The Works of Aphra Behn Volume I Part 4

Published by W. Walker, 8 Grays Inn Square.' The original oil painting was purchased at the Stow Sale in 1848 (No. 57 in the sale catalogue), by J. S. Caldwell, a literary antiquarian, Linley Wood, Staffordshire.

A letter which I wrote to _The Times Literary Supplement_ (26 November, 1914) on the subject of these portraits brought me a most courteous permission from Major-General F. C. Heath Caldwell, the present owner of Linley Wood, to view the picture.

With regard to the well-known and most frequently reproduced portrait by Riley, this, engraved by R. Wise, figures as frontispiece to _The Unfortunate Bride_ (t.i.tle page, 1700, and second t.i.tle page, 1698).

It is also given before the _Novels_ (1696, 1698, and other editions).

Engraved by B. Cole, the same portrait fronts the _Plays_, 4 vols., 1724, and the _Novels_, 2 vols., 1735. It again appears 'H. R. Cook, Sculp.', published 1 August, 1813, by I. W. H. Payne, when it was included as an ill.u.s.tration to the _Lady's Monthly Museum_.

The portrait by Sir Peter Lely, which is reproduced as frontispiece to this edition of Mrs. Behn, was exhibited at the South Kensington Portrait Exhibition of 1866 by Philip Howard, Esq., of Corby Castle, the head of the Corby branch of the Howard family.

The portrait of Mrs. Behn which appears as frontispiece to the _Plays_, 2 vols., 1716, is none other than Christina of Sweden from Sebastian Bourdon's drawing now in the Louvre.

A so-called portrait of Mrs. Behn, 'pub. Rob't Wilkinson', no date, is of no value, being, at best, a bad pastiche from some very poor engraving.

Errors and Irregularities: General Introduction

even such a mad sc.r.a.pegrace as Dryden's Woodall _text unchanged_ the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Field's _all apostrophes in original_ [Footnote 21.]

... knowledge of the / theatre and technicalties theatrical _text unchanged_

THE ROVER; OR,

THE BANISH'D CAVALIERS.

PART I.

[Transcriber's Note:

Entrances and bracketed stage directions were printed in _italics_, with proper names in roman type. The overall _italic_ markup has been omitted for readability.]

ARGUMENT.

During the exile of Charles II a band of cavaliers, prominent amongst whom are Willmore (the Rover), Belvile, Frederick, and Ned Blunt, find themselves at Naples in carnival time. Belvile, who at a siege at Pampluna has rescued a certain Florinda and her brother Don Pedro, now loves the lady, and the tender feeling is reciprocated. Florinda's father, however, designs her for the elderly Vincentio, whilst her brother would have her marry his friend Antonio, son to the Viceroy.

Florinda, her sister h.e.l.lena (who is intended for the veil), their cousin Valeria, and duenna Callis surrept.i.tiously visit the carnival, all in masquerade, and there encounter the cavaliers. Florinda arranges to meet Belvile that night at her garden-gate. Meanwhile a picture of Angelica Bianca, a famous courtezan, is publicly exposed, guarded by bravos. Antonio and Pedro dispute who shall give the 1000 crowns she demands, and come to blows. After a short fray Willmore, who has boldly pulled down the picture, is admitted to the house, and declares his love, together with his complete inability to pay the price she requires. Angelica, none the less, overcome with pa.s.sion, yields to him.

Shortly after, meeting h.e.l.lena in the street, he commences an ardent courtship, which is detected by the jealous Angelica, who has followed him vizarded. Florinda that night at the garden-gate encounters Willmore, who, having been toping in the town, is far from sober, and her cries at his advances attract her brother and servants, whom she eludes by escaping back to the house. After a brawl, Willmore has to endure the reproaches of Belvile, who has appeared on the scene. During their discussion Antonio makes as about to enter Angelica's house before which they are, and Willmore, justling him to one side, wounds him.

He falls, and the officers who run up at the clash of swords, arrest Belvile, who has returned at the noise, as the a.s.sailant, conveying him by Antonio's orders to the Viceroy's palace. Antonio, in the course of conversation, resigns Florinda to his rival, and Belvile, disguised as Antonio, obtains Florinda from Don Pedro. At this moment Willmore accosts him, and the Spaniard perceiving his mistake, soon takes his sister off home. Angelica next comes in hot pursuit of Willmore, but they are interrupted by h.e.l.lena, dressed as a boy, who tells a tale of the Rover's amour with another dame and so rouses the jealous courtezan to fury, and the twain promptly part quarrelling. Florinda, meanwhile, who has escaped from her brother, running into an open house to evade detection, finds herself in Ned Blunt's apartments. Blunt, who is sitting half-clad, and in no pleasant mood owing to his having been tricked of clothes and money and turned into the street by a common cyprian, greets her roughly enough, but is mollified by the present of a diamond ring. His friends and Don Pedro, come to laugh at his sorry case, now force their way into the chamber, and Florinda, whom her brother finally resigns to Belvile, is discovered. She is straightway united to her lover by a convenient priest. Willmore is then surprised by the apparition of Angelica, who, loading him with bitter reproaches for his infidelity, is about to pistol him, when she is disarmed by Antonio, and accordingly parts in a fury of jealous rage, to give place to h.e.l.lena who adroitly secures her Rover in the noose of matrimony.

SOURCE.

The entire plan and many details of both parts of _The Rover_ are taken openly and unreservedly from Tom Killigrew's _Thomaso, or The Wanderer_, an unacted comedy likewise in two parts, published for the first time in his collected works by Henry Herringman (folio, 1663-4). It is to be noticed, however, that whilst Killigrew's work is really one long play of ten closely consecutive acts, the scene of which is continually laid in Madrid, without any break in time or action, Mrs. Behn, on the other hand, admirably contrives that each separate part of _The Rover_ is complete and possesses perfect unity in itself, the locale being respectively, and far more suitably, in two several places, Naples and Madrid, rather than confined to the latter city alone. Mrs. Behn, moreover, introduces new characters and a new intrigue in her second part, thus not merely sustaining but even renewing the interest which in _Thomaso_ jades and flags most wearily owing to the author's prolixity and diffuseness.

Killigrew, a royalist to the core, partic.i.p.ated in the protracted exile of Charles II, and devoting this interim to literature, wrote _Thomaso_ whilst at Madrid, probably about the year 1654-5. Although undeniably interesting in a high degree, and not ill written, it shares in no small measure the salient faults of his other productions, boundless and needless verbosity, slowness of action, unconscionable length.

For all its wit and cleverness, such blemishes would, without trenchant cutting, have been more than sufficient to prohibit it from any actual performance, and, indeed, _Thomaso_ may be better described as a dramatic romance than a comedy intended for the boards. Clumsy and gargantuan speeches, which few actors could have even memorized, and none would have ventured to utter on the stage, abound in every scene.

This lack of technical ac.u.men (unless, as may well be the case, Killigrew wrote much of these plays without any thought of presentation) is more than surprising in an author so intimately connected with the theatre and, after the Restoration, himself manager of the King's Company.

Nor is _Thomaso_ without its patent plagiarisms. Doubtless no small part is simply autobiographical adventuring, but, beside many a reminiscence of the later Jacobeans, Killigrew has conveyed entire pa.s.sages and lyrics wholesale without attempt at disguise. Thus the song, 'Come hither, you that love,' Act ii, Scene 3, is from Fletcher's _Captain_, Act iv, the scene in Lelia's chamber. Again, the procedure and orations of Lopus the mountebank are but the flimsiest alterations of _Volpone_, Act ii, Scene I, nor could Killigrew change Jonson for anything but the worse. He has even gone so far as to name his quack's spouse Celia, a distinct echo of Corvino's wife.

In dealing with these two plays Mrs. Behn has done a great deal more than merely fit the pieces for the stage. Almost wholly rewriting them, she has infused into the torpid dialogue no small portion of wit and vivacity, whilst the characters, p.r.o.ne to devolve into little better than prosy and wooden marionettes, with only too apparent wires, are given life, vigour movement, individuality and being. In fact she has made the whole completely and essentially her own. In some cases the same names are retained. We find Phillipo, Sancho, Angelica Bianca, Lucetta, Callis, in Killigrew. But as Willmore is a different thing altogether to Thomaso, so Ned Blunt is an infinitely more entertaining figure than his prototype Edwardo. Amongst other details Killigrew, oddly and stupidly enough, gives his English gentlemen foreign names:-- Thomaso, Ferdinando, Rogero, Harrigo[*]. This jar is duly corrected in _The Rover_.

[Footnote *: There is a strange commixture here. The character is familiarly addressed as 'Hal', the scene is Madrid, and he rejoices in the Milanese (not Italian) nomenclature Arrigo = Henry in that dialect.]

Mrs. Behn has further dealt with the Lucetta intrigue in a far more masterly way than Killigrew's clumsily developed episode. In _Thomaso_ it occupies a considerable s.p.a.ce, and becomes both tedious and brutally unpleasant. The apt conclusion of the amour in _The Rover_ with Blunt's parlous mishap is originally derived from Boccaccio, Second Day, Novel 5, where a certain Andreuccio finds himself in the same unsavoury predicament as the Ess.e.x squireen. However, even this was by no means new to the English stage. In _Blurt Master Constable_, Lazarillo de Tormes, at the house of the courtezan Imperia, meets with precisely the same accident, Act iii, Scene 3, Act iv, Scenes 2 and 3, and it is probable that Mrs. Behn did not go directly to the _Decameron_ but drew upon Middleton, of whom she made very ample use on another occasion, borrowing for _The City Heiress_ no small portion of _A Mad World, My Masters_, and racily reproducing in extenso therefrom Sir Bounteous Progress, d.i.c.k Folly-Wit, the mock grandee, and that most excellent of all burglaries good enough for Fielding at his best.

In dealing with _Thomaso_ Astrea did not hesitate, with manifest advantage, to transfer incidents from Part II to Part I, and vice versa.

Correcting, pruning, augmenting, enlivening, rewriting, she may indeed (pace the memory of the merry jester of Charles II) be well said to have clothed dry bones with flesh, and to have given her creation a witty and supple tongue.

THEATRICAL HISTORY.

The first part of _The Rover_ was produced at the Duke's House, Dorset Gardens, in the summer of 1677, and licensed for printing on 2 July of the same year. It met, as it fully deserved, with complete success, and remained one of the stock plays of the company. Smith, the original Willmore, and the low comedian Underhill as Blunt were especially renowned in their respective roles. Another famous Willmore was Will Mountford, of whom Dibdin relates, 'When he played Mrs. Behn's dissolute character of The Rover, it was remarked by many, and particularly by Queen Mary, that it was dangerous to see him act, he made vice so alluring.'

Amongst the more notable representations of the eighteenth century we find:-- _Drury Lane; 18 February, 1703._ Willmore by Wilks; h.e.l.lena, Mrs. Oldfield; repeated on 15 October of the same year. _Haymarket; 20 January, 1707._ Willmore by Verbruggen; Blunt, Underhill; h.e.l.lena, Mrs.

Bracegirdle; Angelica, Mrs. Barry; Florinda, Mrs. Bowman. _Drury Lane; 22 April, 1708._ Willmore by Wilks; Blunt, Estcourt; Frederick, Cibber; h.e.l.lena, Mrs. Oldfield; Angelica, Mrs. Barry; Florinda, Mrs. Porter.

_Drury Lane; 30 December, 1715._ Willmore, Wilks; Blunt, Johnson; h.e.l.lena, Mrs. Mountfort; Angelica, Mrs. Porter. _Drury Lane; 6 March, 1716._ Don Pedro, Quin; Frederick, Ryan; Florinda, Mrs. Horton.

_Lincoln's Inn Fields; 5 April, 1725._ 'Never acted there.' Performed for Ryan's benefit. Willmore, Ryan; Belvile, Quin; Blunt, Spiller; h.e.l.lena, Mrs. Bullock; Angelica, Mrs. Parker. _Covent Garden; 9 November, 1748._ Willmore, Ryan; Blunt, Bridgewater; h.e.l.lena, Mrs.

Woffington; Angelica, Mrs. Horton. To make this performance more attractive there was also presented 'a musical entertainment', ent.i.tled, _Apollo and Daphne_, which had been originally produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1726. _Covent Garden; 19 February, 1757._ 'Not acted twenty years.' Willmore, Smith; Belvile, Ridout; Frederick, Clarke; Don Antonio, Dyer; Blunt, Shuter; h.e.l.lena, Mrs. Woffington; Angelica, Mrs.

Hamilton; Florinda, Mrs. Elmy. This, the latest revival, was performed with considerable expense, and proved successful, being repeated no less than ten times during the season. Wilkinson says that Shuter acted Blunt very realistically, and, as the stage directions of Act iii require, stripped to his very drawers.

On 8 March, 1790, J. P. Kemble presented at Drury Lane a pudibond alteration of _The Rover_, which he dubbed _Love in Many Masks_ (8vo, 1790). It was well received, and acted eight times; in the following season once. Willmore was played by Kemble himself; Belvile, Wroughton; Blunt, Jack Bannister; Stephano, Suett; h.e.l.lena, Mrs. Jordan; Angelica, Mrs. Ward; Florinda, Mrs. Powell; Valeria, Mrs. Kemble; Lucetta, Miss Tidswell. It is not entirely worthless from a purely technical point of view, but yet very modest and mediocre. As might well be surmised, the raciness and spirit of _The Rover_ entirely evaporate in the insipidity of emasculation. This is the last recorded performance of Mrs. Behn's brilliant comedy in any shape.

THE ROVER;

or, the Banish'd Cavaliers.

PART I.