentary, along with complete texts of three major British seventeenth-century works concerned with race and colonialism: Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines (1668), Behn’s Abdelazer (1676), and Thomas Southerne’s tragedy Oroonoko (1696). It combines these with a rich anthology of European discussions of slavery, racial difference, and colonial conquest, from the mid-sixteenth century to the time of Behn’s death. Many are taken from important works that have not hitherto been easily available, and the col- lection offers an unrivaled resource for studying the culture which produced Britain’s first major fictions of slavery. Derek Hughes is a Professor of English at the University of Aberdeen, and formerly held a chair at the University of Warwick. He has published widely on Restoration literature in journals such as ELH, Essays in Criticism, and Philo- logical Quarterly, and is internationally recognized as a leading authority on Restoration Drama. His books include English Drama, 1660–1700 (1996), and The Theatre of Aphra Behn (2001). With Janet Todd, he edited the Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn (2004).
    [Show full text]
  • John Milton and Aphra Behn John Milton John Milton
    Culture Literature in the 17th Century: John Milton and Aphra Behn John Milton John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse. - William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author", and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language" John Milton's poetic style The poetic style of John Milton, also known as Miltonic verse, Miltonic epic, or Miltonic blank verse, was a highly influential poetic structure popularized by Milton. Although Milton wrote earlier poetry, his influence is largely grounded in his later poems: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained Although Milton was not the first to use blank verse, his use of it was very influential and he became known for the style. When Miltonic verse became popular, Samuel Johnson mocked Milton for inspiring bad blank verse, but he recognized that Milton's verse style was very influential. Poets such as Alexander Pope, whose final, incomplete work was intended to be written in the form, and John Keats, who complained that he relied too heavily on Milton, adopted and picked up various aspects of his poetry. In particular, Miltonic blank verse became the standard for those attempting to write English epics for centuries following the publication of Paradise Lost and his later poetry. Milton talked about liberties "the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties“ and of these liberties is divorce.
    [Show full text]
  • Aphra Behn (1640-1689)* by Janet Todd
    Aphra Behn (1640-1689)* by Janet Todd Aphra Behn was England’s first major professional woman writer. Living in the Restoration, she wrote at least nineteen plays, some good, some indifferent, but all fast paced and theatrical. She also authored one of the earliest English novels, Love-letters between a Nobleman and his Sister (1684-1687), as well as short stories, several volumes of poems and two scientific translations from French. She knew and wrote for Nell Gwyn, John Dryden, the Earl of Rochester and the Duke of York and was both famous and notorious in her time. To some she was ‘the Ingenious Mrs Behn’ and to others ‘a lewd harlot’. She was largely forgotten in later centuries, but when she was remembered, she evoked extreme responses. Virginia Woolf wanted flowers to fall on her grave for having given women the right to speak their minds, while eminent Victorian ladies and gentlemen dismissed her as disgraceful and vile. Now, much sustained interest is brewing in her and her works, which are being reprinted in paperback. My biography, The Secret Life of Aphra Behn (1996), has just appeared and her plays are being performed, including The Second Part of the Rover, staged this year in England for the first time since 1681. In the last decade, Behn has been canonized as the ‘First Lady of Cultural Studies,’ because of her overwhelming interest in race, gender and class. Although the Old Guard of English Literature grumbles at the phenomenon, believing that she is part of the debasement of the subject, she is, I suspect and hope, here to stay.
    [Show full text]
  • Performing Dreams in England and Spain, 1570-1670
    Ponti, Emanuela (2010) Performing dreams in England and Spain, 1570- 1670. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1737/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] PERFORMING DREAMS IN ENGLAND AND SPAIN, 1570-1670 by Emanuela Ponti Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Glasgow, February 2010. Copyright © Emanuela Ponti, 2010. Dedicated to Cornelio, Nadia, Giuseppe, Micol and Mark, my family. ii PREFACE The work described in this thesis was carried out by the author in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies of Glasgow University during the period September 2005 to September 2009. The work is that of the author and is original in content except where otherwise stated. Emanuela Ponti February 2010 iii CONTENTS Acknowledgments V List of Illustrations VI Abstract VII Chapter 1 Introduction: Theatre and Dreams in England and Spain, 1570-1670
    [Show full text]
  • “Let Me with Sappho and Orinda Be Oh Ever Sacred Nymph, Adorn'd By
    Sino-US English Teaching, February 2017, Vol. 14, No. 2, 120-127 doi:10.17265/1539-8072/2017.02.007 D DAVID PUBLISHING “Let Me With Sappho and Orinda Be oh Ever Sacred Nymph, Adorn’d by Thee”, Aphra Behn: A Character in Search of an Author Tiziana Febronia Arena University of Catania, Catania, Italy In this paper, I will explore Aphra Behn’s world: spy, kept mistress and writer. She created her complex personality between myth and reality, underlining limits and contradictions of her society in her life and works. In a world where woman had to be obedient she turned upside down a strict system, while remaining loyal to male libertinism. I will sketch out a brief outline of her life and works. She plays her role, assuming different positions, such as her masculine poetic gift and the labelled role of whore. This gave her access to the little but exciting world of women’s literature. She constructed the image of the whore, becoming trader of herself. In doing this, she gained a place in society. Keywords: Aphra Behn, Restoration, women’s position Among that number, do not me disdain, Me, the most humble of that glorious Train. I by double right thy Bounties claim, Both from my Sex, and in Apollo’s Name: Let me with Sappho and Orinda be Oh ever Sacred Nymph, adorn’d by thee; And give my Verses Immortality. —Aphra Behn1 Aphra Behn: The Documentary Record (2004) Introduction Who is Aphra Behn? As Mary Ann O’Donnell underlines, “[Behn is] a lethal combination of obscurity, secrecy and staginess, which makes her an uneasy fit for any narrative, speculative or factual.
    [Show full text]
  • Aphra Behn Edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd Excerpt More Information
    Cambridge University Press 0521527201 - The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn Edited by Derek Hughes and Janet Todd Excerpt More information 1 MARY ANN O’DONNELL Aphra Behn: the documentary record When Aphra Behn first attracted public literary notice, it was in September 1670 with her first play, The Forc’d Marriage, which she published in 1671 with the epigraph, ‘Va mon enfant! Prend ta fortune.’ Since the Duke’s Com- pany presented this as the opening play of their new season and Thomas Otway acted in it, we can assume that Behn’s literary connections were formed before the staging of her first play. But tracing the convoluted path of Aphra Behn to this theatrical premiere` is not simple. Behn is a particularly hard person to pin down. Germaine Greer calls her ‘a palimpsest; she has scratched herself out’,1 somehow avoiding notice in church or tax records, perhaps deliberately. Janet Todd underpins this when she notes that Behn ‘has a lethal combination of obscurity, secrecy and staginess, which makes her an uneasy fit for any narrative, speculative or factual. She is not so much a woman to be unmasked as an unending combination of masks.’2 The closest we come to establishing a time and place for Behn’s birth is in Harbledown, Kent, 14 December 1640, as Eaffrey Johnson, daughter of Elizabeth Denham and Bartholomew Johnson.3 The name Johnson and the Kentish birthplace were noted in 1696 in the brief biographies published first in The Younger Brother and shortly thereafter in Histories and Novels.In these two documents, we have the skeleton of the biography: the voyage to Surinam, the marriage to Mr Behn, and the ‘several Negotiations in Flanders’ for Charles II.
    [Show full text]
  • The Use of Rape Narratives in the Plays of Aphra Behn
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works School of Arts & Sciences Theses Hunter College Spring 5-9-2017 The Force of Seduction: the Use of Rape Narratives in the Plays of Aphra Behn Caitlyn Piccirillo CUNY Hunter College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/138 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE FORCE OF SEDUCTION: THE USE OF RAPE NARRATIVES IN THE PLAYS OF APHRA BEHN by Caitlyn Piccirillo Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Theatre, Hunter College The City University of New York May 9, 2017 Thesis Sponsor: May 9, 2017 Professor Mira Felner Date Signature May 9, 2017 Professor Claudia Orenstein Date Signature of Second Reader 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………………. 2 CHAPTER 1: HISTORICAL CONTEXT ………………………………………………………. 3 CHAPTER 2: PRECEDENT ……………………………………………………………………. 9 CHAPTER 3: RAPE’S RISE IN THE RESTORATION ……………………………………… 18 CHAPTER 4: BEHN BIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………... 28 CHAPTER 5: RAPE IN THE ROVER …………………………………………………………. 35 CHAPTER 6: COERSION IN THE CITY HEIRESS ………………………………………….. 47 CONCLUSIONS ………………………………………………………………………………. 60 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………………… 62 2 INTRODUCTION From its conception, theatre has been a way to tell the stories of others - an art of collective compassion. However until the feminist movement, prejudices and societal constraints forced women's stories to be primarily written by men - those intrinsically unable to understand the intricacies of the female point of view. Before the period of the English Restoration, on the European continent women were able to take part in the portrayal of their stories as performers and spectators, but seldom as the authors.
    [Show full text]