The plot of The Young King, which, as the Biograpbia Dramatitca well remarks, ‘is very far from being a bad one’, is taken from the eighth part of La Calprenède’s famous romance, Cléopatre. The adventures of Alcamenes (Thersander) and Menalippa (Cleomena) are therein related for the benefit of Cleopatra and Artemisa, temporarily imprisoned on shipboard. The narrative, which occupies some hundred pages, is n good example of those prolix detached episodes and histories peculiar to this school, which by their perpetual crossing and intertwining render the consecutive reading of a heroic romance so confused and difficult a task. Yet in this particular instance the tale is extraordinarily well told and highly interesting. Mrs. Behn has altered the names for the better. Barzanes in the novel becomes Honorius in the play; Euardes, Ismenes; Phrataphernes, Artabazes; Beliza, Semiris; whilst La Calprenède dubs the Scythian king, Arontes and the queen of Dacia, Amalthea.
Cléopatre, commenced in 1646, was eventually completed in twelve volumes. There is an English translation of the eighth part by James Webb (8vo, 1658), which he terms Hymen’s Praeludia, or, Love’s Masterpiece, and dedicates with much flowery verbiage to his aunt, Jane, Viscountess Clanebuy. A translation of the whole romance, by Robert Loveday, was published folio, 1668.
The story, however, is not original even in La Calprenède, being taken with changed names from Il Calsandro smascherato di Giovanni Ambrogio Marini (Part 1, Fiorenza, 1646; Part 2, Bologna, 1651), a French version of which, by Georges de Scudéri, appeared in 1668.
Some critics have seen a resemblance between the character of the young prince Orsames and that of Hippolito, ‘one that never saw woman,’ in Dryden and Davenant’s alteration of The Tempest (1667). But the likeness is merely superficial. Mrs. Behn has undoubtedly taken the whole episode of Orsames directly from Calderon’s great philosophic and symbolical comedia, La Vida es Sueño (1633). That Mrs. Behn had a good knowledge of Spanish is certain, and she has copied with the closest fidelity minute but telling details of her original. Calderon himself probably derived his plot from Rojas’ Viaje Entretenido. Basilio, King of Poland, to thwart the fulfilling of a horoscope, imprisons his son Segismundo from infancy in a lonely tower. The youth is, however, as a test of his character, one night whilst under the influence of a soporofic conveyed from his prison and wakes to find himself in a sumptuous apartment amidst crowds of adulating courtiers. He shows himself, however, a very despot, and throws an officious servant, who warns him to proffer greater respect to the infanta Estella, his cousin, clean out of window; he nearly kills his tutor Clotaldo, who interrupts his violent wooing; and, in fine, is seen to be wholly unfit to reign. A potion is deftly administered, and once more, asleep, he is carried back to the castle. The populace, however, rise and set him on the throne, and eventually the astrological forecast comes true; but at the same time he proves himself a worthy sovereign. All these details are to be found in The Young King, as well as Calderon’s scene where Rosaura, in pursuit of her lover, accidently encounters Segismundo in his prison.
The story itself is, of course, world-wide with a thousand variants. Oriental in origin, it is familiar to all readers of the Thousand and One Nights, when Abou Hassan is drugged by Haroun al Raschid, and for one day allowed to play the caliph with power complete and unconfined. The same trick is said to have been tried upon a drunkard at Bruges by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, during his marriage festivities, 1440. Christopher Sly, well drubbed by Marian Hacket and bawling for a pot of small ale, will at once occur to every mind. Richard Edwardes has the same story in his Collection of Tales (1570); the old Ballad of the Frolicsome Duke sings it; Sir Richard Barckley repeats it in his Discourse of the Felicitie of Man (1598); and Burton found a niche for it in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Simon Goulart included it in the Tresor d’histoires admirables et memorables (circa 1600), whence it was Englished by Grimeston (1607). In fact it is a common property of all times and all nations.
Although Mrs. Behn confessedly does not attain (nor was such her intention) the deep philosophy and exquisite melody of the great Spanish poet, she has produced a first-rate specimen of the romance drama, rococo perhaps, and with quaint ornaments, but none the less full of life, incident and interest.