Dec 31, 2009

The Rover | Critical Overview

Aphra Behn wrote and staged five plays before producing The Rover on March 24, 1677. Her reputation as a woman of letters was established enough for her to be included in a published list of playwrights called Theatrum Poetarum, compiled by her contemporary Edward Phillips. Despite her reputation, Behn published The Rover anonymously, perhaps because her play was an adaptation of another contemporary playwright, Thomas Killigrew. Behn had condensed his ten-act drama and turned it into a comedy, but as a woman writer, she was especially vulnerable to charges of...