Introduction
The Rover is a Comedy, published in two parts in 1677 and 1681. set in Madrid and Naples. The Rover is one of the Interesting comedy as well as play. which was published in 1677 and first performed in March of that year at Duke's Theater in Dorset Garden.
Early life
Very little is known of Behn’s early life. She was born in 1640 during the lead-up to the English Civil Wars, possibly in Canterbury to a barber father (perhaps named Eaffrey or Bartholomew Johnson) and wet-nurse mother, though in adulthood she moved in aristocratic, courtly circles. Following the narrator’s account of her own life in Oroonoko (1688), some biographers think Behn travelled with her family to the English (later Dutch) colony of Surinam (in the Guianas of South America). There, she may have met an African slave leader who inspired her to write Oroonoko, which is regarded as one of the earliest English novels. Most biographers think Behn had returned to England by 1664, when she married a merchant named Johan Behn, though they separated soon after and by 1666 Johan had died. In any case, from 1664 she went by the name of ‘Mrs Behn’ professionally.
Political sympathies
Behn’s politics were conservative and her sympathies were Royalist. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War, which broke out in 1665, she is said to have acted as a spy in Bruges (her code name was Astrea) on behalf of the court of Charles second Espionage was not a lucrative career, though, and Behn seems to have returned to London within the year. Some accounts have her serving time in debtors’ prison, although that (like much else about her life) is not officially documented.
Writing for the stage
Back in England, Behn turned her attention to writing. We know that she began working for the King’s Company and the Duke’s Company, two theatre companies authorised by Charles II after the Restoration, first as a scribe and then as a playwright. Her first few works in the early 1670s The force marriage . The dutch Lover were not commercial successes. 1677’s The Rover , however, was a critical and commercial victory, and from then on Behn had a steady career as a playwright writing 19 plays in total and probably assisting in the composition of several more.
She also wrote novels, poems and literary translations up until her death in 1689 at the age of 49. She is buried in Westminster Abbey, though not in Poets’ Corner.
Reputation
Much of Behn’s work was published anonymously during her own lifetime. Now, Behn is best known for her novels The fair Jilt Oroonoko the latter of which, though not expressly anti-slavery, was unusual in its time for the respectful attention it pays to a non-white, non-English protagonist – and for her poetry. Her poetry is frequently frank about female sexual pleasure and humorous about male sexual dysfunction (as in ‘The Disappointment’), and some of it was originally attributed to her male contemporary, the famously bawdy Earl of Rochester.
Summary of the play
The setting of Novel in Naples. There is Two sister is talking about her lovers.who is known as the Bellville. who comes with the Identity of British Man. The two sister is coming from the Spanish Girl.Her name is given below.
Florinda
Hellena
cousin sister is valeria
so These three Girls is spanish, but wearing consume as Gipsy girls. Also two spanish man is Father of that girl wants to her girl to marry with Don vincentio. meanwhile, her brother Don pedro wants to her sister marry with Don Antonio.so this is the basic Information of the Character.Also some of the British characters are
willmore
Willmore is The Rover he is a man who spends most of his days at sea, moving from place to place without fixed route or destination. It is implied that Charles II is onboard the ship that Willmore captains, which indicates that Willmore is a royalist. Throughout the play he is an inconstant character, committing to one woman, and then moving on to the next moments later. His disloyal character is thus emphasized via his interaction with the women that he encounters throughout the course of the play. He is also a notably hotheaded and rash character, always quick to draw his sword.
Blunt
Blunt is a foolish English country gentleman who gets duped by Lucetta, a Spanish whore. Initially, Blunt is the most well-off financially of all the Englishmen Bellville, Frederick, Willmore by the end of the play he has lost all of his possessions, right down to his underwear. Throughout the play, Blunt makes obvious the fact that he is an outsider with his attention-grabbing behavior-- he eventually suffers the consequences of this behavior, as he is preyed upon by a practiced tease and thief. It becomes apparent throughout the course of the play that Blunt is a naive and shortsighted character with irrational motives and cruel intentions.
Fredrick
Frederick is an Englishman and friend of Belleville, Blunt, and Willmore. He takes a liking to Valeria, and the two eventually end up together. Frederick proves himself to be a dangerous and cruel character when he agrees to beat and rape Florinda with Blunt toward the end of the play; however, it is also he who puts a stop to the attack when uncertain as to whether she might be Belville's love.
These are the some characters of the The rover. Also, willmore is a very different character in this play as Raped man as well as The Main Rover Character in the play.when story goes in the very Different way, we can't easily says that what will happens in the play but after the end goes to happy because all characters are married with Each other like Willmore loves to Hellena
Frederick loves to valeria
Bellville vs Florinda so Its comic play.
What did
Virginia Woolf say about Aphra Behn? Do you agree with her? Why?
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th century authors and also a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
"All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."
Behn had a few female contemporaries but, unlike her, they were aristocratic and certainly not doing anything as vulgar as writing for money. These hobbyist writers would also usually warn potential readers with a notice that the following work was written by a member of the "fair sex", as though apologising in advance. Aphra Behn made no such apologies. She did not ask for permission or acceptance - and it was because she did neither that she proved to be so popular among the ordinary playgoers whose opinion so often goes unrecorded. Operating with striking success outside gender conventions, it was she who paved the way for other women to do the same. What's more, she included as much wit and bawdiness as she could muster, along with a sharp insight into both sex and politics. She was the Restoration's very own combination of Dorothy Parker and Mae West.Her novel was Oroonoko. This is despite the fact that Behn has been totally overlooked not just by male critics of long ago, but most recently by Terry Eagleton, something which surprised me when I was researching a paper I was writing on Behn and Daniel Defoe last year. In his The English Novel: An Introduction he begins, like most, with Daniel Defoe, despite a gap of almost 30 years between Robinson Crusoe and Oroonoko.
The Sexual Politics of Behn's "Rover": After Patriarchy - Stephen Szilagyi
Each woman begins the play bound one of the three fates: Florinda to marriage, Hellena to the nunnery, and Angellica Bianca to well-paid prostitution. Through Carnival, however, these women abandon their prescribed positions with disguises to “be mad as the rest, and take all innocent freedoms,” including to “outwit twenty brothers” . The masquerade serves multiple purposes. First, disguise equalizes the class distinctions, “and even the difference between the categories available to women” . When lost in the festivities, the ladies join all that “are, or would have you think they’re courtesans,” the most sexually liberated women . Their initial costumes as gypsies allow them to approach men in a feminized, desirous way. Gypsies already occupy the role of outcast on the liminal edge of society; by taking on their looks, Florinda and Hellena put themselves and their sexuality outside the confines of cultural expectation. Their decision implies Behn’s opinion that her peers should seek to escape the restrictions that define them.
Behn’s female characters strive for independence within the limitations of the English system of courtship and marriage. In The Rover, the three leading ladies are all capable and proactive young women who exhibit “the initiative and daring reserved for cavaliers” . Over the course of the play, each takes upon herself the position of active wooer. Maidenly Hellena openly vows to do “not as my wise brother imagines but to love and to be beloved” by reeling in a husband . Her virginal sister, Florinda, and the sexually liberated courtesan, Angellica Bianca, adopt similar goals in pursuit of passion. They are nothing like the subordinate females of Puritan propriety, but witty, competent matches for the men they meet. Through their strong personalities, Behn suggests at early British women’s potential to feel and act confidently on sexual feelings, thus “desire” and “ the construction of woman as a self-policing and passive commodity”
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