NOTE ON THE TEXT

Except in the case of Love-Letters to a Gentleman which is taken from an edition of 1700, I have used as the basis for this volume the first printed version of Aphra Behn’s plays and prose works. Her poems are mainly printed from Poems on Several Occasions (1684), a volume over which she appears to have had some control. In the case of a few poems, this collection represents the second printing: ‘The Disappointment’ first appeared in 1680 in the Earl of Rochester’s Poems on Several Occasions; ‘To Mr Creech… on his Excellent Translation of Lucretius’ was first printed in 1683 in Thomas Creech’s work; ‘Love Armed’ was included in Abdelazar in 1677. In these three cases I have noted substantive changes between versions in the end notes.

It was common seventeenth-century practice to vary type for effect and emphasis, with proper names and important passages in italics and occasionally in variously sized capitals and in gothic script; in addition, nouns and other parts of speech were frequently capitalized. Spelling often differs from modern spelling and is inconsistent within the works and across works, and punctuation occasionally obscures meaning for a modern reader. Since this is a collection for the general reader I have regularized spelling and modernized punctuation, but only where this seems necessary. I have in addition avoided capitalization, italics and typographical extravagancies. I have not, however, altered words in the original except when the sense demanded it; these occasions have been recorded in the end notes. It is possible that Aphra Behn had the opportunity to correct works published in her lifetime; posthumously produced, The Widow Ranter, which may have been printed from manuscript or possibly from actors’ copies, is by far the most carelessly presented of her plays and it requires considerably more emendation and addition than the other works included in this anthology.

Information about the source and publishing history of individual plays, poems and prose works collected in this volume is provided in the initial end note to each work.