Context

The Rover was written during the Restoration, the period of English history beginning in 1660, which followed after the English Civil War and a decade of parliamentary rule, an early form of republican government known as the English “Commonwealth”. That year the king, Charles II, returned to England from France where he had lived in exile since the execution of his father, Charles I, in 1649. He joined Parliament in May and less than a year later (21 April 1661) was offically crowned and “restored” to the throne.

Though England’s revolutionary wars were to erupt again in 1688, the country would never again dispense with the institution of Monarchy, even if the powers of the Crown would be increasingly reduced. (The United Kingdom today is a “constitutional monarchy” according to which parliament makes all political decisions while the monarch serves in a mostly symbolic capacity as the head of state.)

First performed in 1677, The Rover takes place during the interregnum (literally “between reigns”) when Charles II had fled to Europe where he was joined in exile by his royalist supporters, the “cavaliers” of the play’s subtitle.

So the play’s male English characters—Belvile, Willmore, Blunt, and Frederick—are professional soldiers in exile from England because they are supporters of the exiled Charles II. Set in Naples, the play takes place at a time when England was under control of enemies both to Charles and to monarchy as a form of government.

This background is interesting from a historical standpoint, not least because the play implicitly celebrates the royalist cause for an audience that very likely included Charles himself. The Rover, however, is more concerned with sexual politics than with the fortunes and misfortunes of English royalist history.

Aphra Behn (1640-1689)

Of primary importance in this regard is the gender of the author. Prior to the Restoration, women were forbidden from appearing on the English stage or from participating in theatrical production. (The theaters themselves had been almost entirely shut down from 1642-1660.) Aphra Behn is notable not only for being the earliest of women playwrights who made their living this way, but also among the best playwrights of the period, whatever their gender. The Rover was hugely popular on the English stage, drawing audiences continually for more than fifty years after it was first performed.

We know very little about Aphra Behn’s life apart from her works. Among these, it should be noted, is Oroonoko (1688). Widely regarded as the first English novel, it is the story of an African prince enslaved by British colonists. It is based on Behn’s experience while living for a brief time in Surinam, a nominally English colony on the north-east coast of South America where her father, who died on the voyage there, had been appointed Lieutenant General.

It is believed that Behn (née Johnson) married shortly after returning to England in 1664 (she would have been 24). Her husband, Johann Behn, died not long after, but Aphra continued to use the surname Behn professionally throughout her career.

Women and Power

Before we turn to The Rover, I offer a few remarks about the social status of women in Behn’s day that are relevant to the play.

A woman making her living as a playwright was not the norm, to say the least. Behn is the first English woman to do so. The “choices” for the vast majority of women, at least as far as the play is concerned, were as follows: maid (unmarried virgin), wife, widow, nun, or prostitute. It is perhaps no coincidence that some of the women who worked as actors on the Restoration stage had been (or were) prostitutes, nor that popular mores made no distinction between women actors and whores. This might help to explain why for many years, up to and including our own time, Behn has been seen primarily as a licentious and morally questionable figure—a point of view that has blinded critics to the aesthetic strengths and social relevance of her work.

It is notable, for example, that of the five social roles listed above, only the prostitute might be seen as independent and self-supporting—though even prostitutes depended for their living on the patronage of “johns”, as well as, in most cases, partnership with a male pimp. And yet we might note also that Angelica Bianca’s “pimp,” if we can call her that, is a woman, Moretta—unlike the play’s other whore, Lucetta, who works with a pimp named Sancho, a man. Even this is complicated, however, by Lucetta’s connection with another male figure, Phillipo, whom the dramatis personae describes as “Lucetta’s gallant” (“gallant” meaning, variously, “gentleman,” “ladies man,” or merely “lover”).

One of The Rover’s central concerns—complemented by the prominent roles of its main female characters, Florinda, Hellena, and Angelica Bianca—is women’s efforts to navigate and negotiate patriarchal constraints and expectations. And though the men in the play—and in the “real” world of Restoration England—enjoy freedoms and a level of agency mostly denied to the women characters, Behn’s vision suggests that they too are subject to social norms and expectations that impoverish their attitudes and give license to their frequently reprehensible behavior.

Comedy and “Sex Comedy”

Typical features of English comedy inherited from classical playwrights include the following: Trials and tribulations of young lovers Multiple plots Blocking figure (often a father or other male authority) Disguise and mistaken identities Resolution of conflict through marriage(s) Witty dialog and banter

Comedy, generally speaking, is u-shaped: initial peace and stability are disrupted by some adverse circumstance, usually introduced by a blocking figure—an unsympathetic character whose purpose upsets the harmonious balance. A descent into confusion and topsy-turveydom follows (often by way of a journey to some exotic or otherwise magical location), the adversity is overcome, and harmony is restored. Rather than an exotic location, The Rover’s characters “travel” to carnival, a period of temporary escape from the quotidian realities and normative social roles of the city (something like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, wherein costumes, role-playing, and licentious behavior feature prominently).

A species of comedy popular during the Restoration is the “sex comedy,” a form of literary carnival that features themes of adultery, cuckoldry, and fornication; witty verbal exchange and banter; and wars of the sexes in which women play prominent and often victorious roles. These plays seem to endorse their moral licentiousness (by staging it), even while subjecting such behavior to satire and ridicule. Whether this apparent contradiction is merely hypocrisy, or something more complex, is one of the more enduring critical problems associated with the form.

While The Rover is a highly entertaining comedy—replete with sexual intrigue, the frustrated desires of young lovers, disguise and mistaken identities, interwoven plots, and a conclusion based on the socially normative institution of heterosexual marriage—it also raises disturbing questions that the comedic outcome fails fully to answer or to silence.

The discussion prompts are designed to lead students toward identification of these problems and to explore whether and to what extent the play manages to resolve them.