An Insight into Aphra Behn's Plays

The playhouses in the seventeenth century were a major social centre for the court and its supporters. Their appetite was fed largely by the revival of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays and adaptations or translations from French sources.

The major playwrights at this time were Sir William Davenant, Roger Boyle, Robert Howard and John Dryden. By the end of the decade, Davenant was deasd and Boyle and Howard had stopped writing. Briefly, therefore, with the theatre's popularity growing fast, it was a writer's market, and several women- Frances Boothby, Elizabeth Polwhele and Aphra Behn- were among the aspiring authors who began to write.

The Duke of York Theatre

It was after her release from debtor's prison ,that Aphra Behn turned to writing to make a living. It was during this period that the Duke of York Theatre was being managed by Sir William Davenant's widow and Behn began to write for it.

The theatres were closely connected with the court, the audience consisting largely of courtiers and minor state officials. Also, the seats were expensive, so potential playgoers were few. An author's financial survival, (unless s/he had a private income) was tied to her/his ability to speak or interest a small clique who had pronounced political allegiences.

The playgoers' approval of an author became particularly vital from the late 1670's, when political tensions ovr the succession crisis and scares and machinations over the Popish Plot caused people to stay away from theatres in large numbers.

Aphra's Plays

Her first play, The Forc'd Marriage, opens with a metaphor describing the author as a scout or spy for a new party (women). It is possible the audience understood this as a reference to Behn's spying activities in Holland on behalf of the government, whereby she had already demonstrated her loyalty to the Crown (and had been imprisoned for debt for her pains).

The world of courtship and marriage depicted by Behn in her plays is a bleak one. Bright, witty women use daring and imagination in a desperate attempt to evade the arranged marriages or confinemens to nunneries destined them by their families. They race against time , trying to negotiate when all power lies in other's hands.

Woven in with the wit and humour, music and spectacle, are hard, sober women's truths about the debauchery of the Restoration court and its acolytes. Armed with wit like her heroines, Aphra Behn succeeded in dramatising in marketable form, the dilemmas that faced her and her sisters.

Sources:

Goreau, Angeline, Reconstructing Aphra. A Social Biography of Aphra Behn, Oxford University Press, Oxford,1980

Hobby, Elaine,Virtue of Necessity. English Women's Writing 1649-88, Virago Press, London, 1988

Globe Theatre.Prolific on the 17th Century

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