1. Lines 592–4 of Behn’s translation of the sixth book of Abraham Cowley’s Six Books of Plants (1689). See The Poetry of Aphra Behn, ed. Janet Todd (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1992).
2. From the commendatory poems in Poems upon Several Occasions (1684).
3. Broadside of April 1689.
4. Montague Summers, The Works of Aphra Behn (London: Heinemann, 1915, reprinted 1967); Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas (London: Chatto & Windus, 1984), p. 61.
5. Thomas Colepeper, ‘Adversaria’, British Library manuscript, Harley 7588; ‘Memoirs on the Life of Mrs Behn’ (18 pp.), in The Histories and Novels (1696); ‘The History of the Life and Memoirs of Mrs Behn…’ (60 pp.), in the third edition of All the Histories and Novels (1698); Maureen Duffy, The Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn 1640–89 (London: Cape, 1977); Mary Ann O’Donnell, ‘Tory Wit and Unconventional Woman’, in Women Writers of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Katharina M. Wilson and Frank J. Warnke (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1989), pp. 341–74; Jane Jones, ‘New Light on the Background and Early Life of Aphra Behn’, Notes & Queries, September 1990, pp. 289–93. Sharon Valiant put forward the Sidney hypothesis in a paper of March 1989: ‘Sidney’s Sister, Pembroke’s Mother… and Aphra Behn’s Great-Grandmother?’. See also Janet Todd, The Secret Life of Aphra Behn (London: André Deutsch, 1996; Pandora, 1999).
6. William J. Cameron, New Light on Aphra Behn (Auckland: University of Auckland Press, 1961).
7. ‘To the Author of the New Utopia’, The Six Days Adventure, or The New Utopia. A Comedy (1671), reprinted in Poems on Several Occasions (1684).
8. Our Cabal’, Poems on Several Occasions (1684); Thomaso, or The Wanderer, in Comedies and Tragedies. Written by Thomas Killigrew (1664).
9. Samuel Johnson, The Lives of the English Poets (1779–81).
1. The 1688 first edition has a dedication to the Roman Catholic Henry Nevil Payne, playwright like Behn for the Duke’s Company in the 1670s and loyal supporter and propagandist for James II. Between the dedication and the beginning of the story are two advertisements, one for a face powder and the other for Behn’s Oroonoko. Although the title page gives the name of the story as The Fair Jilt: or, the History of Prince Tarquin and Miranda, the story itself begins with the title The Fair Hypocrite: or the Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda.
2. opinionatreism. Obstinacy in his own opinion, conceit.
3. scrutore. Writing-desk.
4. billets-doux. Love letters.
5. pit and boxes. The pit was the part of the theatre where the ‘wits’ sat: see Wycherley’s Love in a Wood, ‘my brisk brothers of the pit’; the boxes, which were expensive, were where ladies tended to sit.
6. Aphra Behn was a spy in Antwerp in late 1666. The London Gazette of 28–31 May 1666 prints the following item: ‘The Prince Torquino being condemned at Antwerp to be beheaded, for endeavouring the death of his Sister in Law: Being on the Scaffold, the Executioner tied an handkerchief about his head and by great accident his blow lighted upon the knot, giving him only a slight wound. Upon which, the people being in a tumult, he was carried back to the Townhouse, and is in hopes both of his pardon and his recovery.’ Another issue announces his pardon.
7. Order of St Francis. An austere religious order founded in 1209 by St. Francis of Assissi (1181/2–1226).
8. Galloping Nuns. Popular name for nuns of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (I.B.V.M.), or women who were members of a religious community, but free to come and go.
9. Chanonesses. Members of a Christian women’s community where a rule is observed but no perpetual vows taken.
10. Beguines. Members of a lay sisterhood which members could leave to marry.
11. Quests. Members of a begging order.
12. Swart-sisters. Nuns dressed in black; Dominican sisters.
13. Jesuitesses. A name often given to members of the I.B.V.M., which was founded on Jesuit principles.
14. filles dévotes. Women consecrated by a religious vow.
15. governante. Woman in charge of a household or of young people.
16. bando. Collar.
17. sensible. Sensitive.
18. Cordeliers. Nuns of a strict Franciscan order, the members of which wear knotted cord for a belt.
19. pistole. A name given to certain Spanish and French gold coins.
20. beaux esprits. Wits.
21. mal à propos. Inappropriately.
22. sacristy. The room in which vestments and sacred vessels are kept.
23. stomacher. A panel, often richly decorated, worn by women under the lacing at the front of their bodices.
24. sense. Feeling, physical ardour.
25. scapular. ‘An article of devotion composed of two small squares of woollen cloth, fastened together by strings passing over the shoulders’ (O.E.D.). It can also mean a short cloak worn by some religious orders.
26. provincial. The head of the religious order in that area.
27. gown-men. Priests and men in religious orders.
28. Marquis Casteil Roderigo… governor of flanders. According to the London Gazette it was he who pardoned Prince Tarquin. Flanders was Spanish territory at the time.
29. King Charles… Brussels. Charles II was in Brussels in February and March, 1660.
30. Tarquin… Rome. Tarquin the Proud was traditionally believed to have been the last King of Rome.
31. 1 have seen him. Aphra Behn left England in July 1666 and her first letter from Antwerp was sent in August. Since the newspaper report of the failed execution is for May 1666, and the meeting with Tarquin took place about two and a half years before, there seems to be some discrepancy in dates. It is possible that she is not being accurate or that she had been to Antwerp during the previous years.
32. laced with gold. Decorated with gold lace.
33. Lucretia. The rape of Lucretia by Tarquin, son of the last King of Rome, was supposed to have precipitated the fall of the monarchy.
34. bare. Bare-headed (as a mark of respect to her).
35. tuition. Guardianship.
36. received… pension. Took him into her household.
37. juggle. Deception.
38. Margrave. Governor.
39. mittimus. Warrant directing a gaoler to receive and keep a prisoner until further notice.
40. laced. Trimmed with lace.
42. Portugal-mat. Probably a thin rush or split-cane patterned mat from North Africa; frequently mentioned in grand settings, such as beneath state beds. See the 1683 inventory for Ham House.
43. state-house. Town-hall.
44. booted… coach. A coach with steps at the side for servants to sit on, or with a low compartment outside at the back or front.
45. bruit. News, rumour.
46. Louis d’or. A gold coin first issued in the reign of Louis XIII.
47 holland… with point. Linen cap trimmed with lace.
48. let blood. Opening a vein in order to let some blood, or applying leeches, was for many centuries one of the most common treatments for numerous diseases. Until comparatively recently it was used as a means of lowering blood pressure.
49. bating. Except for.
50. French army… campaigns. In 1667 the period of peace which had marked the beginning of Louis XIV’s reign was broken; between 1668 and 1678 the King’s thirst for glory, as well as political and religious considerations, led to constant military campaigns and the acquisition of a great deal of territory on the north-eastern frontiers of France.
1. Oroonoko was first published in 1688, having been announced both in The Fair Jilt and in Two Congratulatory Poems To Their Most Sacred Majesties. It had been through several editions by 1701 and was reprinted frequently throughout the eighteenth century. It was serialized in the Ladies Magazine, included in revised form in Elizabeth Griffith’s Collection of Novels in 1777, translated into French, Dutch and German, often imitated, and turned into a popular play by Thomas Southerne in 1696. Oroonoko was dedicated to Richard Lord Maitland, 4th Earl of Lauderdale (1653–95), a Roman Catholic and a Stuart supporter. The text here is from the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. For a detailed description of the printing of the first edition, see Gerald Duchovnay, ‘Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko: A Critical Edition’ (dissertation, Indiana University, 1971).
2. … life. Although it has sometimes been doubted, Aphra Behn seems to have arrived in Surinam in mid or late 1663 and left in 1664. Much of the description of the country is probably from memory, perhaps overlaid by some accounts in George Warren’s short Impartial Description of Surinam (1667).
3. Surinam. The first English colonies in Surinam, later Dutch Guiana, were founded in the 1640s; in 1650 Anthony Rous and Francis, Lord Willoughby of Parham founded further settlements. After the Restoration in 1663 Charles II granted proprietary rights to most of Surinam to Willoughby. Willoughby was also governor of Barbados and he appointed William Byam as his deputy in Surinam. Byam was a powerful figure in a colony which was more or less free of control from London in the early 1660s. Petitions to the King from some settlers suggested that Byam ruled autocratically and punished those who tried to oppose him.
4. not natives of the place. White Surinam planters tended to have large estates with many slaves, primarily brought from the Gold Coast. Black slaves were introduced into Surinam in 1650 by Lord Willoughby and soon outnumbered whites; there was considerable fear of an uprising among the settlers. In 1667 there were under 300 whites and over 500 black slaves. Apparently only one quarter of the slave force was labouring on the plantations.
5. cousheries. The local Caribee Indians spoke Galibi. Warren does not usually use Galibi terms but he does mention ‘Cusharees’. Antoine Biet in Voyage de la France équinoxiale en l’isle de Cayenne (1654), which often gives Galibi words close to those in Oroonoko, calls the ‘couchari’ a deer (cerf) and the ‘caǐcouci’ a tiger.
6. flies. Butterflies.
7. Indian Queen. The Indian Queen, written by John Dryden and Sir Robert Howard, was one of the first rhymed heroic dramas produced in London. It was first performed in January 1664 by the King’s Men at the Theatre Royal in Bridges Street under the management of Thomas Killigrew. There were several revivals in the 1690s, which, together with the success of Southerne’s Oroonoko and reprinting of Behn’s story in the same years, suggests a fashion for ‘Indian’ subjects at this time.
8. ell. The English ell measured 45 inches.
9. nice. Reluctant.
10. no curiosity. This description of a natural lack of shame is a usual feature of Behn’s depictions of a Golden Age world. It can be found in many pastoral writers and is a convention of the pastoral tradition expressed by Torquato Tasso in his poem ‘O bella età de l’oro’, and in Behn’s own adaptation, ‘The Golden Age’.
11. savannahs. The word was also used in The Widow Ranter for a large heath in the Americas.
12. Coramantien. Cormantine, from the Dutch fort Koromantyn or Fort Amsterdam, was a settlement on the west coast of Africa, a few miles east of Cape Coast in Ghana. It was an English trading post from the 1630s and the name was used loosely for most of the area of modern Ghana. At the time it was used by the English and Dutch slave-traders as a source of supply of slaves from the Fantis, Ashantis and interior tribes.
13. Oroonoko. The name may be a variant of the South American river Orinoco (spelt ‘Oronoque’ in the contemporary London Gazette), or perhaps a derivative from an African word such as Oro, a Yoruba god. Moors were commonly believed to be black or very dark, so the term was often used for Negroes as well.
14. Civil Wars… great monarch. The wars of the 1640s between Royalists and Parliamentarians, culminating in the execution of Charles I in 1649.
15. statuary. Sculptor of statues.
16. bating. Excepting.
17. politic. Sagacious or shrewd.
18. otan. Since this section seems inspired by oriental tales and is more reminiscent of European ideas of the East than of Africa, perhaps the word derives from oda, the Turkish term for a room in a seraglio, or the Persian otagh, a tent or pavilion. In the Akan languages of the Gold Coast, odammaa and odan signify a small hut or room. See D. M. Warren, Bibliography and Vocabulary of the Akan Languages of Ghana (Indiana University Press, 1976) and J. G. Christaller, Dictionary of the Asante and Fanti Languages (Basel, 1881).
19. governants. Governesses.
20. antic. Grotesque.
21. complaisance. Desire to please.
22. maugre. In spite of.
23. The original reads ‘efforts’.
24. parole. Word or pledge.
25. too generous. The 1688 edition has a comma between ‘generous’ and ‘not’ which renders the qualifying clause critical of Oroonoko but makes the whole sentence difficult to interpret.
26. pickaninnies. An early use of this word for black children.
27. Trefry. John Treffry was Lord Willoughby’s agent in his plantation of Parham.
28. backearary. Possibly a variant of buckra or bakra (master), the word used in Surinam by the blacks for the whites. See J. A. Ramsaram, ‘Oroonoko: A Study of the Factual Elements’, Notes & Queries, 205, 1969, 142–5.
29. osenbrigs… holland. Osnaburg was heavy coarse cotton or linen (‘holland’) fabric.
30. Caesar. It was a custom of slave-owners to give slaves Roman names.
31. the Dutch… in time. The Dutch captured Surinam in February 1667; it was retaken by the English in October but was ceded to the Dutch at the Treaty of Breda in 1667. Treffry remained in Surinam and died there in 1674.
32. Parham-House. Parham House was part of Lord Willoughby’s estate of Parham Hill.
33. shock dog. A poodle, or dog with long, shaggy hair. Later editions changed ‘Clemene’ here to ‘Trefry’.
34. allary. Abatement, diminution.
35. novel. New turn in events.
36. raced. Slashed with something sharp.
37. japanned. Varnished or lacquered with a hard black gloss.
38. high point. A type of lace.
39. Picts… chronicles. Ancient people of north Britain who were thought to paint and tattoo themselves. They are described in such contemporary chronicles as Britannia Speculum (1683).
40. mutiny… numbers. This was a constant fear in the Caribbean and South American colonies.
41. lives… nuns. This gendered reading presumably gave Plutarch’s Lives to Oroonoko and works such as Behn’s own The History of the Nun (1689) to Imoinda.
42. pitching the bar. Throwing a heavy bar was a form of athletic exercise. (D’Urfey, Pills III.253,4: ‘I… can… pitch-bar, and run and wrestle too.’)
43. parted… Dutch. See note 31 above.
44. Spring… Autumn. Cf. Warren, ‘There is a constant Spring and Fall… Some [trees] have always blossoms, and the several degrees of fruit at once’ (p. 5).
45. St John’s Hill. St John’s Hill was a plantation belonging to Sir Robert Harley, probably sold to Willoughby in 1664. Harley, Chancellor of Barbados under Willoughby, corresponded with William Yearworth, possibly an agent in Surinam, who mentions ‘Ladeyes’ living at St John’s Hill on 27 January 1664.
46. ravishing. The 1688 edition reads ‘raving’; it was changed to ‘ravishing’ in the third edition. In some later editions, ‘sands’ became ‘fancy’, but this seems an unnecessary emendation.
47. Mall. The first two editions read ‘Marl’, the third emends this to ‘mall’, presumably a reference to the walk in St James’s Park, London, where originally the game of pall-mall was played.
48. branches. The 1688 edition reads ‘fruity bear branches meet’; the third edition emends this to ‘fruit-bearing branches met’.
49. he. There seems some confusion over the tiger’s sex. Later editions emend to ‘she’ and ‘her’ in the following lines.
50. English… Oliverian. George Marten, owner of Surinam plantations, was, according to Behn, the brother of Henry Marten, one of the regicides and supporters of Oliver Cromwell.
51. numb eel. Electric eel. See The Diary of John Evelyn (18 March 1680): ‘a letter from Surenam of a certaine small Eele that being taken with hook and line… did so benumb, and stupifie the limbs of the Fisher…’.
52. tepeeme. Biet claimed the Indians said tapouimé for ‘a great number’ (p. 396).
53. numberless… heads. The same image occurs in Warren who, describing native arithmetic as primitive, claimed that the Indians cried ‘ounsa awara, that is, like the hair of one’s head, innumerable’ (p. 26).
54. Amora tiguamy. Biet reported that a familiar Galibi form was acné tigami and the second person pronoun amoré, so that Behn is reporting a greeting (p. 26).
55. sarumbo… table-cloth. Biet gives chalombo as the name of leaves of trees which he notes are used as ‘serviettes’ (p. 416). Cf. Warren: ‘their napery is the leaves of the trees’ (p. 24).
56. prophet. Biet describes the piaye as a doctor (p. 408).
57. The first edition reverses ‘several other’.
58. comitias. Biet claimed that the Indians wore only a piece of clothing called un camison (p. 353). Although he notes the Spanish origin of some Galibi words, he does not connect this one with the Spanish camisa.
59. … America. There had been stories of a ‘golden city’ on the Amazon since the previous century; Sir Walter Raleigh had made two unsuccessful expeditions in search of it. His Discovery of Guiana (1596) includes a description of ‘Eldorado’ and describes the plainlands as a natural Eden. In Paradise Lost (published the year that Guiana was ceded to the Netherlands) Milton makes a topical reference to ‘… Guiana, whose great Citie Geryons Sons/Call El Dorado…’ (XI.410,411). Willoughby died in a storm at sea in 1666 during the Second Dutch War. It is interesting to think of the Amazon compared with the Thames.
60. several trades, and slaves for four years. Trades are tradesmen. European slaves or labourers were often indentured for four years.
61. whip and bell. ‘Something that detracts from one’s comfort or pleasure’ (O.E.D.).
62. runagades. Renegades; apostates and deserters.
63. salvages. Savages.
64. … hands. Southerne, who was impressed with Behn’s dramatic presentation of Oroonoko and had wondered why she did not herself make the story into a play, makes Oroonoko speak in blank verse on heroic occasions such as this and differentiates him more sharply than Behn from the other blacks.
65. cut… rocks. When crossing the Alps, ‘in certaine places of the highest rockes, [Hannibal] was driven to make passage through, by force of fire and vinegar’ (Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes, North’s translation, 1579 edition).
66. hamaca. Hammock, from the Carib word through Spanish hamaca. Pepys comments on buying ‘hammacoes’ for the navy.
67. Parhamites… Plantation. Supporters of Lord Willoughby in the faction-ridden colony.
68. baffled with. Deceived and abused.
69. cat with nine tails. Whip with nine knotted lashes used in the British navy and army.
70. Byam. William Byam was the royalist governor of Surinam from c. 1654 and then deputy governor under Willoughby. In 1663 he became lieutenant-general, a position the narrator claims her father should have held.
71.… terrible to behold. Behn was contemptuous of turncoats, especially when they were disloyal to her respected James II, from whom support was slipping away during 1688.
72.… so brave a man. The Younger Brother: or the Amorous Jilt (1696). The Memoir of 1696 claims that Behn based the play on a true story supplied by George Marten.
73. chirurgeon. Surgeon.
74. Newgate. A London prison from which many convicts were exported to work on New World plantations. For example, in 1681 Christopher Jeaffreson bought 300 convicts from the chief gaoler of Newgate to use on his plantation in Jamaica. See also Behn, The Widow Ranter, p. 259.
75. nemine contradicente. Unanimously.
76. The first edition reads ‘they’.
77. mobile. Mob, rabble.
78. fatal stroke. There is a parallel here with Othello, who also kills the woman he loves.
79. gashly. Ghastly.
80. Banister. Major James Bannister. In 1688, after the Treaty of Breda, he negotiated with the Dutch on behalf of the remaining English settlers and was sent as a prisoner to Holland.
81. which they did. See Bryan Edwards and John Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796) for a later description of a tortured man smoking a pipe of tobacco.
1. ‘Love-Letters’ was first published posthumously in Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs Behn (1696). It was then retitled ‘Love-Letters to a Gentleman’ and reappeared as part of Memoirs of Mrs Behn by ‘One of the Fair Sex’ in the 1698 Histories and Novels. The letters are addressed to ‘Lycidas’ and signed ‘Astrea’. It is not known when they were written, but Lycidas is probably John Hoyle, the lawyer with whom Aphra Behn’s name was frequently linked. The present text is from Histories and Novels of 1700.
2. complaisance. Desire to please, or politeness.
3. unconversable. Unfit for social life or conversation.
4. parole. Word.
5. cast. Throw of dice.
6. new play. This cannot be identified with certainty, but from the remark that ‘you were the man’ it may be The Rover, Part I (1677).
7. Philly. Philly. may be ‘Philaster’, to whom Behn dedicated The Young King in 1683. Maureen Duffy speculates that this is the Duke of Buckingham, or, as ‘lover of Astrea’, it might be William Scot.
8. over the way. Perhaps a reference to the Davenants. Sir William and later his widow were proprietor and manager of the Duke’s Company of players. The household seems to have included children, stepchildren and several of the younger actresses. Aphra Behn’s friend, the actress Elizabeth Barry, had been adopted by the Davenants when still a child.
9. calentures. A ‘calenture’ was either the physical condition of suffering from a very high temperature, or the psychological condition of suffering from a burning passion.
1. The Rover is loosely based on Thomas Killigrew’s Thomaso, Parts I and II, written in 1654 but published only in 1664, with many of its incidents based on earlier stock ones from such writers as Boccaccio and Middleton. Behn changes Killigrew’s setting from Madrid to Naples and places her scene in a carnival. The theatricality, disguises and cross-dressing that this allows make comparison with the popular image of the Court of Charles II almost inevitable, although she retains the dating of the interregnum. Thomaso is a long, rambling but fascinating play which raises many questions about sexual relations and the nature of male and female honour. Behn’s play shortens and sharpens discussion of these questions and is consequently far more dramatic and actable. Although Angellica is flanked by other prostitutes in Thomaso (Killigrew has a group of whores, Behn one of virgins), the main contest, as in The Rover, is between Angellica and a virginal young woman, Serulina in Thomaso and Hellena in The Rover. The latter is given some of the liberationist rhetoric Killigrew put into Angellica’s mouth and she is more ambitious in disguise, crossing sexual as well as class boundaries. In Thomaso, Angellica graciously accepts her defeat at the end and Thomaso repents his libertine life. Neither of these attitudes is displayed in The Rover. Both Angellica and Hellena also have something in common with Franceschina and Crispinella of The Dutch Courtesan by Marston, from whom Aphra Behn frequently borrowed. Many incidents like Blunt’s misadventures with Lucetta are stock ones and occur in English, Spanish and French sources.
The Rover was first produced at the Duke’s House, Dorset Gardens, in 1677 and was a great success. In the first recorded performance, Willmore was played by Mr Smith, Hellena by Elizabeth Barry and Angellica Bianca by ‘Mrs Gwin’ (Anne Quin). Unlike most of Aphra Behn’s plays, The Rover kept its popularity on the stage in future centuries. Steele in the Spectator, 51, 28 April 1711, uses The Rover as an example of female bawdry and suggests that this reflects the character of the author: ‘the men-authors draw themselves in their chief characters, and the women-writers may be allowed the same liberty’. Although Behn herself was much criticized for her bawdiness after her death, The Rover was produced successfully during the first half of the eighteenth century and revived in 1757. In the latter half of the century, however, her work was found immodest and a new version of the play was made to suit the times – J. P. Kemble’s Love in Many Masks (T. and J. Egerton, 1790). In the Royal Shakespeare Company’s revival of The Rover in 1986, John Barton substantially adapted the play by cutting, adding and rearranging it to suit assumed modern taste.
2. The Banished Cavaliers. The play is set during the interregnum before the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Royalists or cavaliers had joined Charles in exile. At the time, the word ‘rover’ could mean not only someone who wandered around the world, but also an inconstant lover or male flirt, and a sea-robber or pirate (Willmore has a ship at sea – see p. 244).
3. masqueraders… Carnival time. The week before Lent in Italy and other Roman Catholic countries has often been spent in festivities, including dressing up in fantastic costumes and appearing incognito with a masked face. However, the masquerade had come to be a symbol of the age in England: see Wycherley, The Gentle-man Dancing Master, I.i, where Mrs Caution laments ‘the fatal liberty of this masquerading age’.
4. Rabel’s Drops. A patent medicine.
5. cabal. Faction.
6. elves. Malicious beings.
7. Bating. Except.
8. lampoon. Scurrilous satirical poem.
9. Behn did not claim The Rover until the third issue of the first edition in 1677.
10. debauches. Debauchees – people who give themselves up to sensual enjoyments.
11. cits. Ordinary citizens or shopkeepers.
12. May-Day coaches. On May Day it was customary to parade around Hyde Park.
13. the Viceroy’s son. Naples was under the Spanish Crown continuously from 1503 until 1707.
14. devote. Nun.
15. Siege of Pamplona. The capital city of Navarre is in a strategic position near the Spanish border and has been besieged many times. The siege referred to probably occurred in 1653, shortly before Thomaso was written.
16. jointure. Estate settled on a wife to provide for widowhood.
17. bags. Wealth.
18. Indian breeding. American or West Indian upbringing.
19. dog days. The canicular or hottest days of the summer.
20. Sancho the First. Castile and Navarre both had kings of this name in the Middle Ages.
21. … stretches itself… snore or two. The description is based on Thomaso, Part II, II.i, where Harrigo describes a form of matrimony to Serulina. Killigrew’s description is more disgusting: ‘… yawns and sighs a belch or two, stales in your pot, farts as loud as a musket…’.
22. And this man… lips. Thomaso, Part II, II.i: his breath ‘a stink compos’d of vile tobacco and dead wine, stuffed nose, rotten lungs, and hollow teeth, half whose number has been drawn with dry cheese, and tough lean beef; yet this man you must kiss; nay, you must kiss none but this, and muzzle through his beard to find his lips…’.
23. Hostel de Dieu. Hospital run as a charity by a religious order.
24. lazars. Plague-stricken paupers.
25. Marry… marriage. The servant Calis makes this speech in Thomaso, Part II, II.i.
26. Don Indian… Gambo. Don Vincentio must have lived in an American or West Indian colony and made his money from the slave trade with Africa.
27. grate. Barred window of a convent.
28. Shall I… venture on me. In Thomaso, Part II, II.i, Serulina says some words about her fitness for a convent. Instead of carnival gear she puts on Calis’s old coat and veil as disguise for specific days rather than for general escape.
29. The first edition has ‘whe’ as an exclamation in the speech of Blunt, Frederick, Willmore and Hellena in masquerade. I have emended it to ‘why’ throughout, although it suggests a stronger tone than ‘why’ possesses.
30. hogoes. Strong flavours or relishes.
31. Parliaments and Protectors… forfeit my estate by cavaliering… following the Court. Royalists who fought for the king and followed the court into exile had their property confiscated by Cromwell’s government.
32. the prince. Charles II.
33. chapmen. Merchants.
34. habits. Costume.
35. horns. The sign of a cuckolded husband.
36. I like… despised. The play is set before the Restoration of Charles II; some of the Puritans would consider this an apt description of early post-Restoration society.
37. bravoes. Ruffians hired for protection or assault.
38. Dutchman… New Bridge. In 1673 the Dutch lost Nieuwerbrug to the French in a humiliating defeat.
39. cross their hands. Pay them.
40. parlous. Shrewd.
41. Jephtha’s daughter. Before sacrificing his only child in fulfilment of a vow, Jephtha allowed her two months to bewail her virginity among the mountains (Judges 11.37–39).
42. took orders. Entered a nunnery.
43. Let… that. You can depend on her to do that.
44. bellman. Town crier.
45. stock. Money or capital.
46. piece of eight. Spanish dollar.
47. honest. Chaste.
48. Paduana. Woman from the Italian city of Padua.
49. vizard. Mask.
50. buff. Military coat made of strong leather. To go ‘in buff’ could also mean to go naked. An early eighteenth-century prompt copy (University of London) eliminates this word.
51. The first edition reads:
BELVILE What the devil’s the matter with thee Ned? – Oh such a Mrs Fred! such a girl!
WILLMORE Ha! where, Fred! Ay, where! So fond, so amorous…
52. clap. Gonorrhoea or syphilis.
53. bottom. Ship.
54. cozened. Cheated.
55. errant. Thoroughgoing.
56. ycleped. Called.
57. bullies. Ruffians.
58. Essex calf. Fool (particularly apt, as Blunt is from Essex).
59. a thousand crowns a month. In Thomaso the terms are more specific: the purchaser will have four days and nights a week.
60. portion for the Infanta. The Infanta Margarita, daughter of Philip IV of Spain, was married to the Emperor Leopold I of Austria in 1666. The London Gazette (21–24 May) has a report from Madrid of disputes which had occurred in the Council about such an expensive marriage. The English Ambassador, Sir Richard Fanshawe, wrote home that she had just left Madrid with ‘a vast treasure in money, plate and jewels; so in that respect, will much enfeeble this summer’s preparation against Portugal’. Her dowry and attendants occupied thirty galleys.
61. anticly attired. Dressed fantastically or grotesquely.
62. Molo. Mole; an extensive stone pier or breakwater.
63. patacoon. Spanish or Portuguese silver coin.
64. Scene ii. This scene follows II.iv of Thomaso, Part I, with much of Angellica’s feminist protest at the double standard of honour omitted.
65. Worcester. The decisive defeat of the Royalists by Cromwell in 1651.
66. pistole. A name given to certain Spanish and French gold coins.
67. black… sum it up. Take your pencil and work out the calculation.
68. the whole piece. In Thomaso the maid says, ‘We sell not this stuff by the yard; the whole piece, or nothing.’
69. sell upon the Friday’s Mart. Auction at the market on Friday.
70. Pray, tell me… as poor. In Thomaso the emphasis at this point is not only on acquisitiveness, but also on the unjust double standard of honour which Hellena points to in The Rover.
71. shameroon. ‘To sham’ was late seventeenth-century slang for to cheat or deceive and ‘-aroon’ seems to have been a derogatory colloquial suffix meaning ‘fellow’.
72. tatterdemalion. A person wearing ragged clothes.
73. picaroon. A brigand or pirate.
74. Loretto. Shrine in the Ancona region of Italy; as a place of pilgrimage it would attract many beggars.
75. the pip. Applied humorously to slight diseases or depression.
76. venture a cast. Risk a throw of the dice.
77. Does not… lovers. Thomaso, Part II, III.ii: ‘Do’s not the little god appear upon my brow to distinguish me from the common crowd of lovers.’
78. bona roba. Courtesan; see The English Rogue, 4th Part (1671), pp. 37–9, where the terms are interchangeable.
79. canary. Sweet wine from the Canary Islands.
80. hungry balderdash. Unsatisfying and adulterated drink.
81. All the honey… sting. Thomaso, Part I, III.ii: ‘All the honey of Marriage, but none of the sting.’
82. sneak. Skulk furtively.
83. Capuchin. Member of an order founded by Matteo di Bassi as an offshoot of the Franciscans; its rule was drawn up in 1529. It was called Capuchin because of the hooded habit worn.
84. I am as… the inconstant. In Thomaso the heroine Serulina does not mind physical inconstancy in a man, but insists ‘a virgin once blown upon by the world, or touched in reputation, is for ever stained’ (IV.ii).
85. budget. Bag.
86. settlements. Legal arrangements made on marriage guaranteeing a wife financial security.
87. eighty-eight. The great Armada of Spanish ships tried to invade England in 1588 and was defeated by the ships of Elizabeth I and by storms.
88. shore. Sewer.
89. quean. Harlot or strumpet.
90. Prado. A fashionable street. (Killigrew’s Thomaso was set in Madrid.)
91. cullies. Dupes.
92. disguised. Drunk.
93. why… spider. This scene and Blunt’s assault on Florinda in Act IV, scene iii are both based on Edwardo’s encounter with Serulina in Thomaso, Part I, IV.ii: ‘What do you do here alone else? in a garden at this hour, and your door set open, good spider, but to catch a passenger?’ Aphra Behn has given the fool’s episode to the hero.
94. coil. Fuss, noisy disturbance.
95. pistole. Edwardo offers ‘a piece of eight’ in Thomaso.
96. chase-gun. Gun positioned ahead or astern in a ship and used during pursuit.
97. St Jago. Santiago or St James, brother of St John the Evangelist; his cult was strong in Spain and Spanish colonies because of a tradition that he visited Spain.
98. discounting. Reducing.
99. nicely punctual. Scrupulously punctilious.
100. mumping. Sullen.
101. dressed. Ready.
102. prater. Chatterer.
103. en passant. The first edition reads ‘e’n passant’.
104. cogging. Wheedling.
105. motion. Puppet.
106. In the first edition, this speech is given to Hellena.
107. fresco. In the fresh air.
108. prize. A ship which might be legally captured.
109. morris dancer. Blunt is wearing only his white linen shirt and drawers: Morris dancers throughout Europe traditionally wore white clothes.
110. I shall… sex more. A similar humiliation occurs in V.xi of Thomaso, Part I. The prompt copy of The Rover in the University of London Library marks out much of Blunt’s misogyny.
111. He. The first edition has ‘she’.
112. damnable women. Killigrew’s Serulina in Thomaso, Part II, II.iv, says: ‘Do not mistake me for one of those vile women.’ Cf. Jonson’s Volpone, III. vii, where the misogynist Corvino thinks up similar torment for Celia.
113. cormorant. A proverbially greedy bird.
114. jack pudding. Buffoon; cf. Wycherley, The Gentle-man Dancing Master (1672), ‘he debases [mirth] as much as a jack pudding’.
115. one at once. One at a time.
116. toledo. Sword blade from Toledo, in Spain.
117. traitor. First edition reads ‘taylor’.
118. he’ll. First edition reads ‘you’ll’.
119. My richest… value. In Thomaso, Part I, II.iv, Angellica argues ‘to afflict myself with the consideration of that which cannot be remedied is second folly; only (once a whore and ever) is the world adage; yet there may be degrees of all…’.
120. [Offers… gold]. At the end of Thomaso, Part II, Thomaso also resolves to return Angellica’s money, but there she and another whore decide to change country, if not their lives. Thomaso concludes that there is no anger but only kindness felt for her.
121. tramontana. From beyond the Alps; foreign or barbarian.
122. flying… lure. One who can be trusted to remain faithful as long as she is satisfied. (In the first edition ‘flying, one’ reads ‘flying on’.)
123. Hymen. God of marriage in Greek and Roman mythology.
124. bug. Terrifying.
125. consort. Company, usually of musicians.
126. upse. In the gipsy manner.
127. inkle. Linen thread and the tape made from it.
128. caudle. A warm drink made from gruel and wine or ale, with sugar and spices. It was given to the sick from at least the thirteenth century until the nineteenth. It was especially drunk by women after childbirth and by their visitors.
129. band. Collar.
130. bag of bays. Bag of seasoning used in cooking.
131. en cavalier. First edition reads ‘e’n cavalier’.
132. doxy. Prostitute.
133. a cast of his office. An example of his work (i.e. marry them).
134. conventicling. A pun; a conventicle was a Dissenting meeting.
135. That mutinous tribe. Dissenters.
136. maggot. Whimsical fancy.
137. canting. Hypocritical use of language. ‘In the seventeenth century applied in ridicule to the preaching of Presbyterians and Puritans’ (O.E.D.).
138. Blackfriars. The Blackfriars Theatre was used by the King’s Men from 1608 until the closing of the theatres in 1642. An enclosed or ‘private’ theatre, in which the audience were all seated, the prices were higher than in the open-air ‘public’ theatres. Scenery and music were quite elaborate.
139. bamboo. A cane.
140. Nokes… Lee. The best-known comedians of the day, James Nokes and Anthony Lee (or Leigh), teamed up in the 1670s and seem to have been highly skilled as a comic double act; prologues and epilogues of the period make frequent reference to or use of them. Both were with the Duke’s Men and appeared in a number of Behn’s plays; they acted together in The Feign’d Curtizans, in which the Epilogue refers to their skilful representation of ‘fops of all sorts’. In Sir Patient Fancy, Nokes played Sir Credulous Easy and Leigh the title role. The ‘Mrs Leigh’ who played Moretta in The Rover was probably his wife. See Colley Cibber, Apology (1740) for accounts of both actors.
141. stolen object. As the many borrowings from Thomaso indicate, Behn is not being entirely frank here.
142. their dominion. In some copies of the second issue and in all subsequent editions the words ‘especially of our sex’ follow here, indicating a female author.
143. the famous Virgil. Virgil is supposed to have written some lines which were at first anonymous; when these were claimed by an inferior poet he produced some more, which included the final quotation in this postscript.
1. The Widow Ranter was printed posthumously and prepared for publication by G. J., who complained that in the first performance ‘a whole scene of the Virginian Court of Judicature’ and ‘the appearance of the ghost of the Indian King’ were omitted; the latter scene is not in the text he printed, which is in a rough state with many authorial and compositorial errors, presumably because it was printed without Behn’s supervision. Some of these errors were corrected in the collected edition of 1702. The editor, G. J., dedicated the play to Madam Welldon, to whom he claims Behn wanted to dedicate some of her works. In the dedication G. J. admits the play was not successfully staged: ‘Had our Author been alive she would have committed to the flames rather than have suffered it to have been acted with such omissions as was made.’
The Widow Ranter was one of the few of Behn’s plays not to be clearly based on a previous one, although there are echoes; for example, the Widow’s house on a feast-day has something of the anarchic effect of Ursula the pig-woman’s roast-pork booth in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (performed 1614, printed 1631), and the Widow’s transvestite soldiering may be compared with that in The Roaring Girl by Middleton and Dekker (printed 1611) or in Shadwell’s The Woman Captain (1680). The heroic tragedy of Bacon looks back to the plays of the late 1670s, such as Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens (1677), which seem disillusioned with the heroic politics portrayed in Restoration plays of the 1660s and early 1670s and differ greatly from the tragedies popular in the 1690s. Southerne used part of The Widow Ranter as the basis of his play Oroonoko.
The historical Nathaniel Bacon was an English settler of good family who, having lost money in England, went to Virginia in 1674 to recoup his fortune. In 1676 he rebelled against Sir William Berkeley, who had been Governor of Virginia since 1641. Although Bacon seems to have been supporting the grievances of smaller settlers against the colonial government and the cavalier monopoly of land, and although he used the Puritan rhetoric of levelling and ‘the people’ in his Manifesto, he had a few of the aristocratic touches Behn gives him. He called rulers of the colony ‘spongers’ on the public treasury and accused them of being of low extraction and vile education. In addition, he was said to be a witty and extravagant man.
Bacon believed that the Susquehanna Indians should never have been allowed to purchase firearms, and when Governor Berkeley refused to aid him in his efforts against Indian raiders he took matters into his own hands and organized a force to repel them. Having been asked to disband this force, he soon found himself at odds with the vindictive Governor, who tried to compel him to surrender. With popular support Bacon seized Jamestown and defied Berkeley, who recaptured the town only after Bacon’s sudden death and with the help of forces from other colonies.
It is unclear where Aphra Behn obtained information on Bacon’s rebellion (which, according to the ‘order of Council’ quoted by Parson Dunce in Act III, scene ii, she dates as 1670). Information is given in several contemporary accounts: Strange News from Virginia: Being a full and true Account of the Life and Death of Nathaniel Bacon, Esquire… and More News from Virginia…; both appeared in 1677. In 1804 the Richmond Enquirer published ‘An account of our late troubles in Virginia; written in 1676 by Mrs An. Cotton of Q. Creeke’, together with another manuscript account.
The Ranters were a sect in the interregnum described by Christopher Hill as anarchic and antinomian; they had a short prominence in 1648–50. Historians such as J. C. Davis (Fear, Myth and History: Ranters and the Historians, Cambridge University Press, 1986) believe they are largely a myth of later historians and not the counter-culture religious movement Hill takes them to be. Whatever the historical case, much was made in contemporary pamphlets of the Ranters’ supposed sexual promiscuity and outrageous behaviour; they were also depicted as supporters of the abolished Stuart monarchy. In A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew (c. 1690) a Ranter is described as either an extravagant, unthrifty and lewd spark or a lewd woman and a whore, in addition to the definition of a member of a sect.
2. The 1690 first edition was published with a prologue by John Dryden, earlier used for Shadwell’s A True Widow, and an epilogue previously printed in Covent Garden Drollery in 1672. Dryden wrote a prologue and epilogue especially for The Widow Ranter which were printed separately in 1689. These are reproduced here.
3. Covent-Garden. Though fashionable, Covent Garden and its Piazza adjoined a disreputable area and became a rendezvous for prostitutes and their clients. There was already an unlicensed market there in Aphra Behn’s time.
4. vizard-masks. Though first worn by fashionable ladies, masks were soon adopted by prostitutes.
5. privateers. Armed private vessels, licensed to attack and capture ships of hostile nations.
6. clap… commissions. Reference to captured English sailors being forced to fight for the French. ‘Clap’ also meant gonorrhoea and syphilis.
7. sparks. Young men who affected elegance.
8. the game. Prostitutes.
9. bug. Terrifying.
10. savourly. With enjoyment.
11. mundungus. ‘Stinking tobacco’ (Johnson).
12. Iniskelling. In August 1689 a comparatively small number of men from Enniskillen, loyal to the regime of William and Mary, managed to defeat a Jacobite force.
13. port-mantle. A bag or case for travellers.
14. James-Town. On the James River, the town was settled in 1607 and was the capital of Virginia at the time of Bacon’s revolt.
15. woundly. Extremely.
16. cogue. Small wooden cup.
17. Groom-Porter. Official of the royal household who regulated gaming.
18. sharping. Cheating.
19. bully. Good friend, ‘mate’.
20. cully. Companion.
21. flats and bars. Kinds of dice which fall unfairly when thrown.
22. lay. Wager or stake.
23. character. Handwriting.
24. bought from the ship. Many immigrants had the cost of their voyage paid on arrival by someone who needed a servant, for whom they would then work without wages until they had ‘paid back’ this cost. The very poor and convicts were often auctioned to the highest bidder. A number of such ‘indentured’ servants eventually prospered.
25. extravagancy. Original or outrageous behaviour.
26. new governor. When Sir William Berkeley was recalled in 1677, the new governor, Lord Culpeper, ruled through deputies except for one brief period; he was then ordered to go back to Virginia and spent a year there before being removed from the post in 1683.
27. ruled… council. The colony of Virginia followed English models for its institutions. The executive was vested in a governor appointed by the crown and assisted by a council and an assembly of burgesses. The councillors, who held many of the most lucrative offices, were appointed by the governor; the burgesses were elected by freeholders.
28. transported criminals. Men and women legally condemned to exile in a colony.
29. places of authority. The English were outraged at the upstart nature of men who sat in the administrative bodies of Virginia (the Council and House of Burgesses) and at the colonial confounding of ranks. As early as 1618 one observer writes, ‘our cowkeepers here of James citty on Sundays goes accoutered all in fresh flaming silke and a wife of one that in England had professed the black art not of a scholler but of a collier in Croyden weares her rough bever hatt with a faire perle hatband, and a silken suite…’.
30. Alexander… Romulus. The exploits, whether historical or mythical, of Alexander in conquering lands from the Mediterranean to India, and of Romulus in founding Rome, were well known to seventeenth-century readers from North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1597).
31. Madam [Mistress, Mrs]. Used as a matter of courtesy to a woman of some social standing, whether married or not. Although Virginians traditionally see themselves as descendants of cavaliers, the bulk of the early settlers, who came in the seventeenth century, were either felons and indentured servants or from the middling and lower classes. They brought ideas of social rank from England.
32. Nants. Brandy from the town of Nantes.
33. pipes and smoke. Tobacco was introduced into England in the late sixteenth century, was used copiously from at least 1603, and was quickly associated with high living. Originally obtained through the Spanish, after 1610–11 it came primarily from Virginia where it was the major crop of the colonists.
34. sheer. Undiluted.
35. paulter. Sham.
36. hogherds. Swineherds, pigmen.
37. farrier. Someone who doctors and shoes horses.
38. breaking. Going bankrupt.
39. life-guard man. Soldier in the sovereign’s bodyguard.
40. deputation. Document appointing him as a minister of religion.
41. fain to keep an ordinary. Glad to run a tavern.
42. trusting… broke. Oliver Cromwell’s funeral in 1658 was magnificent, but many of the bills for it remained unpaid.
43. excise-man… king’s money. Customs officer who embezzled the payments of customs duty which should have gone to the Royal Exchequer.
44. groat. Coin worth four pence.
45. Scandalum Magnatum. ‘The utterance or publication of a malicious report against any person holding a position of dignity’ (O.E.D.).
46. Newgate. The principal criminal prison in London.
47. turned evidence. Became an informer.
48. bear the bob. Sing the chorus.
49. Justice… Corum (for ‘quorum’). Justice of the Peace of especial learning or ability.
50. club. Share.
51. Covent-Garden bully. See note 3 above.
52. broken citizen turned factor. Middle-class person who has gone bankrupt and turned to peddling the goods of others.
53. huffed. Bullied.
54. make. The first edition reads ‘have’.
55. thrummed. Torn or cut into rags.
56. Hector. The heroic Trojan warrior whose exploits and tragic death had been described by Homer and Virgil was by now a familiar name to Englishmen with no classical knowledge; they associated him with strength in a fight.
57. dispatched. Killed.
58. sevana (savannah). A grassy plain; this is an example of Behn’s use of words specifically associated with America. See Oroonoko.
59. fresco. The fresh air.
60. Bridewell. House of correction for vagabonds and prostitutes.
61. shoving the tumbler. Being tied to the tail of a cart and whipped.
62. lifting or filing the cly. Stealing or picking pockets.
63. maukish. Off-colour.
64. regalio. ‘Choice or elegant repast’ (O.E.D.).
65. stock-fish. Dried cod.
66. points. Twisted tags for fastening garments, used instead of buttons.
67. chafferer. Dealer.
68. In this scene, and at various other points in the play, the effect is heightened by some of the characters, particularly Bacon, speaking in language which modulates in and out of blank verse, though never set out as such. We cannot know what Aphra Behn’s intentions were, as she did not live to see the play through the press. In Southerne’s Oroonoko the hero talks in blank verse although the other characters do not.
69. antics. Fantastic and grotesque dances.
70. considering caps. ‘To put on a considering cap’ – to think something over.
71. treater. Entertainer, hostess.
72. sharper. Swindler.
73. salt. Assault, as in ‘assault and battery’ – an attack on somebody with blows.
74. mundungus. See note 11 above.
75. Court of Aldermen. In London this consisted of the representatives of the different wards; as in other English cities, the position of alderman has always been a prestigious one, often held by successful and established businessmen.
76. mor-blew, mor-dee. ‘Morbleu, mordieu’ – French oaths.
77. the Louvre… Whitehall. The palaces, respectively, of the French and English Kings.
78. billets-doux. Love letters.
79. troopers. Soldiers in a troop of cavalry.
80. Ludgate. A London street which was then occupied by the premises of tradesmen and merchants.
81. kidnapper. Kidnap – ‘Originally, to steal or carry off (children or others) in order to provide servants or labourers for the American plantations’ (O.E.D.).
82. poltroon. Coward or rascal.
83. maw. Stomach.
84. mobile. Mob, rabble.
85. rake-hells. Scoundrels.
86. bob. A blow or rap with the fist.
87. barbicu. To barbecue, or grill over a fire; a very early example of the use of this American word.
88. roistering hector. Blustering or boisterous ‘hector’, a name frequently given in the second half of the seventeenth century to ‘a set of disorderly young men who infested the streets of London’ (O.E.D.); they were rowdies who smashed windows and were quick to draw their swords in a fight.
89. bull of Bashan. See Psalm 22:12, ‘strong bulls of Bashan have compassed me round’. Bulls of Bashan were taken as symbolic of cruelty and oppression.
90. De Wit. Johan de Witt (1625–72), a great Dutch statesman. Supporting a republic in opposition to the House of Orange, he raised the United Provinces to naval and commercial power and was popular with the masses until Louis XIV invaded the country, when he and his brother Cornelius were seized and torn to pieces.
91. rods in piss. ‘Punishments in store’ (O.E.D.).
92. Quorum. See note 49 above.
93. writ of ease. ‘A certificate of discharge from employment’ (O.E.D.).
94. tally… stick. The amount of a debt was marked by notches on a stick; the stick was then split down the middle, so that each party had legal proof of the transaction.
95. Dalton’s Country Justice. Michael Dalton, The Countrey lustice, Contteyning the practise of the Iustices of the Peace out of their Sessions. Gathered for the better helpe of such Iustices of Peace as haue not beene much conuersant in the studie of the lawes of this realme (London, 1618). New editions with additional material appeared throughout the seventeenth century. The first edition of The Rover contains this advertisement, among others, for ‘Some books printed this year’: ‘The Country Justice, containing the practice of the Justices of the Peace, in and out of their Sessions, with an abridgement of all Statutes relating thereunto to this present year 1677. By Michael Dalton Esq.; Fol. price bound 12s.’
96. Board. Council-table.
97. docket. ‘A list of causes for trial, or of names of persons having causes pending’ (O.E.D.).
98. affidavit viva voce. An affidavit is a written statement, confirmed by oath, to be used as judicial proof. The witnesses have therefore made their written statements by word of mouth (via voce).
99. cagg. Keg or small barrel.
100. jade. First edition reads ‘jude’.
101. Scandalum Magnatum. See note 45 above.
102. ordinary. Tavern.
103. se defendendo. In self-defence.
104. peruke. Wig.
105. buff. Military coat made of buff leather.
106. termagant. A violent and overbearing person (originally a supposed pagan god).
107. to cock. To behave in a boastful and swaggering way.
108. brigantine… shallop. Both were types of boat which could be used for passage between larger vessels and the shore.
109. speaks like a Gorgon. The three loathsome Gorgons of Greek mythology had no need to speak, as their piercing gaze turned anyone who looked at them to stone.
110. rugged. Shaggy or rough-coated. The first edition reads ‘rugid’.
111. the god of our Quiocto. Quiocos were the second tier in a hierarchy of Indian deities; they could bring harm and had to be placated by gifts. Wooden images of them were kept in temples called ‘quiocosan’.
112. fell. Fierce.
113. Teroomians. No evidence has yet been found to connect this and most of the other ‘Indian’ words in the play to any Amerindian language.
114. starter. Deserter.
115. breathed. Lanced, so as to let blood.
116. like Caesar… weep. According to Plutarch, when Julius Caesar was presented with the head of the defeated Pompey, he turned his head aside and wept.
117. cadees. Gentlemen who enlisted without a commission in order to learn the profession and earn promotion (the same word as ‘cadet’; O.E.D. quotes this play as an example).
118. Benefit of the Clergy. Exemption of those in holy orders from the jurisdiction of secular courts, for many years extended to all who proved they could read, was not entirely abolished until the early nineteenth century.
119. Shaw. Dismissive exclamation (cf. ‘pshaw’).
120. in a hempen cravat-string. With a rope round his neck.
121. lay him on. Thrash him.
122. hawks’ meat. Easy prey.
123. Pauwmungian. Probably a reference to the queen of the Pamunkey Indians, who ruled from 1656 for about thirty years. Their territory was the Virginia coastal plain.
124. Hannibal. Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general, took his own life rather than fall into the hands of the Romans.
125. Roman Cassius. The forces of Brutus and Cassius fought those of Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar at Philippi in 42 B.C. in the struggle for power after the assassination of Julius Caesar. Cassius killed himself during the battle, probably under the mistaken impression that they had already lost. Not only the action, but the language is here reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act V, Scene iii.
126. Act V has been much mutilated. There are remnants of a scene here: the 1690 text reads:
… in agreement.
DARING You shall be obliged – [Exeunt Daring, Dance, Dullman and Timorous, as Fearless goes out, a Soldier meets him.
SOLDIER What does your Honour intend to do with Whimsey and Whiff, who are condemned by a Council of War?
[Enter Daring, Dullman, Timorous, Fearless and Officers.
127. clouts. Clothes.
128. spark it. Show off.
129. farce. A pun; the word could also mean ‘stuffing’.
130. green-sickness. An anaemic disease often believed to affect adolescent girls; chlorosis.
131. crumped. Curved.
132. tobacco pipes. Tobacco was once thought to be medicinal. (Pepys wrote in his diary for 29 June 1661, ‘Mr Chetwind, by chawing of tobacco, is become very fat and lusty, whereas he was consumptive.’)
133. infernal judges. In Greek mythology, Minos and Rhadamanthys were believed to sit in judgment over spirits entering the Underworld.
‘LOVE ARMED’
1. ‘Love Armed’ first appeared as ‘Love in fantastic triumph sat’ in Abdelazer (1677). It was reprinted in Poems on Several Occasions in 1684; the 1684 version is reprinted here.
2. Love… sat. Cf. the masque by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, performed in 1630: Love’s Triumph through Callipolis.
1. This formed the Epilogue to Behn’s comedy Sir Patient Fancy, published in 1678.
2. Mrs Gwin. Not Nell Gwyn, who had left the stage by this time.
3. vizard mask. Though first worn by fashionable ladies, masks were soon adopted by prostitutes.
4. jilts. The first edition reads ‘gilts’.
5. Method, and rule. The English playwrights were often contemptuous of rules in drama, which were associated with French authors.
1. The immediate source of this poem is the French ‘Sur une Impuissance’ in Recueil de diverses poesies choisies (1661), which appeared in English translation as ‘The Lost Opportunity Recovered’ in Wit and Drollery. Jovial Poems (1682). The ancestor is Ovid’s poem on the subject in Amores, Book III.7; several of Behn’s contemporaries took this as their model, for example the Earl of Rochester, whose ‘Imperfect Enjoyment’ was published in his Poems on Several Occasions in 1680. Behn’s poem was first printed in the same volume and was for a long time thought to be by Rochester (see David M. Vieth, Attributions in Restoration Poetry, Yale University Press, 1963); it was reprinted with variations in Behn’s Poems on Several Occasions in 1684, which has provided the copy text. The poems by Ovid and Rochester and ‘The Lost Opportunity Recovered’ are told rather more from the male point of view than Behn’s and are more comforting to the unperforming man. Ovid ends his poem with the disappointed girl pretending to maids that something has occurred between her and the man, and ‘The Lost Opportunity Recovered’, which is more than twice as long as Behn’s poem, allows the man to succeed spectacularly on subsequent occasions. The male texts include the man’s railing against his penis, which Behn omits. In Familiar Letters of Love and Gallantry (1718), ‘The Disappointment’ (here called ‘An Imperfect Enjoyment’) is printed with a letter allegedly by Behn to Hoyle about his ‘too close familiarity’ with a young man.
2. Surprised… longer. Cf. ‘The Lost Opportunity Recovered’:
It chanced Lysander, that unhappy man,
Led to it by the rashness of his love
Assaulted the fair Cloris, who does prove
Uneth to resist, do what she can.
3. draw him. The 1684 version reads ‘draw them’.
4. in vain. The 1680 version reads ‘too late’.
5. breathing faintly. The 1680 version reads ‘whispering softly’.
6. She… do. Cf. ‘The Lost Opportunity Recovered’: ‘I shall call out – don’t urge me to a noise…’.
7. mouth. The 1680 version reads ‘lips’.
8. desire. The 1680 version reads ‘desires’.
9. Each… alarms. Cf. ‘The Lost Opportunity Recovered’: ‘He then a lower hidden place alarms.’
10. swelling. The 1680 version reads ‘melting’.
11. calmed. The 1680 version reads ‘tamed’.
12. That fountain… repose. The 1680 version reads:
That living fountain from whose trills,
The melted soul, in liquid drops distills!
13. Her… light. The 1680 version reads: ‘Her eyes appeared like humid light.’
14. Cloris… goes. Cf. ‘The Lost Opportunity Recovered’:
Half living and half dead with the surprise,
She suddenly did counterfeit a swoon.
15. While. The 1680 version reads ‘Whilst’.
16. garments. The 1680 version reads ‘garment’.
17. opened. The 1680 version reads ‘open’.
18. envious gods conspire. The 1684 version reads ‘envying god conspires’.
19. Now… shame. Cf. Rochester’s ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’:
Eager desires, confound my first intent,
Succeeding shame, does more success prevent,
And rage, at last, confirms me impotent.
20. Priapas. The god of fertility, whose symbol was the phallus.
21. hinder. The 1680 version reads ‘kinder’.
22. Daphne… god. The nymph Daphne, who (rather differently from Cloris) fled from the unwanted love of the god Apollo, and was turned into a laurel.
23. of fair. The 1684 version reads ‘if fair’.
24. So Venus… plain. Venus’s beloved Adonis received a mortal wound from a wild boar when hunting; Venus rushed to his aid.
25. or. The 1680 version reads ‘and’.
26. shepherdess’s charms. In ‘The Lost Opportunity Recovered’ the lover likewise blames the lady for his initial lack of performance.
1. This was first published as a commendatory poem in the second edition of T. Lucretius Caro… De natura rerum (Oxford, 1683). It was dated 25 January 1682 and appeared among other commendatory poems by Waller, Evelyn, Otway, Tate and Duke. It was reprinted in Poems on Several Occasions in 1684, the version which is reprinted here.
Thomas Creech (1659–1700), to whom Behn also wrote ‘A Letter to Mr Creech at Oxford, Written in the last great Frost’, was a fellow of All Souls, Oxford in 1683, then headmaster of Sherborne School. He became so famous for his translations of Lucretius, Ovid, Plutarch and other classical writers that the author of A Comparison between the Two Stages (1702) could declare that Dryden was jealous of his reputation. Suffering from melancholy, and reputedly love, he hanged himself in 1700. It was said to be an act in sympathy with Lucretius, who was believed to have committed suicide.
Lucretius (c. 94–55 B.C.) was a Roman poet and philosopher conflating the philosophies of Epicurus and Empedocles and the theory of atoms from Democritus. He suggested that there was no life after death and that happiness should be gained on earth, although in De natura rerum he condemns atheists. The work was much criticized by Christians. Jerome claimed that Lucretius was poisoned by a love-potion, wrote the poem in lucid intervals of the resulting insanity and finally committed suicide, and this was widely believed. In fact, almost nothing is known about his life. His emphasis on the desirability of pleasure in this world came to represent the libertine philosophy of Restoration wits.
Aphra Behn seems to have provided one version of this poem for Creech and another for use in Poems on Several Occasions, or Creech may have changed it because of fear of its effect. In his own defensive dedication to the 1683 (second) edition in which Behn’s poem first appeared, he worried about the ‘venomed pill’ of Lucretius and tried to separate himself from the philosophy he was translating.
2. Whilst. The 1682 version reads ‘While’.
3. palled. Satiated.
4. my birth, my education. The 1682 version reads ‘my sex and education’.
5. verse. The 1682 version reads ‘Muse’.
6. Beyond… oracles. The 1682 version reads: ‘As strong as Faith’s resistless oracles.’
7. despairing. The 1682 version reads ‘religious’.
8. last shift. The 1682 version reads ‘secure retreat’.
9. Wadham. Wadham College, Oxford, from which Creech obtained his M.A. in 1683, was associated with the Royal Society whose members had met there. They included Thomas Sprat, Christopher Wren and Ralph Bathurst. The Earl of Rochester was a student from January 1660 to September 1661.
10. by dull. The 1682 version reads ‘or by’.
11. Thirsis. Thomas Sprat (1635–1713), Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Rochester; he was known as a wit, preacher and man of letters. He was a student at Wadham from 1651 to 1654 and held a fellowship from 1657 to 1670. In 1667 he published his History of the Royal Society, of which he was a founder member. In 1659 he wrote The Plague of Athens in the style of the poet Abraham Cowley, an account of whose life he also composed. Chaplain to Charles II, Sprat was loyal and in December 1680 accused Parliament of being unfaithful to the King.
12. Strephon. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680), glamorous court wit and poet, who according to Samuel Johnson ‘blazed out his youth and health in lavish voluptuousness’. He went to Oxford at the age of twelve and ‘grew debauched’ there. He took his degree at Wadham in 1661.
13. flag. Droop.
14. and the. The 1682 version reads ‘gay and’.
15. sacred. The 1682 version reads ‘happy’.
16. every bark… dressed. ‘Every tree trunk is decorated with your couplets’ (distichs).
17. And. The 1682 version reads ‘Whilst’.
18. kind. The 1682 version reads ‘low’.
19. their. The 1682 version reads ‘thy’.
20. sacred. Omitted in the 1682 version.
21. As is clear from his suicide, Creech did not have the happy future Aphra Behn expected.
1. The work is printed in Miscellany (1685) edited by Aphra Behn. In this she includes other verse letters in the Horatian mode, such as ‘A Letter from one in the University to his Friend in the Country’, but they are far more formal than this comic burlesque one, which resembles in style Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, the three parts of which appeared at intervals between 1662 and 1680.
For Thomas Creech (1659–1700), see note 1 on ‘To Mr Creech… on his Excellent Translation of Lucretius’.
According to Narcissus Luttrell, the frost of 1683–4 started about 15 December and lasted until 5 February. Coaches drove on the frozen Thames, oxen were roasted and booths and printing-houses were set up.
2. Tonson’s. The bookseller Jacob Tonson (c. 1656–1736), publisher of several of Behn’s works, including The Feigned Courtesans (1679), The Rover, Part II (1681) and Poems on Several Occasions (1684). Kathleen M. Lynch, in Jacob Tonson, Kit-Cat Publisher, says that Tonson told his nephew that he had anonymously included in the latter a poem he had written himself, ‘To the Lovely Witty Astraea, on her Excellent Poems’. He had his shop at the Judge’s Head in Chancery Lane; towards the end of the century he seems to have taken over his brother’s press near Gray’s Inn as well. The route from Whitehall appears to be through Charing Cross to the Temple and Chancery Lane.
3. shie wine. Sherry.
4. Bays. A reference to the royalist poet John Dryden. He is satirized as ‘Bayes’, the laureate author of a heroic tragedy, in The Rehearsal, attributed to Buckingham and printed in 1672. There may also be a reference to ‘A Sermon of the Poets’ (c. 1676) attributed to Rochester and Buckingham, in which the poets, including Aphra Behn, compete in ‘hopes of bays’. Behn is gently dismissed with the judgment that she should have presented herself ‘a dozen years since’.
5. White-Hall. The palace of Whitehall, to which Aphra Behn had apparently gone to obtain money from Charles II for her propagandist services to the royalist Tory party. The palace had been built by Cardinal Wolsey and had been the principal residence of the sovereign since the time of Henry VIII. It was said in 1665 to contain over 2,000 rooms. It was mainly destroyed by fire in 1697–8.
6. Temple. A series of buildings on Fleet Street once owned by the Templars; they were taken over by the lawyers’ societies of the Inner and Middle Temple, two of the four Inns of Court.
7. simple. Foolish behaviour.
8. sign of whore called Scarlet. The Pope’s Head, a large tavern in Chancery Lane. Protestants identified the whore in Revelation 17 with the Roman Catholic Church.
9. pilgarlic. A bald head likened to a peeled head of garlic. In the seventeenth century the term was simply used contemptuously or in mock pity.
10. H—le. Probably John Hoyle, a lawyer of Gray’s Inn with whom Aphra Behn was reputed to have been involved for several years and who is referred to in many of her poems of the early 1680s. (See also Letters to a Gentleman.)
11. For Lucretius, see note 1 on ‘To Mr Creech… on his Excellent Translation of Lucretius’.
12. saucy Whig… Plot. Possibly a reference to the Whig disappointment at the discovery of the Rye-House Plot in 1683 which was supposed to have been a plan to kill Charles and James on their way from Newmarket to London.
13. Oxford Member… Rowley. Sir Walter Scott recounts an anecdote which derives this nickname for Charles II from that of a pet goat kept in the Privy-garden. Rowley the goat was ‘a… lecherous devil… good-humoured and familiar; and so they applied this name to Charles’ (Personal History of Charles II, 1846). ‘Rowley’ is also said to be the name of a stallion in the royal stud. In March 1681 Charles called and dismissed a parliament at Oxford to avoid the Whig faction, strong in the City of London.
14. Perkin… James the second. Perkin Warbeck had made an attempt to gain the throne in 1498, claiming that he was the younger of the two sons of Edward IV. ‘Prince Perkin’ was a nickname for Charles II’s illegitimate son James, Duke of Monmouth, who claimed that the king had married his mother; this would have meant that Monmouth, rather than his uncle the Duke of York, would have become James II.
15. Wapping. This hamlet near the Tower was almost entirely inhabited by rough seamen. At the time of the Popish Plot crisis, Shaftesbury was alleged to have stirred up a rabble, including a mob of ‘Wapping boys’, in order to place Monmouth on the throne.
16. his vigour cheated. The theme of premature ejaculation is a common one in Behn; cf. ‘The Disappointment’ and the first part of Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister.
17. Lazarello. The Pleasant History of Lazarillo de Tormes (1586 and subsequent reprints): in Part II by Juan de Luna (Chapters III–V) Lazarillo recounts how, shipwrecked, he is drawn up in the nets of some fishermen along with their catch. Taking him at first for a sea-monster with commercial potential, the men realize the truth but are unwilling to forgo any profit; Lazarillo is forcibly disguised with seaweed and a tunny-fish tail, tied into a tank of water and taken around on a cart for public exhibition.
18. Twelfth Night… cake. On Twelfth Night (6 January) a cake was served with a bean and a pea hidden inside. It was cut so that a man got the bean and a woman the pea and they had to be King and Queen for the evening. Pepys spent the large sum of one pound on ingredients for his Twelfth Night cake in 1668. It might have been ‘lamentable’ because the festival ended the time of feasting.
1. ‘On her Loving Two Equally’ first appeared as ‘How Strangely does my Passion grow’ in The False Count (1682). It was reprinted in Poems on Several Occasions in 1684, the version used here.
2. Captain Pack. Simon Pack (1654–1701), amateur musician and eventually a lieutenant-colonel, was well known as a composer of songs for plays. He wrote the tune for a song in Behn’s Rover and others for plays by Dryden, D’Urfey, Otway and Southerne. See Choice Ayres and Songs (1679–84) and The Theater of Music (Books I and II, 1685).
1. ‘To the fair Clarinda’ first appeared in 1688 in A Miscellany of New Poems by Several Hands (published with Lycidus).
2. … fragrant leaves. Cf. Stanza XI of ‘The Disappointment’.
3. Hermes, Aphrodite. The god and goddess had a son called Hermaphroditus. When he refused to return the love of the nymph Salmacis, she prayed that they might be joined for ever and they were united in the form of a being of both sexes. The hermaphrodite was by no means always considered as a freak; it could be taken as a symbol of the creative union of opposites and was an important image in alchemy and mystical philosophies. (See also Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590), III.xii.46.)
1. ‘On Desire’ was first published in the miscellany Lycidus, or the Lover in Fashion (1688). It was reprinted with variations, anonymously, in Poems on Affairs of State (1697).
2. propension. ‘Favourable inclination’ (O.E.D.).
3. calenture. A burning passion or a fever.
4. So Helen… bed. Theseus, King of Athens, abducted the child Helen, daughter of Zeus and Leda, but she was returned unviolated to her family. She was later seduced by Paris, son of the King of Troy, when she was the wife of the Greek Menelaus.
1. ‘A Pindaric Poem to the Reverend Doctor Burnet’ was published in broadsheet in March 1689, the year of Behn’s death.
Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715) was a historian, clergyman and politician, familiar with Charles II and James until 1684 when he fell out of favour, left England and became a keen supporter of William and Mary, whom he accompanied to England in 1688. He became Bishop of Salisbury in 1689. He was the author of numerous pamphlets and books including a History of My Own Times (1724–34) and an account of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. Burnet appears to have invited Aphra Behn to write a poem on William of Orange despite her known loyalty to the ousted King, James II. The full title of her poem is ‘A Pindaric Poem to the Reverend Doctor Burnet, on the Honour he did me of Enquiring after me and my Muse’.
2. old Rome’s candidates. In the days of the Roman republic, candidates for consulship were proposed by the Senate and voted for by the people; in later times the Emperors chose Consuls; the Emperors (sometimes referred to as ‘Caesars’) were themselves theoretically chosen by senatorial votes.
3. But yet… given. In a correspondence with Anne Wharton, with whom Behn had had a poetic exchange, Burnet had described Behn as an ‘abominably vile’ woman who mocked religion and virtue in an ‘odious and obscene’ manner. (See J. Granger, Letters, ed. Malcolm (1805).)
4. … Kings. Although Behn claims a low place on the poetic mount of Parnassus unlike the heroic poet Abraham Cowley, she had not only versified a long Latin poem by Cowley, but had also written many political poems on the Kings Charles and James.
5. But since… wrought. Just as the sovereign’s head stamped on a coin gives it value, whatever metal it is made from, so the endorsement of Burnet will now give value to Behn’s writing, whatever its quality.
6. Echo. When her love for Narcissus was unreciprocated, the nymph Echo withdrew into a wild and rocky place where she faded away until only her voice remained. Behn’s image of herself is reminiscent of several heroines in Ovid’s Heroides; see especially the tenth letter, that of Ariadne to Theseus.
7. joyful victory. Moses brought the Children of Israel to the Promised Land but was forbidden to enter himself (Deuteronomy 34:1–5).
8. ’Tis to your pen… wrought. A perhaps bitter reference to Burnet’s part in the replacement of James II with William III.
9. So when the wiser Greeks… conqueror in. Following the ten years’ armed struggle for Troy, the Greeks took the city by the stratagem of the Trojan horse.
10. Nassau. William of Orange was also Count of Nassau.