The Rover
Introduction
The Rover, in full The Rover; or, The Banish’t Cavaliers, comedy by Aphra Behn, produced and published in two parts in 1677 and 1681. Set in Madrid and Naples during the exile of England’s King Charles II, the play depicts the adventures of a small group of English Cavaliers. The protagonist, the charming but irresponsible Willmore, may have been modeled on John Wilmot Rochester, a poet in the inner circle of Charles II. The hero’s real-life counterpart may also have been John Hoyle, who was a lover of the playwright.Aphra Behn's "The Rover" was published in 1677 and first performed in March of that year at Duke's Theatre in Dorset Garden. The play is based upon Thomas Killigrew's drama "Thomas, or, The Wanderer," which was published in 1664. Some dialogue in Behn's "The Rover" closely resembles that found in Thomaso's script; however, the majority of the text was re-written completely, or else is entirely original. As a result of such similarities between texts, Behn was accused of plagiarism on more than one occasion.
Key Facts about The Rover
Full Title: The Rover, or the Banished Cavaliers, Part One
When Written: 1677
Where Written: London
When Published: Premiered at the Duke’s Theatre in London in 1677
Literary Period: Restoration (17th century England)
Genre: Restoration Comedy
Setting: Naples, Italy
Climax: After a farcical chase, the three pairs of lovers are reunited
Antagonist: Don Pedro and Don Antonio, two Spaniards who seek to keep the cavaliers from their lovers
> What did Virginia Woolf say about Aphra Behn? Do you agree with her? Why?
ALL WOMEN TOGETHER OUGHT TO LET FLOWERS FALL UPON THE TOMB OF APHRA BEHN, FOR IT WAS SHE WHO EARNED THEM THE RIGHT TO SPEAK THEIR MINDS.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Aphra Behn Introduction :-
Yes, I agree with Virginia Woolf. Because Aphara Behan was a good writer. In her time she gave a lot to the literary world by writing. The important thing was that there was ultimately a female character. In the time of Aphara Behan, women could not write literature. Behn had a few female contemporaries but, unlike her, they were aristocratic and certainly not doing anything as vulgar as writing for money. These hobbyist writers would also usually warn potential readers with a notice that the following work was written by a member of the "fair sex", as though apologising in advance. Aphra Behn made no such apologies. She did not ask for permission or acceptance - and it was because she did neither that she proved to be so popular among the ordinary playgoers whose opinion so often goes unrecorded. Operating with striking success outside gender conventions, it was she who paved the way for other women to do the same. What's more, she included as much wit and bawdiness as she could muster, along with a sharp insight into both sex and politics. She was the Restoration's very own combination of Dorothy Parker and Mae West. Yet Aphara Behan has given a lot of literature to the literary world by venturing. Even though she hid her identity, she has given the society by writing such literature from which the society can get something moral. The Rover also satirizes many of the characters she writes. She portrays the reality of society as a female character. She has hidden the identities of all the characters and has shown the sheer reality in the society. It is a great thing to talk like this even though you are a female character. And that too was rejected by women in their time. Women were not allowed to write literature. Yet it is a great thing to write such realistic things in literature. In fact, she has provided a good literature to the literary world by facing many difficulties. She has written in his literature as if she had seen things in the society. Which we can go within their work.
The Rover Play Introduction :-
Article-1
Carnival Politics, Generous Satire, and Nationalist Spectacle in Behn’s The Rover
Adam R. Beach
Ball State University
The article also discusses the issue of religion. The article epilogue has been discussed. That the epilogue contains the keys to any literature. From what point of view should people look at literature. This literature depicts the reality of society within the Epilogue without looking at the matter of religion. If you look at it from the angle of religion, your feelings will hurt. As Helena talks about making herself a nun. Which is why people of religion don't like this.In the article Here, Behn attempts to school her audience the politics of reading by anticipating, parodying, and therefore dis-missing, a particular anti-Catholic, anti-court hermeneutics of paranoia that she associates with the “Conventickling” Dissenters of the “Mutinous Tribe”If you interpret this according to the Catholic religion, you will fail to read and understand it. There are many things in this play but many writers look at it from the same angle which is gender role. There are many others inside Rolla that have not been criticized. Which is discussed in this article.This article also discusses nationalist practical. To be loyal to the nation that is. If he goes against it, he is likely to become a traitor.This is article say something different way The interpretive guidance offered by Behn’s epilogue has not been heeded by modern critics, who have neither fully addressed the play as a serious rewriting of the Stuart exile nor accounted for its remarkable appropriation of Elizabethan nationalist discourse in the service of a pro-Stuart
agenda. Because The Rover was performed just before the eruption of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis, it has not been included in recent considerations of Behn’s more strident political plays written during those turbulent times.2 In general, most scholars have viewed it as primar ily concerned with gender politics and have only peripherally considered, or excluded altogether, national political and religious issues.3 In fact, much recent work follows a critical approach that confirms the young Spark’s assessment, which Behn herself derides in the epilogue. Focusing on Will-more’s drunkenness and blundering, his attempted rapes of Florinda, and his creating difficulties for Belvile, many scholars have argued that Behn’s play represents an earnest feminist attack on the character of the rake and the sexual audacity of the Stuart court, while others have asserted a more general ambivalence about Cavalier libertine ideology.4 Janet Todd argues that Willmore’s character is ambiguous, both “macho and sexually attrac-tive to desperate southern women” and a “ridiculous” and nearly “villain-ous” drunk; but, unlike other critics, she suggestively remarks that “Some of the serious ambiguity in The Rover may have been gained by time.”5 Given Todd’s discussion of James’ admiration for the play, along with the fact that there were three known performances of The Rover at court, it is difficult to believe that the work was viewed by Charles II or James II as a serious or even ambivalent depiction of their experience in exile or of the conduct of their court.6
Article -2
Rape and the Female Subject in Aphra Behn's "The Rover"
Anita Pacheco
The article talks about the female character. What kind of female characters are there in the same play? This article gives you a brief overview on how a writer can turn the whole thing upside down. It represents the things that were in the women of that time, what kind of place she had in the society and what kind of women she had at that time. This article discusses such matters as ..RAPE AND THE FEMALE SUBJECT IN APHRA BEHN'S THE ROVER BY ANITA PACHECO Critics have often remarked that in Aphra Behn's The Rover, ladies act like whores and whores like ladies. At this level, the play presents a dramatic world dominated by the two principal patriarchal definitions of women, but in which the boundary separating one category from the other has become blurred. In the case of both Florinda, the play's quintessential "maid of quality," and the prostitute Angellica Bianca, the role reversals arise out of contrasting bids to move from subjection into subjectivity. position within patriarchy, while Angellica Bianca's self-construction as Petrarchan mistress charts the attempt of a woman excluded from the marital marketplace to turn her beauty into an alternative form of power. escape patriar chal devaluation. Before the obligatory happy ending, Florinda faces three attempted rapes that are called not rape, but seduction, retalia tion, or "ruftling a harlot" (228); In presuming to make her own sexual choices, she enters a world where the word "rape" has no meaning, Angellica Bianca's subject position is shown to involve a complex complication in the same cultural legitimation of male sexual aggression. This paper will suggest that the presence of rape in the experiences of these two characters works to interrogate and problematize different modes of female subjectivity by situating them within a patriarchal dramatic world in which the psychology of rape is endemic. ? Rebellion against forced marriage is, of course, an age - old comic theme; but the terms in which Florinda articulates her defiance of paternal authority - her condemnation of the "ill customs" which make a woman the "slave" of her male relations (160) –presents this comic motif as a clash between the absolutist concept of marriage, in which women function as "objects of exchange and the guarantee of dynastic continuity.
Concluded :-
Inside The Rover there are many themes like love vs lust, Deceit and Disguise, class and mony, wit and language. But from this article we see a new kind of themes. Such as love courtship and marriage, gender roles and female agency. There are many characters in this play through which all these themes are created. Which is especially wilmore is our hero. Which brings a lot of turns and twists in this play.
Thank You
Words:-1613
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