OR, THE BANISH’D CAVALIERS
The Rover was first performed at The Duke’s Theatre at Dorset Gardens on 24 March 1677. The play proved to be a huge success, which not only generated a decent income for Behn, but also encouraged her to write the second part, which debuted in 1681. The famous Restoration actress, Anne Marshall, played the role of Angellica in the opening production in 1677. Ms. Marshall was part of the first generation of actresses to appear on the English stage and she starred in prominent works by Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Behn’s contemporary, John Dryden. The first part of The Rover remains the writer’s best known and most critiqued work to date; it far exceeds the popularity of any of her other plays. The Rover was performed frequently during the twentieth century, including a 1986 Royal Shakespeare Company production. Behn based her play on the Thomas Killigrew’s mid-century play, Thomaso, which was published in 1664. The nature, and structure or Killigrew’s work has made it virtually impossible to stage, despite an abortive attempt by the playwright to mount an all-female production in 1664.
The first part of The Rover centres on two sisters in Naples who attempt to defy their father’s wishes regarding their future. When the play begins, the sisters —Hellena and Florinda — are discussing their frustration with their father. He has determined to place Florinda in a convent and marry Hellena to an old man she does not like, rather than the young English colonel Belvile whom she loves. Once they have escaped into the city, Hellena quickly encounters a possible suitor in the form of the rakish Willmore. There is a sub-plot in which the idiotic Ned Blunt is humiliated, deceived and mocked by all he encounters. The depiction of Blunt reveals Behn’s anti-Whig political stance, as she unfavourably compares him to the attractive, witty, aristocratic and rakish Willmore, and strips him of his wealth and dignity, neither of which she believed he merited. The second part of the play is unabashedly royalist and Tory in its content and in the dedication Behn makes the political nature of the work explicit.
However, while part one of The Rover contains royalist sympathies, the author also challenges ideas of male authority, marriage and the traditional delineation of women into ‘good’ or ’bad’ categories. Florinda and Hellena both flagrantly disobey their father’s authority, and even though the play finishes with both of them accepting marriage, it does not conclude without criticisms of the institution. Behn underlines the economic aspect of marriage and the commodification of women, while also rupturing the virgin/whore dichotomy by demonstrating its unstable nature.