CHAPTER FIVE

BLEEDING HEARTS AND KILLING DARTS IN ABDELAZER, OR THE MOOR’S REVENGE

Rather, how hast thou yeelded to transgress That strict forbiddance, how to violate The sacred Fruit forbidd’n! som cursed fraud Of Enemie hath beguil’d thee, yet unknown ....1

In his History of England, Laurence Echard claims that Charles II’s reign from 1674 onward was mostly taken up by internal disputes and various domestic disturbances.2 As noted in the previous chapter, the King’s Declaration of Indulgence (1672) and Parliament’s Test Act (1673) had contributed in no way toward the stabilization of the government. The marriage of James, Duke of York, to the Roman Catholic Mary of Modena in 1673 simply added fuel to an already raging fire. Parliament, unhappy about James’ choice – for surely there was a Protestant bride to be found – wanted to discuss the matter prior to the new duchess’s arrival and the consummation of the marriage. By 1674, the King was forced to issue a proclamation To Restrain the Spreading of False News, and Licentious Talking of Matter of State and Government, which “showed clearly the King’s fears of upheaval”.3 The situation was so clamorous that Richard Legh wrote to his brother Thomas at Lyme, observing, “God deliver us from the fate of 1641. These days look too like them.”4 As if the current fracas both over and within the government was insufficient, in August

1 Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 902-905, ed. Elledge, 221. 2 Laurence Echard, The History of England: From the First Entrance of Julius Caesar King William and Queen Mary, 3 vols, London, 1707-1718, III, 356. 3 Miller, Charles II, 235. See A Proclamation: To Restrain the Spreading of False News, and Licentious Talking of Matters of State and Government, 2 May 1674, included here in Appendix B. 4 Lady Newton, Lyme Letters 1660-1760, London: Heinemann, 1925, 55. 160 Of Love and War

1675, the weavers rioted in London for several days. The King had reason to be alarmed, for as Sarotti notes: “Many of the citizens here, remembering the beginning and the manner of the late revolution, are apprehensive that more of the populace, stirred up by evil men, may also raise other kinds of pretensions or demands under colour of the public good … .”5 In October 1675, Ralph Josselin records in his diary the country’s fears of “the poor rising up and down our country, especially those that belong to the wool trade”.6 Certainly to the observer, the 1670s must have seemed rife with sedition and the seeds – and fears – of rebellion, as this decade raced toward the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis. Already fomenting, however, before Titus Oates spins his wild story, are deep concerns about religion and the succession, issues Behn attempts to treat in Abdelazer, or The Moor’s Revenge.7 The choice of this play, given the political acuity Behn has demonstrated to date, is one that could hardly have been accidental. The play is revision of Lust’s Dominion; or The Lascivious Queen (1657), at one time ascribed to Marlowe, but more recently to Day, Haughton, and/or Dekker.8 Charles Cathcart argues that Lust’s Dominion was published in 1657 for political reasons and suggests that the Moor in this play, Eleazar, might be viewed as Oliver Cromwell. Cathcart bases his claim on one surviving copy of the play that suggests through its commendatory versus that the current regime has an “inverted sense

5 A rather lengthy discussion of the incident may be found in Calendar of State Papers Venetian 1673-1675, in Paolo Sarotti’s letters to the Doge and Senate, 23 August 1675, 446-51. See also Correspondence of the Family of Hatton, being Chiefly Letters Addressed to Christopher, First Viscount Hatton, A.D. 1601-1704, ed. Edward Maunde Thompson, Camden Society n.s. 22-23, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1965, I, 120. In January 1676, there were further problems with the weavers and in March, they met several times to determine what could be done “to encourage the English weavers and put down the French”. In the end, the mercers were invited to “wait upon the King ... with patterns of stuffs and silks, when he will make his choice, and he and all the Court will constantly wear these to the exclusion of all other” (HMC Le Fleming, 124-25). 6 Ralph Josselin, Diary of Ralph Josselin 1616-1683, ed. Alan MacFarlane, Records of Social and Economic History, New Series, London: Oxford UP, 1976, 587. 7 Aphra Behn, Abdelazer, or the Moor’s Revenge, in Works, V, 139-315. 8 Lust’s Dominion; or, The Lascivious Queen, in Materials for the Study of English Drama, ed. J. Le Gay Brereton, Louvain: Uystpruyst, 1931, V, 1-146.