Dec 12, 2009

The Rover | Introduction

The Rover, published and first produced in 1677, was Aphra Behn's most successful play. The original full title, The Rover, or The Banish 'd Cavaliers, indicates that the play was a tribute to the formerly exiled cavalier and newly reinstated king, Charles II. The Rover is a dark comedy that mixes themes of prostitution and rape with comic buffoonery. The play expresses its author's objections to the vulnerability of women in Restoration society. Perhaps ironically, it also appeals to the prurient interests of the audience by putting women in morally compromising situations. Based loosely on her contemporary Thomas Killigrew's 1564 Thomaso, or The Wanderer (1664), Behn's play is leaner, less lewd, and more profound. The plot follows the fortunes of opposing lovers, one a woman of quality masquerading as a courtesan and one a wandering rake whose philandering days end when he falls in love with her. Several near-rapes and the tragic case of a jilted courtesan, another character in the play, balance the comic treatment of sexual politics in the seventeenth century. The rover of the title is either Willmore, an exiled English sea captain on shore leave to enjoy the carnival, or Hellena, a young woman hoping to experience life and love before being committed to a convent by her brother. These two rovers meet and fall in love amid witty debates and sexual maneuvering. Willmore has many parallels to Charles II, whose exploits during his twenty-year banishment from England were well known. Charles II enjoyed the play so much that he commissioned a private viewing of it.

The Rover Summary

Prologue
The prologue in rhyming couplets portends a play that is not just ‘‘good conversation’’, as conventional plays present, but is full of "wit" and "deboches" [debauches], as is life.

Act I
The scene untraditionally opens on two women. Sisters Hellena and Florinda are discussing love, which the younger sister Hellena wants to experience before her brother sends her to a nunnery, and Florinda coyly tells about her beau, an English colonel. They are interrupted by their brother, Don Pedro, who announces that, to prevent Florinda from having to marry her father's choice for her, an old man, she must marry Don Pedro's friend, Don Antonio, the next day. The girls decide to go to the carnival that night in masks and costumed as gypsy whores to exploit their independence before it is stifled by their prearranged futures, and Florinda hopes to encounter Belvile to tell him that she loves him. Their cousin, Valeria, and their governess, Callis, accompany them. Very soon they meet four English gentlemen who are also heading to the carnival.

Hellena meets and sets a date with an English sailor, Captain Willmore, who shares her goal of enjoying as many fleeting encounters with the opposite sex as he can during his two-day leave. Florinda is also successful, for she meets Colonel Belvile, the man she had fallen in love with when he protected her and her brother during the siege of Pamploma. Behind her mask, she pretends to tell Belvile his fortune, hands him a letter, and whispers to him to meet Florinda at the garden gate that night. Valeria flirts with Frederick, and the fourth Englishman, a simple country squire named Ned Blunt, wanders off with a real harlot, Lucetta. The other three joke that she will probably rob him, as they happily head off for dinner, anticipating an evening of physical pleasure.

Act II
Blunt comes back from setting a date with what he thinks is a woman of quality, who acts as though she is in love with him. He has not bothered to learn her name. He has high hopes of paying nothing for his time with her. The others, now donning carnival masks, take their common purse of money from him, convinced that she is a common whore who will fleece him of his valuables. Walking the streets, they come across the house of the famous courtesan, Angellica. Three portraits of this beauty hang outside, advertising her charms for one thousand crowns a month. Willmore falls in love with her beauty and takes one of the portraits, since he does not have the money to enjoy the original. Don Pedro and Don Antonio arrive wearing masks and vie over which of them will buy Angellica's favors. Don Pedro recognizes his friend, Don Antonio, who shows no shame over betraying Florinda as he presses his case with Angellica. Pedro challenges him to a fight, but he allows Don Antonio to think it is Belvile who challenges... » Complete The Rover Summary