1. Kalendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1666-7.—ed. Mrs. M. A. E. Green (1864).
2. This is inaccurate. Mrs. Behn’s first play, The Forc’d Marriage, was produced in December, 1670.
3. e.g. to Waller’s daughter-in-law; to Tonson. cf. also the Warrant of 12 August, 1682; the Pindaric to Burnet, &c.
4. Aphra now appears on Mrs. Behn’s gravestone, and is the accepted form. This is, however, in all probability the third inscription. The Antiquities of Westminster (1711), quoting the inscription, gives Aphara. Sometime in the eighteenth century a certain Thomas Waine restored the inscription and added to the two lines two more:—
Great Poetess, O thy stupendous lays
The world admires and the Muses praise.
The name was then Aphara. The Biog. Brit., whilst insisting on Aphara as correct and citing the stone as evidence, none the less prints Apharra. Her works usually have Mrs. A. Behn. One Quarto misprints ‘Mrs. Anne Behn’. There are, of course, many variants of the name. Afara, and Afra are common. Oldys in his MS. notes on Langbaine writes Aphra or Aphora, whilst the Muses Mercury, September, 1707, has a special note upon a poem by Mrs. Behn to say ‘this Poetess’ true Name was Apharra.’ Even Aphaw (Behen, in the 1682 warrant,) and Fyhare (in a petition) occur.
5. He died in 1642.
6. The Vicar of Wye, the Rev. Edgar Lambert, in answer to my inquiries courteously writes: ‘In company with Mr. C. S. Orwin, whose book, The History of Wye Church and College, has just been published, I have closely examined the register and find no mention of “Johnson”, nor of the fact that Aphara Amis’ father was a “barber”.’
7. Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1660-1720), sometime Maid of Honour to Queen Mary of Modena. She had true lyric genius. For a generous appreciation see Gosse, Gossip in a Library (1891).
8. Then unprinted but now included in the very voluminous edition of Lady Winchilsea’s Poems, ed. M. Reynolds, Chicago, 1903.
9. In ‘Mrs. Behn’s Oroonoko’ Dr. Bernbaum elaborately endeavours to show that this story is pure fiction. His arguments, in many cases advanced with no little subtlety and precision, do not appear (to me at least) to be convincing. We have much to weigh in the contrary balance: Mrs. Behn’s manifest first-hand knowledge of, and extraordinary interest in, colonial life; her reiterated asseverations that every experience detailed in this famous novel is substantially true; the assent of all her contemporaries. It must further be remembered that Aphra was writing in 1688, of a girlhood coloured by and seen through the enchanted mists of a quarter of a century. That there are slight discrepancies is patent; the exaggerations, however, are not merely pardonable but perfectly natural. One of Dr. Bernbaum’s most crushing arguments, when sifted, seems to resolve itself into the fact that whilst writing Oroonoko Mrs. Behn evidently had George Warren’s little book, An Impartial Description of Surinam (London, 1667), at hand. Could anything be more reasonable than to suppose she would be intimately acquainted with a volume descriptive of her girlhood’s home? Again, Dr. Bernbaum bases another line of argument on the assumption that Mrs. Behn’s father was a barber. Hence the appointment of such a man to an official position in Surinam was impossible, and, ‘if Mrs. Behn’s father was not sent to Surinam, the only reason she gives for being there disappears’. We know from recent investigation that John Amis did not follow a barber’s trade, but was probably of good old stock. Accordingly, the conclusions drawn by Dr. Bernbaum from this point cannot now be for a moment maintained.
10. Both these incidents are the common property of Italian novelle and our own stage. Although not entirely impossible, they would appear highly suspicious in any connection.
11. He was at Margate 25 July, and at Bruges 7 August.
12. There do not appear to be any grounds for the oft-repeated assertions that Mrs. Behn communicated the intelligence when the Dutch were planning an attack (afterwards carried out) on the Thames and Medway squadrons, and that her warning was scoffed at.
13. Had he been imprisoned for political reasons it is impossible that there should have been so speedy a prospect of release.
14. Baptist May, Esq. (1629-98), Keeper of the Privy Purse.
15. William Chiffinch, confidential attendant and pimp to Charles II.
16. Amintas repeatedly stands for John Hoyle. In Our Cabal, however (vide Vol. VI, p. 160), Hoyle is dubbed Lycidas.
17. The Retrospective Review, however (Vol. I, November, 1852), has an article, ‘Mrs. Behn’s Dramatic Writings,’ which warmly praises her comedies. The writer very justly observes that ‘they exhibit a brilliance of conversation in the dialogue, and a skill in arranging the plot and producing striking situations, in which she has few equals.’ He frequently insists upon her ‘great skill in conducting the intrigue of her pieces’, and with no little acumen declares that ‘her comedies may be cited as the most perfect models of the drama of the latter half of the seventeenth century.’
18. Which it certainly was not secundum mid-Victorian morals.
19. Mr. Gosse in the Dictionary of National Biography basing upon the preface to The Young King, says that after knocking in vain for some time at the doors of the theatres with this tragi-comedy that could find neither manager nor publisher, she put it away and wrote The Forc’d Marriage, which proved more successful. Dr. Baker follows this, but I confess I cannot see due grounds for any such hypothesis.
20. The Duke’s Company opened at their new theatre, Dorset Garden, 9 November, 1671.
21. 4to, 1673. Mrs. Behn’s accurate knowledge of the theatre and technicalties theatrical as shown in the preface to this early play is certainly remarkable. It is perhaps worth noting that her allusion to the popularity of 1 Henry IV was not included in Shakspere Allusion-Book (ed. Furnivall and Munro, 1909), where it should have found a place.
22. In view of the extremely harsh treatment Ravenscroft has met with at the hands of the critics it may be worth while emphasizing Genest’s opinion that his ‘merit as a dramatic writer has been vastly underrated’. Ravenscroft has a facility in writing, an ease of dialogue, a knack of evoking laughter and picturing the ludicrous, above all a vitality which many a greater name entirely lacks. As a writer of farce, and farce very nearly akin to comedy, he is capital.
23. Letters from the Dead to the Living: The Virgin’s [Mrs. Bracegirdle] Answer to Mrs. Behn. ‘You upbraid me with a great discovery you chanc’d to make by peeping into the breast of an old friend of mine; if you give yourself but the trouble of examining an old poet’s conscience, who went lately off the stage, and now takes up his lodgings in your territories, and I don’t question but you’ll there find Mrs. Behn writ as often in black characters, and stand as thick in some places, as the names of the generation of Adam in the first of Genesis.’ How far credence may be given to anything of Brown’s is of course a moot point, but the above passage and much that follows would be witless and dull unless there were some real suggestion of scandal. Moreover, it cannot here be applied to Hoyle, whereas it very well fits Ravenscroft. This letter which speaks of ‘the lash of Mr. C——r’ must have been written no great time after the publication of Jeremy Collier’s A Short View of the Immorality of the English Stage (March, 1698), probably in 1701-2. Ravenscroft’s last play, The Italian Husband, was produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1697, and he is supposed to have died a year or two later, which date exactly suits the detail given by Brown. Ravenscroft’s first play, Mamamouchi, had been produced in 1672, and the ‘an old poet’ would be understood.
24. This occurrence is the subject of some lines in The Rump (1662): ‘On the happy Memory of Alderman Hoyle that hang’d himself.’
25. The Muses Mercury, December, 1707, refers to verses made on Mrs. Behn ‘and her very good friend, Mr. Hoyle’.
26. My attention was drawn to these lines by Mr. Thorn Drury, who was, indeed, the first to suggest that Hoyle is the person aimed at. I have to thank him, moreover, for much valuable information on this important point.
27. cf. Luttrell’s Diary, February, 1686-7, which records that an indictment for misconduct was actually presented against him at the Old Bailey, but the Grand Jury threw out the bill and he was discharged. The person implicated in the charge against Hoyle seems to have been a poulterer, cf. A Faithful Catalogue of our Most Eminent Ninnies, said to have been written by the Earl of Dorset in 1683, or (according to another edition of Rochester’s works in which it occurs) 1686. In any case the verses cannot be earlier than 1687.
Which made the wiser Choice is now our Strife,
Hoyle his he-mistress, or the Prince his wife:
Those traders sure will be beiov’d as well,
As all the dainty tender Birds they sell.
The ‘Prince’ is George Fitzroy, son of Charles II by the Duchess of Cleveland, who was created Duke of Northumberland and married Catherine, daughter of Robert Wheatley, a poulterer, of Bracknell, Berks; and relict of Robert Lucy of Charlecote, Warwickshire.
28. Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry, etc. There are several editions. I have used that of 1718, 2 vols.
29. In his MS. Commonplace Book (now in the possession of G. Thorn Drury, Esq., K.C.), Whitelocke Bulstrode writes:—
’27 May 92.
’Mr Hoyle of y’e Temple, coming this morning about two of ye Clock frõ ye Young Divel Tavern, was killed wth a sword; He died Instantly: It proceeded frõ a quarrell about Drincking a Health; Killed by Mr Pitt of Graies Inne yt Dranck wth them. Mr Hoyle was an Atheist, a Sodomite professed, a corrupter of youth, & a Blasphemer of Christ.’
The Young (or Little) Devil Tavern was in Fleet Street, on the south side, near Temple Bar, adjoining Dick’s Coffee House. It was called Young (or Little) to distinguish it from the more famous house, The Devil (or Old Devil) Tavern, which stood between Temple Bar and the Inner Temple Gate.
30. Betterton’s adaption of Marston’s The Dutch Courtezan, which the actor calls The Revenge; or, A Match in Newgate, has sometimes been erroneously ascribed to Mrs. Behn by careless writers. She has also been given The Woman Turn’d Bully, a capital comedy with some clever characterization, which was produced at Dorset Garden in June, 1675, and printed without author’s name the same year. Both Prologue and Epilogue, two pretty songs, Oh, the little Delights that a Lover takes; and Ah, how charming is the shade, together with a rollicking catch ‘O London, wicked London-Town!’ which is ‘to be sung a l’yvronge, in a drunken humour’, might all well be Mrs. Behn’s, and the whole conduct of the play is very like her early manner. Beyond this, however, there is no evidence to suggest it is from her pen.
31. The overture, act-tunes, incidental music, were composed by Henry Purcell.
32. Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry, etc., Vol. I (1718), pp. 31-2.
33. Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperor of the Turks, produced in 1696 (410, 1696), a commendable tragedy by Mrs. Mary Pix, née Griffiths (1666-1720?). The plot is based on Sir Paul Ricaut’s continuation of the Turkish history.
34. The date is fixed by the Epilogue ‘at his R.H. second exile into Flanders’. The Duke of York sailed for Antwerp 4 March, 1679. He returned in August owing to the King’s illness.
35. This fact sufficiently explodes the quite untenable suggestion that The Young King in earlier days could find neither producer nor publisher. That the quarto did not appear until four years after the play had been seen on the stage is no argument of non-success. Ravenscroft’s Mamamouchi was produced early in 1672, and ‘continu’d Acting 9 Days with a full house’. It specially delighted the King and Court. It was not printed, however, until 1675.
36. Gould in The Play House, a Satyr, stung by Mrs. Behn’s success, derides that
clean piece of Wit
The City Heiress by chaste Sappho Writ,
Where the Lewd Widow comes with Brazen Face,
Just seeking from a Stallion’s rank Embrace,
T’ acquaint the Audience with her Filthy Case.
Where can you find a Scene for juster Praise,
In Shakespear, Johnson, or in Fletcher’s Plays?
37. Publication was delayed. Brooks’ Impartial Mercury, Friday, 17 Nov., 1682, advertises: ‘To be published on Monday next, the last new play called Romulus.’ The 4to is dated 1683. A broad sheet, 1682, gives both Prologue ‘spoken by Mrs. Butler, written by Mrs. Behn,’ and Epilogue ‘spoken by the Lady Slingsby.’ The 4to gives ‘Prologue, spoken by Mrs. Butler,’ ‘Epilogue, Writ by Mrs. A. Behn. Spoken by Tarpeia.’
38. Curtis’ Protestant Mercury, August 12-6, 1682, notices that both Lady Slingsby and Mrs. Behn have been ordered into custody in respect of this Epilogue.
39. Forde, Lord Grey of Werke, Earl of Tankerville, who succeeded to the title in 1675, was married to Lady Mary Berkeley. He eloped, however, with Lady Henrietta Berkley, and great scandal ensued. When he and his minions were brought to trial, 23 November, 1682, his mistress and a number of staunch Whigs boldly accompanied him into court. He was found guilty, but as his friends banded together to resist, something very like a riot ensued. He died 25 June, 1701. Lady Henrietta Berkeley, who never married, survived her lover nine years.
Astrea with her soft gay sighing Swains
And rural virgins on the flowery Plains,
The lavish Peer’s profuseness may reprove
Who gave her Guineas for the Isle of Love.
—Contemporary Satire,—(Harleian MSS.)
41. This of course cannot be correct, but it is so transcribed. In the transcript of this letter made by Malone, and now in the possession of G. Thorn Drury, Esq., K.C., over the word ‘Garth’s’ is written ‘Q’, and at the foot of the page a note by Mitford says: ‘This name seems to have been doubtful in the MSS.’ I have thought it best not to attempt any emendation.
42. Neither of these was printed until eight years after her death. They first appear, each with its separate title page, 1697, bound up in the Third Edition, ‘with Large Additions,’ of All the Histories and Novels, Written by the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn, Entire in One Volume, 1698. After Nos. vii, viii, ix, Memoirs of the Court of the King of Bantam, The Nun; or, the Perjured Beauty, The Adventure of the Black Lady follows a note: ‘These last three never before published.’ Some superficial bibliographers (e.g. Miss Charlotte E. Morgan in her unreliable monograph, The English Novel till 1749) have postulated imaginary editions of 1683-4 for The Little Black Lady and The King of Bantam. The Nun; or, the Perjured Beauty is universally confounded with The History of the Nun (vide Vol. V, p. 259, Introduction to that novel) and dated 1689.
With reference to The King of Bantam we have in the 1698 collected edition of the Novels the following ’Advertisement to the Reader. The Stile of the Court of the King of Bantam, being so very different from Mrs. Behn’s usual way of Writing, it may perhaps call its being genuine in Question; to obviate which Objection, I must inform the Reader, that it was a Trial of Skill upon a Wager, to shew that she was able to write in the Style of the Celebrated Scarron, in Imitation of whom ’tis writ, tho’ the Story be true. I need not say any thing of the other Two, they evidently confessing their admirable Author.’
43. Swift, although he amply fulfilled Dryden’s famous prophecy, ‘Cousin Swift, you will never be a Pindaric poet’, was doubtless thinking of these Pindarics when in The Battle of the Books he wrote: ‘Then Pindar slew ——, and ——, and Oldham, and ——, and Afra the Amazon light of foot.’
44. First published in The Gentleman’s Magazine, May, 1836.
45. Christopher Monck, second Duke of Albermarle, was appointed Governor-General of Jamaica, 26 November, 1687. He died there early in the following autumn.
46. ’Sappho famous for her Gout and Guilt,’ writes Gould in The Poetess, a Satyr.
47. Now published for the first time by the courtesy of G. Thorn Drury, Esq., K.C., who generously obliged me with a transcript of the original.
48. In the original edition of The Fair Jilt (1688), we have advertised: ‘There is now in the Press, Oroonoko; or, The History of the Royal Slave. Written by Madam Behn.’
49. In the second edition (1688), of this Congratulatory Poem to Queen Mary of Modena we have the following advertisement:—’On Wednesday next will be Published the most Ingenious and long Expected History of Oroonoko; or, the Royal Slave. By Mrs. Behn.’
50. The title page has 1689, but it was possibly published late in 1688.
51. Traditionally said to be John Hoyle.
52. Sam Briscoe, the publisher, in his Dedicatory Epistle to Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry, etc. (2 vols., 1718), says: ‘Had the rough Days of K. Charles II newly recover’d from the Confusion of a Civil War, or the tempestuous Time of James the Second, had the same Sence of Wit as our Gentlemen now appear to have, the first Impressions of Milton’s Paradise Lost had never been sold for Waste Paper; the Inimitable Hudibras had never suffered the Miseries of a Neglected Cavalier; Tom Brown the merriest and most diverting’st man, had never expir’d so neglected; Mr. Dryden’s Religion would never have lost him his Pension; or Mrs. Behn ever had but two Lines upon her Grave-stone.’
53. ‘She was a most beautiful woman, and a more excellent poet’. Col. Colepeper. Adversaria, Vol. ii (Harleian MSS.)
54. This piece finds a place in the unauthorised edition of Prior’s Poems, 1707, a volume the poet himself repudiated. In the Cambridge edition of Prior’s Works (1905-7), reason is given, however, to show that the lines are certainly Prior’s, and that he withdrew this and other satires (says Curll, the bookseller), owing to ‘his great Modesty’. The Horatian tag (Epistles i, xiv, 19) is of course ‘O Imitatores servum pecus’.
55. In his Preface Concerning Ovid’s Epistles affixed to the translation of the Heroides (Ovid’s Epistles), ‘by Several Hands’ (1680), Dryden writes: ‘The Reader will here find most of the Translations, with some little Latitude or variation from the Author’s Sence: That of Oenone to Paris, is in Mr. Cowley’s way of Imitation only. I was desir’d to say that the Author who is of the Fair Sex, understood not Latine. But if she does not, I am afraid she has given us occasion to be asham’d who do.’
56. ‘Old Mr. John Bowman, the player, told me that Mrs. Behn was the First Person he ever knew or heard of who made the Liquor call’d Milk Punch.’—Oldys; MS. note in Langbaine. In a tattered MS. recipe book, the compilation of a good housewife named Mary Rockett, and dated 1711, the following directions are given how to brew this tipple. ‘To make Milk Punch. Infuse the rinds of 8 Lemons in a Gallon of Brandy 48 hours then add 5 Quarts of Water and 2 pounds of Loaf Sugar then Squize the Juices of all the Lemons to these Ingredients add 2 Quarts of new milk Scald hot stirring the whole till it crudles grate in 2 Nutmegs let the whole infuse 1 Hour then refine through a flannel Bag.’
57. ‘She always Writ with the greatest ease in the world, and that in the midst of Company, and Discourse of other matters. I saw her my self write Oroonoko, and keep her own in Discoursing with several then present in the Room.’—Gildon: An Account of the Life of the Incomparable Mrs. Behn, prefixed to The Younger Brother (4to 1696). Southerne says, with reference to Oroonoko, ‘That she always told his Story, more feelingly than she writ it.’
58. It is ushered in by one ‘G. J. her friend’. This was almost certainly George Jenkins.
59. The School for Greybeards, produced at Drury Lane, 25 November, 1786. It owes much of its business to The Lucky Chance. See the Theatrical History of that comedy (Vol. iii, p. 180). Miss Farren acted Donna Seraphina, second wife of Don Alexis, one of the Greybeards. She also spoke the epilogue.
Explanation of “Notes”
In the printed book, all Notes were grouped at the end of the volume in two sections: “Notes on the Plays” and “Notes: Critical and Explanatory”. Passages cited were identified only by page and line number.
For this e-text, the Notes have been placed after their respective plays, retaining the division between textual notes (generally short, one or two lines) and critical notes (often several paragraphs). The original page numbers are shown in brackets [ ].
References to Acts and Scenes were added by the transcriber. Page and line numbers have been retained for completeness, but all links lead directly to the cited text. Annotated passages are identified in the body text with two kinds of link: dotted underlining for “Notes on the Plays”; solid underlining for “Notes: Critical and Explanatory”. Passages that have both kinds of note are linked to the critical note.
THE ROVER; OR,
THE BANISH’D CAVALIERS.
PART I.
Scenes described in (parentheses) are unnumbered.
ARGUMENT.
During the exile of Charles II a band of cavaliers, prominent amongst whom are Willmore (the Rover), Belvile, Frederick, and Ned Blunt, find themselves at Naples in carnival time. Belvile, who at a siege at Pampluna has rescued a certain Florinda and her brother Don Pedro, now loves the lady, and the tender feeling is reciprocated. Florinda’s father, however, designs her for the elderly Vincentio, whilst her brother would have her marry his friend Antonio, son to the Viceroy. Florinda, her sister Hellena (who is intended for the veil), their cousin Valeria, and duenna Callis surreptitiously visit the carnival, all in masquerade, and there encounter the cavaliers. Florinda arranges to meet Belvile that night at her garden-gate. Meanwhile a picture of Angelica Bianca, a famous courtezan, is publicly exposed, guarded by bravos. Antonio and Pedro dispute who shall give the 1000 crowns she demands, and come to blows. After a short fray Willmore, who has boldly pulled down the picture, is admitted to the house, and declares his love, together with his complete inability to pay the price she requires. Angelica, none the less, overcome with passion, yields to him. Shortly after, meeting Hellena in the street, he commences an ardent courtship, which is detected by the jealous Angelica, who has followed him vizarded. Florinda that night at the garden-gate encounters Willmore, who, having been toping in the town, is far from sober, and her cries at his advances attract her brother and servants, whom she eludes by escaping back to the house. After a brawl, Willmore has to endure the reproaches of Belvile, who has appeared on the scene. During their discussion Antonio makes as about to enter Angelica’s house before which they are, and Willmore, justling him to one side, wounds him. He falls, and the officers who run up at the clash of swords, arrest Belvile, who has returned at the noise, as the assailant, conveying him by Antonio’s orders to the Viceroy’s palace. Antonio, in the course of conversation, resigns Florinda to his rival, and Belvile, disguised as Antonio, obtains Florinda from Don Pedro. At this moment Willmore accosts him, and the Spaniard perceiving his mistake, soon takes his sister off home. Angelica next comes in hot pursuit of Willmore, but they are interrupted by Hellena, dressed as a boy, who tells a tale of the Rover’s amour with another dame and so rouses the jealous courtezan to fury, and the twain promptly part quarrelling. Florinda, meanwhile, who has escaped from her brother, running into an open house to evade detection, finds herself in Ned Blunt’s apartments. Blunt, who is sitting half-clad, and in no pleasant mood owing to his having been tricked of clothes and money and turned into the street by a common cyprian, greets her roughly enough, but is mollified by the present of a diamond ring. His friends and Don Pedro, come to laugh at his sorry case, now force their way into the chamber, and Florinda, whom her brother finally resigns to Belvile, is discovered. She is straightway united to her lover by a convenient priest. Willmore is then surprised by the apparition of Angelica, who, loading him with bitter reproaches for his infidelity, is about to pistol him, when she is disarmed by Antonio, and accordingly parts in a fury of jealous rage, to give place to Hellena who adroitly secures her Rover in the noose of matrimony.
SOURCE.
The entire plan and many details of both parts of The Rover are taken openly and unreservedly from Tom Killigrew’s Thomaso, or The Wanderer, an unacted comedy likewise in two parts, published for the first time in his collected works by Henry Herringman (folio, 1663-4). It is to be noticed, however, that whilst Killigrew’s work is really one long play of ten closely consecutive acts, the scene of which is continually laid in Madrid, without any break in time or action, Mrs. Behn, on the other hand, admirably contrives that each separate part of The Rover is complete and possesses perfect unity in itself, the locale being respectively, and far more suitably, in two several places, Naples and Madrid, rather than confined to the latter city alone. Mrs. Behn, moreover, introduces new characters and a new intrigue in her second part, thus not merely sustaining but even renewing the interest which in Thomaso jades and flags most wearily owing to the author’s prolixity and diffuseness.
Killigrew, a royalist to the core, participated in the protracted exile of Charles II, and devoting this interim to literature, wrote Thomaso whilst at Madrid, probably about the year 1654-5. Although undeniably interesting in a high degree, and not ill written, it shares in no small measure the salient faults of his other productions, boundless and needless verbosity, slowness of action, unconscionable length.
For all its wit and cleverness, such blemishes would, without trenchant cutting, have been more than sufficient to prohibit it from any actual performance, and, indeed, Thomaso may be better described as a dramatic romance than a comedy intended for the boards. Clumsy and gargantuan speeches, which few actors could have even memorized, and none would have ventured to utter on the stage, abound in every scene. This lack of technical acumen (unless, as may well be the case, Killigrew wrote much of these plays without any thought of presentation) is more than surprising in an author so intimately connected with the theatre and, after the Restoration, himself manager of the King’s Company.
Nor is Thomaso without its patent plagiarisms. Doubtless no small part is simply autobiographical adventuring, but, beside many a reminiscence of the later Jacobeans, Killigrew has conveyed entire passages and lyrics wholesale without attempt at disguise. Thus the song, ‘Come hither, you that love,’ Act ii, Scene 3, is from Fletcher’s Captain, Act iv, the scene in Lelia’s chamber. Again, the procedure and orations of Lopus the mountebank are but the flimsiest alterations of Volpone, Act ii, Scene I, nor could Killigrew change Jonson for anything but the worse. He has even gone so far as to name his quack’s spouse Celia, a distinct echo of Corvino’s wife.
In dealing with these two plays Mrs. Behn has done a great deal more than merely fit the pieces for the stage. Almost wholly rewriting them, she has infused into the torpid dialogue no small portion of wit and vivacity, whilst the characters, prone to devolve into little better than prosy and wooden marionettes, with only too apparent wires, are given life, vigour movement, individuality and being. In fact she has made the whole completely and essentially her own. In some cases the same names are retained. We find Phillipo, Sancho, Angelica Bianca, Lucetta, Callis, in Killigrew. But as Willmore is a different thing altogether to Thomaso, so Ned Blunt is an infinitely more entertaining figure than his prototype Edwardo. Amongst other details Killigrew, oddly and stupidly enough, gives his English gentlemen foreign names:—Thomaso, Ferdinando, Rogero, Harrigo*. This jar is duly corrected in The Rover.
Mrs. Behn has further dealt with the Lucetta intrigue in a far more masterly way than Killigrew’s clumsily developed episode. In Thomaso it occupies a considerable space, and becomes both tedious and brutally unpleasant. The apt conclusion of the amour in The Rover with Blunt’s parlous mishap is originally derived from Boccaccio, Second Day, Novel 5, where a certain Andreuccio finds himself in the same unsavoury predicament as the Essex squireen. However, even this was by no means new to the English stage. In Blurt Master Constable, Lazarillo de Tormes, at the house of the courtezan Imperia, meets with precisely the same accident, Act iii, Scene 3, Act iv, Scenes 2 and 3, and it is probable that Mrs. Behn did not go directly to the Decameron but drew upon Middleton, of whom she made very ample use on another occasion, borrowing for The City Heiress no small portion of A Mad World, My Masters, and racily reproducing in extenso therefrom Sir Bounteous Progress, Dick Folly-Wit, the mock grandee, and that most excellent of all burglaries good enough for Fielding at his best.
In dealing with Thomaso Astrea did not hesitate, with manifest advantage, to transfer incidents from Part II to Part I, and vice versa. Correcting, pruning, augmenting, enlivening, rewriting, she may indeed (pace the memory of the merry jester of Charles II) be well said to have clothed dry bones with flesh, and to have given her creation a witty and supple tongue.
* There is a strange commixture here. The character is familiarly addressed as ‘Hal’, the scene is Madrid, and he rejoices in the Milanese (not Italian) nomenclature Arrigo = Henry in that dialect.
THEATRICAL HISTORY.
The first part of The Rover was produced at the Duke’s House, Dorset Gardens, in the summer of 1677, and licensed for printing on 2 July of the same year. It met, as it fully deserved, with complete success, and remained one of the stock plays of the company. Smith, the original Willmore, and the low comedian Underhill as Blunt were especially renowned in their respective rôles. Another famous Willmore was Will Mountford, of whom Dibdin relates, ‘When he played Mrs. Behn’s dissolute character of The Rover, it was remarked by many, and particularly by Queen Mary, that it was dangerous to see him act, he made vice so alluring.’
Amongst the more notable representations of the eighteenth century we find:— Drury Lane; 18 February, 1703. Willmore by Wilks; Hellena, Mrs. Oldfield; repeated on 15 October of the same year. Haymarket; 20 January, 1707. Willmore by Verbruggen; Blunt, Underhill; Hellena, Mrs. Bracegirdle; Angelica, Mrs. Barry; Florinda, Mrs. Bowman. Drury Lane; 22 April, 1708. Willmore by Wilks; Blunt, Estcourt; Frederick, Cibber; Hellena, Mrs. Oldfield; Angelica, Mrs. Barry; Florinda, Mrs. Porter. Drury Lane; 30 December, 1715. Willmore, Wilks; Blunt, Johnson; Hellena, Mrs. Mountfort; Angelica, Mrs. Porter. Drury Lane; 6 March, 1716. Don Pedro, Quin; Frederick, Ryan; Florinda, Mrs. Horton. Lincoln’s Inn Fields; 5 April, 1725. ‘Never acted there.’ Performed for Ryan’s benefit. Willmore, Ryan; Belvile, Quin; Blunt, Spiller; Hellena, Mrs. Bullock; Angelica, Mrs. Parker. Covent Garden; 9 November, 1748. Willmore, Ryan; Blunt, Bridgewater; Hellena, Mrs. Woffington; Angelica, Mrs. Horton. To make this performance more attractive there was also presented ‘a musical entertainment’, entitled, Apollo and Daphne, which had been originally produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1726. Covent Garden; 19 February, 1757. ‘Not acted twenty years.’ Willmore, Smith; Belvile, Ridout; Frederick, Clarke; Don Antonio, Dyer; Blunt, Shuter; Hellena, Mrs. Woffington; Angelica, Mrs. Hamilton; Florinda, Mrs. Elmy. This, the latest revival, was performed with considerable expense, and proved successful, being repeated no less than ten times during the season. Wilkinson says that Shuter acted Blunt very realistically, and, as the stage directions of Act iii require, stripped to his very drawers.
On 8 March, 1790, J. P. Kemble presented at Drury Lane a pudibond alteration of The Rover, which he dubbed Love in Many Masks (8vo, 1790). It was well received, and acted eight times; in the following season once. Willmore was played by Kemble himself; Belvile, Wroughton; Blunt, Jack Bannister; Stephano, Suett; Hellena, Mrs. Jordan; Angelica, Mrs. Ward; Florinda, Mrs. Powell; Valeria, Mrs. Kemble; Lucetta, Miss Tidswell. It is not entirely worthless from a purely technical point of view, but yet very modest and mediocre. As might well be surmised, the raciness and spirit of The Rover entirely evaporate in the insipidity of emasculation. This is the last recorded performance of Mrs. Behn’s brilliant comedy in any shape.