SOURCE: "Aphra Behn," in Women Playwrights in England c. 1363-1750, Bucknell University Press, 1980, pp. 55-80.

Aphra Behn (c. 1640-89) was a hard-driving professional playwright, independent, bawdy, witty, and tough. She differed from all her feminine predecessors because she was "forced to write for Bread and not ashamed to owne it" (To the Reader, Sir Patient Fancy). Nothing is known of her background or education but myths and guesses. She was born in Wye; she was born in Canterbury. Her maiden name was Amis; or Johnson. She was the daughter of a barber; or of the lieutenant-general of Surinam. She was married to a London merchant named Behn, of Dutch extraction; or Mr. Behn was a fiction. She had lovers innumerable; she suffered faithfully a long unhappy passion for a bisexual lawyer named John Hoyle. But what is known of her life shows her one of the remarkable personalities of her age.

Her first biography, "Memoirs on the Life of Mrs. Behn," appeared in 1696 with the earliest collected edition of her novels and purported to be "Written by a Gentlewoman of her Acquaintance." "One of the Fair Sex" reports Behn's early precosity "ev'n in the first Bud of Infancy," for "besides the Vivacity and Wit of her Conversation, at the first Use almost of Reason in Discourse, she wou'd write the prettiest, soft-engaging Verses in the World". There is no record of her education, but her works show that she knew French, and there is presumptive evidence that she knew Spanish and Italian also.

About 1663-64 Behn traveled to Surinam, then an English colony. She describes her journey in her famous and influential Oroonoko (1688), sometimes called the first abolitionist novel. The facts may be embroidered—Oroonoko after all is a novel rather than an autobiography—but they show her adventurousness. She tells us that her stay was short in the colony "because my Father dy'd at Sea, and never arriv'd to possess the Honour design'd him (which was Lieutenant-General of six and thirty Islands, besides the Continent of Surinam) nor the Advantages he hop'd to reap by them: So that though we were oblig'd to continue on our Voyage, we did not intend to stay upon the place". She visited the Indians, who were understandably amazed at her European dress: "They were all naked; and we were dress'd, so as is most commode for the hot Countries, very glittering and rich; so that we appear'd extremely fine; my own Hair was cut short, and I had a Taffety Cap, with black Feathers on my Head; my Brother was in a Stuff-Suit, with Silver Loops and Buttons, and abundance of green Ribbon." Behn remembered with gusto her voyage across "Three thousand Leagues of spacious Ocean" (Dedication, The Young King), recounting in Oroonoko her adventures searching for "tiger" cubs and eating an armadillo.

Upon her return to England, according to her biographer, she "gave King Charles the Second, so pleasant and rational an Account of his Affairs there, and particularly of the Misfortunes of Oroonoko, that he desir'd her to deliver them publickly to the World; and [was] satisfy'd on her Abilities in the Management of Business, and the Fidelity of our Heroine to his Int'rest" ("Memoirs"). This ancedote is as difficult to prove or disprove as any told about her life at this period, but she herself tells of presenting to "his Majesty's Antiquary's … some rare Flies, of amazing Forms and Colours" from Surinam. The story goes that she married Mr. Behn about this time. He disappeared rapidly from the scene, perhaps of the plague in 1665 or 1666, and was never heard of again. Behn never mentions him in any of her writings.

Everything about the character she gives of herself in Oroonoko, even perhaps the tale of her acquaintance with the king, is consonant with the first indisputable external evidence about her life. In 1666 she went to Antwerp as a secret agent for the English government. Her employment as a spy is documented in a series of letters preserved among official state papers. Her mission was to send information about disaffected Cromwellians, now taking their turn in exile, and to relay Dutch military plans. As a secret agent she used the code name Astrea. Later, as her literary name, Astrea became as synonymous with Aphra Behn as Orinda was with Katherine Philips.

Astrea ran into debt in the Netherlands and sent urgent appeals for money to Thomas Killigrew, who had recommended her for the job, and even to Lord Arlington, Secretary of State. Finally she had to borrow money from a London merchant in order to pay her debts abroad. She arrived home in 1667, penniless and substantially in debt. Despite further appeals to those who had employed her, she ended up in debtor's prison. She wrote Killigrew the day before her imprisonment:

I will send my mother to the King with a petition, for I see everybody are words, and I will not perish in prison from whence he [her creditor] swears I shall not stir till the utmost farthing be paid; and oh God, who considers my misery and charge too, this is my reward for all my great promises and my endeavours. Sir, if I have not the money to-night, you must send me something to keep me in prison, for I will not starve.

No one knows how or when she was released from prison, but it may indeed have been someone at court who paid her debt, perhaps the king himself, for to the end of her life she was an ardent Tory, devoted to Charles II and his brother James.

"The Rest of her Life was entirely dedicated to Pleasure and Poetry; the success in which, gain'd her the Acquaintance and Friendship of the most sensible Men of the Age" ("Memoirs"). As to the "Pleasure," if the word means sexual pleasure as it often did in the Restoration, there is little external evidence. Her works show her sexual sophistication and won her a reputation in her own lifetime as an adept of love, who practiced what she preached: "The Passions, that of Love especially, she was Mistress of; and gave us such nice and tender Touches of them, that without her Name we might discover the Author." As to the "Poetry," the incomplete edition of her collected works runs to six volumes. The determination expressed in her letter to Killigrew—"I will not starve"—is evident in all her work. She turned out plays, poems, novels, and translations to suit the marketplace. Her wide circle of friendships is documented in innumerable compliments from distinguished contemporaries. Among her literary friends were Dryden, Otway, Edward Howard, Waller, Charles Cotton, Nahum Tate, Edward Ravenscroft, Nathaniel Lee, Thomas Creech, and probably the Earl of Rochester. She must have known all her contemporaries in the theater, both playwrights and actors. Sir Peter Lely and Mary Beale painted portraits of her. People of other professions also sought her out, and students just down from the universities haunted her rooms. She apparently was "able to write in the midst of Company, and yet have her Share of the Conversation." She was noted among her friends for her witty conversation, beauty, and generosity.

No one knows how she gained an entree to the theater. In Oroonoko, after describing the "glorious Wreaths" of feathers made by the natives, she says, "I had a Set of these presented to me, and I gave 'em to the King's Theatre; it was the Dress of the Indian Queen, infinitely admir'd by Persons of Quality; and was inimitable". The patentee of the King's Company at this time was Thomas Killigrew, whom Behn had worked for during her career as a spy. In spite of these connections with the King's Company, her plays were produced by the rival Duke's Company. Perhaps, as has been suggested, she took her plays to the rival house because Killigrew had treated her shabbily about her expenses in the Netherlands. It has also been suggested that the Duke's Company might have been more receptive to a woman playwright because it was the more innovative of the two companies. This hypothesis, however, ignores the fact that the King's Company had already produced plays by Frances Boothby and Katherine Philips in 1669. A more likely hypothesis is that the Duke's Company was competing with the King's Company by producing a woman playwright in the following year.

Whatever the circumstances, Behn entered the theater in 1670, producing, before her death nineteen years later, seventeen extant plays. Two more plays have been lost—Like Father Like Son; or, The Mistaken Brothers (1682) and The Wavering Nymph; or, Mad Amyntas (1684). Four anonymous plays have been attributed to her—The Woman Turned Bully (1675), The Debauchee; or, The Credulous Cuckold (1677), The Counterfeit Bridegroom; or, The Defeated Widow (1677), and The Revenge; or, A Match in Newgate (1680).

She began her apprenticeship with The Forced Marriage; or, The Jealous Bridegroom (1670), a romantic tragicomedy of intrigue of the popular Beaumont and Fletcher school. In February 1671 Behn followed up with a romantic comedy, The Amorous Prince; or, The Curious Husband, more vivacious in language and more complex in plot. With The Dutch Lover (1673) Behn found her forte, the comedy of intrigue, and her style, brisk colloquial prose. Her apprentice work was finished—she had found her stage formulas. Behn typically manipulates several sources into a complexly plotted play of expert stage craftsmanship. A number of couples—eluding the unwanted marriages arranged for them—meet, bed and/or wed after innumerable intrigues, mistaken identities, duels, disguises, and practical jokes. Her plays abound in bedroom farce. Her scenes of comic lowlife are delightful, full of landladies, bawds, buffoons, and prostitutes. She provides spectacle in masquing, costuming, and dance, and uses stage machinery and other technical resources to create special effects. Behn had a fine lyric gift, and her plays are full of witty and romantic songs. These plays, although fun to read, are for the stage rather than the page. Behn was the first woman to write theatrically.

Her wit is more often in the plot than in the dialogue. Because of this, her plays are often compared unfavorably with the comedies of manners written by her contemporaries. But Behn was writing in another genre, the Spanish-type comedy of intrigue, one of the most commercially successful genres of the day. Behn wrote for money and she chose the mode that suited her talents. Behn's assessment of her own plays in the preface to The Lucky Chance … is accurate. She wrote as well as any of her contemporaries except Etherege, Wycherley, and Dryden. And considering her prolific output, she indeed "made as many good Comedies, as any one Man" in her own age.

Behn wrote a series of fine intrigue comedies. The best of these, The Rover; or, The Banished Cavaliers (1677), is set at carnival time in Naples, where impoverished English cavaliers-in-exile become entangled with Spanish ladies and win their persons and fortunes. Behn's rover, Willmore, is her distinctive version of a favorite Restoration character, the wild gallant. The rover is eager for an amour anytime, anyplace, with any woman at hand. The Rover stayed in the repertory until the middle of the eighteenth century, the role of the witty heroine being taken by such famous actresses as Elizabeth Barry, Anne Brace-girdle, Anne Oldfiled, and Peg Woffington. Behn exploited her success by continuing Willmore's adventures in The Rover Part II (1681). The play was dedicated to the Duke of York because of "the incouragement" he gave "the Rover at his first appearance, and the concern" he was "pleas'd to have for his second" (The Epistle Dedicatory). Another variant on The Rover was The Feigned Courtesans; or, A Night's Intrigue (1679). Again a group of English travelers, this time in Rome, meet, intrigue with, and marry a group of foreign ladies. Also among Behn's best is Sir Patient Fancy (1678), an amusing tangle of the amours of two neighboring London families, a first-rate stage play with fine scenes of bedroom farce. Behn's Emperor of the Moon was an instant success in 1687. A gay and extravagant combination of commedia dell' arte, operatic spectacle, sumptuous costuming, dance, song, satire, intrigue, and a bit of manners comedy, The Emperor of the Moon was performed for nearly a hundred years.

Two of Behn's plays deal centrally with her most distinctive theme, her attack on forced marriage. Announcing that theme in the title of her first play, she went on to write The Town Fop; or, Sir Timothy Tawdrey (1676) and The Lucky Chance; or, An Alderman's Bargain (1686)—a sentimental, then a harder treatment of the same subject. In The Town Fop, the young lovers are brought near to ruin before a fifth-act reversal dissolves a forced marriage. We see not their witty stratagems but their bitter sufferings when parental authority is abused. The effect, then, is sentimental rather than comic. Ten years later The Lucky Chance made a comic attack on loveless marriage, with three pairs of lovers using their wits to escape that dreadful fate. All three heroines complain explicitly about forced marriage. Lady Fulbank:

Oh, how fatal are forc'd Marriages!
How many Ruins one such Match pulls on!
Had I but kept my Sacred Vows to Gayman,
How happy had I been—how prosperous he!
Whilst now I languish in a loath'd embrace,
Pine out my Life with Age—Consumptions, Coughs.

Leticia, preparing to elope with Bellmour, addresses the absent Sir Feeble:

Old Man forgive me—thou the Aggressor art,
Who rudely forc'd the Hand without the Heart.

Diana speaks similarly as she prepares to elope with Bredwel:

Father, farewell—if you dislike my course,
Blame the old rigid Customs of your Force.

The serious tone of these complaints, made in what is essentially a farcical comedy, shows the earnestness of Behn's feeling that love should be the basis for marriage. New Comedy in general depicts the witty stratagems of young lovers who outwit their elders and thus escape unwanted arranged marriages. Behn goes beyond this to attack the arranged marriage as an institution.

She also used the stage to voice her strong opinions about the political upheavals in the latter years of Charles II's reign, when feeling ran high between Whig and Tory over the possibility of a Catholic succession through the Duke of York. In The Roundheads; or, The Good Old Cause (1681) Behn satirized the Parliamentarians in the turbulent days immediately preceding the Restoration. The Roundheads is a poor play; the satire is too gross to be telling. A few months later, in the spring of 1682, Behn produced a much better political satire in The City Heiress; or, Sir Timothy Treat-all. Treat-all, "an old seditious Knight, that keeps open House for Commonwealthsmen and true blue Protestants" (dramatis personae), was clearly a satire of the prominent Whig Shaftesbury. The satire is effective and is integrated into a fast-paced intrigue comedy. That summer Behn went too far in her political outspokenness and offended the king when, for the anonymous play Romulus and Hersilia, she wrote an epilogue attacking the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's natural son and potential Protestant usurper. Both Behn and the actress who spoke the epilogue were arrested. Apparently nothing much came of the arrest, but Behn had made enemies among a number of powerful Whigs and among Whig playwrights such as Shadwell.

Some of Behn's plays are not easy to categorize. She wrote one tragedy, Abdelazer; or, The Moor's Revenge (1676), a murderous melodrama distinguished only by its energy and the often quoted song "Love in fantastick Triumph sat." She was apparently always pressed for money, particularly during the 1680s when times were hard for playwrights, and consequently often wrote hurriedly. In 1679 she refurbished for production The Young King; or, The Mistake, like her earliest plays a romantic tragicomedy in the Beaumont and Fletcher mold. The dedication calls the play the "first Essay of my Infant-Poetry" and implies that an early version was written in Surinam. The text shows signs of hasty and incomplete revision. Haste and need may also have produced The False Count; or, A New Way to Play an Old Game (1681), described in the epilogue as "a slight Farce, five Days brought forth with ease." Possibly the play was indeed written with such speed, for, although amusing, it is less complexly plotted than her other plays. Two Behn plays were produced posthumously. The Widow Ranter; or, The History of Bacon in Virginia (1689), set in America, unmercifully dramatizes the colonial officials as cowardly and drunken transported felons. Charles Gildon rewrote a few scenes of The Younger Brother; or, The Amorous Jilt, a busy intrigue comedy, and brought it out in 1696, seven years after Behn's death.

In several plays, Behn explores in distinctive ways two stock characters, the courtesan and the amazon. Critics have suggested that she gives prominence to the courtesan simply as a means of titillation. Rather, she uses this character as a weapon in her thematic attack on mercenary marriage. An early example is Angelica Bianca in The Rover. She is so famous and beautiful a courtesan that she can sell her favors for a thousand crowns a month. In spite of her mercenary nature, she falls in love with the poor but dashing rover, Captain Willmore. He argues her into bed by upbraiding her for selling love for money. Although she is persuaded, at one point she turns the argument against him:

Pray, tell me, Sir, are not you guilty of the same mercenary Crime? When a Lady is proposed to you for a Wife, you never ask, how fair, discreet, or virtuous she is; but what's her Fortune—which if but small, you cry—She will not do my business—and basely leave her, tho she languish for you.—Say, is not this as poor?

Ultimately the humorless courtesan loses Willmore to the witty maiden Hellena. Angelica Bianca mistakenly thinks that this is due to her "lost honor," but what wins the rover is not Hellena's "honor" but her wit. Although she loses the love game in The Rover, Angelica Bianca is developed as a three-dimensional passionate woman, a character with real thoughts and feelings.

Two years later in The Feigned Courtesans the rover of the play, Frank Galliard, woos the young Roman courtesan La Silvianetta, while his more romantic friend Sir Harry Fillamour is attracted by her companion Euphemia. The courtesans are really Cornelia and Marcella, young ladies of fortune and family who have run away from home in disguise, Marcella to avoid a forced marriage, Cornelia to avoid a convent. It is their disguise as courtesans—a role they enjoy playing—that enables them to attract and then win their men. Another young lady, Laura Lucretia, also disguises as La Silvianetta in order to attract Galliard. Inferior in wit to Cornelia, she loses the rover and must be content with her fiancé.

The Rover Part II, in another two years, varies again the pattern of Part I. Willmore, now a widower, is once more pursued by a witty, virtuous maid—Ariadne—and a beautiful, passionate courtesan—La Nuche. Because of the earlier play, a strong expectation is set up that Ariadne will capture Willmore in marriage, taking him away from the mercenary courtesan. But Ariadne's wit fails at a crucial point. Striking up a flirtation with Willmore, she talks of love in terms of monetary value. When he praises her charms, she says they are to be enjoyed by "one that can esteem 'em to their worth, can set a Value and a Rate upon 'em". Wishing to impress the inconstant rover, she derides constancy because "it loses Time and Profit," because "new Lovers have new Vows and new Presents." Willmore, who in Part I upbraided the courtesan for being mercenary, now turns the same attack on Ariadne, on honorable ladies and their marriage settlements:

You Women have all a certain Jargon, or Gibberish, peculiar to your selves; of Value, Rate, Present, Interest, Settlement, Advantage, Price, Maintenance, and the Devil and all of Fopperies, which in plain Terms signify ready Money, by way of Fine before Entrance; so that an honest well-meaning Merchant of Love finds no Credit amongst ye, without his Bill of Lading.

La Nuche and Willmore are attracted to each other when the play opens, and he turns the same arguments on her. Throughout five acts she wavers between love and interest while Willmore tries to win her to the rover view of love free and unconfined. Their battle of wits takes serious and comic turns, culminating in an allegorical scene in which La Nuche in center stage hears Willmore on one side argue for her on the grounds of pure love, while Beaumond, on the other side of the stage, offers wealth for her favors. La Nuche nearly loses Willmore at this point by succumbing to Beaumond's offers, and Willmore makes her conscious of her error:

Death, hadst thou lov'd my Friend for his own Value, I had esteem'd thee; but when his Youth and Beauty cou'd not plead, to be the mercenary Conquest of his Presents, was poor, below thy Wit: I cou'd have conquer'd so, but I scorn thee at that rate—my Purse shall never be my Pimp.

La Nuche now realizes that she loves her rover more than her profit and uses her wits to win him back. Knowing that Willmore has a midnight assignation with Ariadne, she substitutes herself for her rival. This time the courtesan disguises as the maid. In a fifth-act surprise, Ariadne must return to her fiancé Beaumond, while Willmore and La Nuche pair off "without the formal Foppery of Marriage."

The denouement of Rover II, although surprising in terms of stage convention, is carefully prepared for. La Nuche's character is much more highly developed than that of her prototype. La Nuche has the wit and sense of humor that Angelica Bianca lacked. She is on stage far more often than her rival, Ariadne, and she tends to dominate the action. Because of her full characterization, La Nuche elicits audience sympathy, so that her success with Willmore is psychologically satisfying. The casting may have added to the satisfaction of the Restoration audience. While William Smith played Willmore in both parts of The Rover, Elizabeth Barry, the most celebrated actress of the day, played first the witty maid Hellena and then the courtesan La Nuche. The denouement works out a progression: in Rover I the witty maid wins out over the courtesan; in The Feigned Courtesans the witty maid wins out disguised as a courtesan; in Rover II the witty courtesan wins out over the maid. In each case, the more generous woman gets the man. Behn uses the series of Rover plays to make in a stronger form the point she makes in her plays against forced marriage. In those plays, heroines forced into, or about to be forced into, loveless but profitable marriages feel themselves prostituted. In the Rover series Behn goes a step further to say that the only difference between prostitution and marriage for money is that prostitution is the more candid, less hypocritical way for a woman to earn a living.

Another female character used to translate theme into stage action is Behn's woman warrior. This character provides a visual metaphor for the battle of the sexes and appears in both romantic and comic versions. The romantic woman warrior appears in The Young King as Cleomena, Princess of Dacia, who has been "bred up in War" (dramatis personae); because of an oracle, she is to inherit the throne instead of her brother. She makes her first entrance "drest like an Amazon, with a Bow in her Hand, and a Quiver of Arrows at her Back." Her hereditary enemy, Thersander, Prince of Scythia, for his own reasons is disguised as Clemanthis, an unknown warrior of incredible valor fighting in the Dacian army. Cleomena and Clemanthis inevitably fall in love with each other. Believing that the Scythian prince has treacherously murdered Clemanthis, the princess herself disguises as Clemanthis and fights in single combat with Thersander. Her plans for revenge are foiled when she is wounded, recognized, and carried off the field. Still bent on revenge, Cleomena next disguises as a shepherd and stabs Therander in the breast. He recovers from his near-fatal wound, the mistakes are unraveled, and the marriage of Cleomena and Thersander makes peace between the warring kingdoms. It is curious that both Cleomena and Thersander masquerade as the same person, as Clemanthis. This may support the other suggestions in the play of Cleomena's androgynous temperament. More probably, the identity of disguise suggests the identity of souls in love. The name Clemanthis combines the letters and sounds of the names Cleomena and Thersander.

A jolly woman warrior is the title character of The Widow Ranter. Because the play is set in colonial America, the Widow Ranter has full scope for her unconventionality. Formerly the mistress, later the wife of old Colonel Ranter, she has been left with "fifty thousand Pounds Sterling, besides Plate and Jewels: She's a great Gallant … her Extravagancy is very pleasant, she retains something of her primitive Quality still, but is good-natur'd and generous." Ranter is notorious for beginning the morning with a pipe and punch.

Ranter loves dashing Lieutenant-General Daring and intends to have him in spite of his affection for the maiden Chrisante. When Indian wars break out, Ranter disguises as a man and appears on the battlefield, with her maid Jenny dressed as a footman:

Ranter. Why should I sigh and whine, and make my self an Ass, and him conceited? no, instead of snivelling I am resolved—

Jenny. What, Madam?

Ranter. Gad, to beat the Rascal….

Jenny. Beat him, Madam! what, a Woman beat a Lieutenant-General?

Ranter. Hang 'em, they get a name in War from Command, not Courage; but how know I but I may fight? Gad, I have known a Fellow kick'd from one end of the Town to t'other, believing himself a Coward; at last forced to fight, found he could; got a Reputation, and bullied all he met with; and got a Name, and a great Commission.

Jenny. But if he should kill you, Madam.

Ranter. I'll take care to make it as comical a Duel as the best of 'em; as much in love as I am, I do not intend to die its Martyr.

Daring recognizes Ranter through her disguise, and realizing that she loves him, teases her by gossiping about the widow: "Gad, I'd sooner marry a she-Bear, unless for a Penance for some horrid Sin; we should be eternally challenging one another to the Field, and ten to one she beats me there; or if I should escape there, she wou'd kill me with drinking…. she'll rail and smoke till she choke again; then six Gallons of Punch hardly recovers her, and never but then is she good-natur'd."

Ranter is so enraged that she draws her sword on him, and Daring, laughing, proposes to her:

Daring. Give me thy Hand, Widow, I am thine—and so entirely, I will never—be drunk out of thy Company:—Dunce [the parson] is in my Tent,—prithee let's in and bind the Bargain.

Ranter. Nay, faith, let's see the Wars at an end first.

Daring. Nay, prithee take me in the humour, while thy Breeches are on—for I never lik'd thee half so well in Petticoats.

Ranter. Lead on, General, you give me good incouragement to wear them.

The compatibility of a marriage between these two equals in wit and war is emphasized a few minutes later. Battle breaks out in earnest, and Daring enters duelling, "Ranter fighting like a Fury by his side."

Behn uses the Widow Ranter to give visual, dramatic representation to the battle of the sexes. Sword combat is added to the usual wit combat of the gay couple of Restoration comedy. While the amazon was an old stage character, Behn uses her in a distinctive way. Possibly Cleomena and the Widow Ranter grew out of Behn's Surinam experience; both plays have colonial connections. The Widow Ranter is set in Virginia, and the first draft at least of The Young King was written in Surinam. Behn's woman warrior may be a colonial conception; she may also have been a feminist conception.

Certainly her creator was a feminist. During her career, in response to the attacks of her enemies, Behn became a staunch defender of women. She took this position gradually. She began her career confident that the novelty of being a woman playwright would help rather than hinder her success. A glamorous woman, widely complimented on her beauty and wit, she intended to exploit her glamor in the theater. She opened her first play with a flirtatious prologue that traded on her sex as an advertisement. An actor begins the prologue of The Forced Marriage, warning the gallants that the women are planning "new Stratagems … They'll join the force of Wit to Beauty." He warns that all the ladies in the audience are spies set by the "Poetess"

To hold you in a wanton Compliment;
That so you may not censure what she 'as writ,
Which done, they face you down 'twas full of Wit.

At this point an actress enters, points to the ladies, and scoffs:

How hast thou labour'd to subvert in vain,
What one poor Smile of ours calls home again?
Can any see that glorious Sight and say
A Woman shall not Victor prove to day?
Who is't that to their Beauty would submit,
And yet refuse the Fetters of their Wit?

The prologue had probably been preceded by some advance publicity, for the play opened to a full house and ran for six nights.

But as soon as it became clear to the theatrical world that a woman was going to be a serious contender for money and prestige, resistance set in, and a cabal formed against Behn because of her sex. The Dutch Lover failed for a number of suspiciously coincidental reasons—poor acting (particularly in the part of the Dutch lover, played by the comedian Edward Angel), poor costuming (which made the mistaken identities unintelligible), and a missing epilogue (which had been promised by a friend). Behn responded with spirit in an epistle to the "Good, Sweet, Honey, Sugar-Candied Reader" in which she denounced the acting and costuming. She also turned her guns on the hostile members of the audience:

Indeed that day 'twas Acted first, there comes me into the Pit, a long, lither, phlegmatick, white ill-favour'd, wretched Fop, an Officer in Masquerade newly transported with a Scarf & Feather out of France, a sorry Animal that has nought else to shield it from the uttermost contempt of all mankind, but that respect which we afford to Rats and Toads, which though we do not well allow to live, yet when considered as a part of God's Creation, we make honourable mention of them. A thing, Reader—but no more of such a Smelt: This thing, I tell ye, opening that which serves it for a mouth, out issued such a noise as this to those that sate about it, that they were to expect a woful Play, God damn him, for it was a woman's. Now how this came about I am not sure, but I suppose he brought it piping hot from some who had with him the reputation of a villanous Wit: for Creatures of his size of sense talk without all imagination, such scraps as they pick up from other folks. I would not for a world be taken arguing with such a properties as this; but if I thought there were a man of any tolerable parts, who could upon mature deliberation distinguish well his right hand from his left, and justly state the difference between the number of sixteen and two, yet had this prejudice upon him; I would take a little pains to make him know how much he errs.

She did not write a play, at least not under her own name, for three years. When she returned to the stage with Abdelazer (1676), it looks as though she made one more attempt to conciliate her enemies with flirtation. The epilogue "Written by a Friend" was spoken by "little Mrs. Ariell" who told the gentlemen she would "intercede" for "our Poetess":

my Sex's Cause
Whose Beauty does, like Monarchs, give you Laws,
Should now command, being join'd with Wit, Applause.
Yet since our Beauty's Power's not absolute,
She'll not the Privilege of your Sex dispute,
But does by me submit.

Apparently the intercession did not work, for Behn was extremely careful the following year, 1677, when she brought out two plays, possibly three, anonymously. Among them was The Rover, the prologue of which specifically refers to the author as a man.

After the success of The Rover, Behn wrote again under her own name. The next year she was forced into a defense of her fine comedy Sir Patient Fancy. The epilogue begins:

I here and there o'erheard a Coxcomb cry,
Ah, Rot it—'tis a Woman's Comedy,
One, who because she lately chanc'd to please us,
With her damn'd Stuff, will never cease to teeze us.
What has poor Woman done, that she must be
Debar'd from Sense, and sacred Poetry?
Why in this Age has Heaven allow'd you more,
And Women less of Wit than heretofore?
We once were fam'd in story, and could write
Equal to Men; cou'd govern, nay, cou'd fight.

Behn was even blunter in the epistle to the reader: "The play had no other Misfortune but that of coming out for a Womans: had it been owned by a Man, though the most Dull Unthinking Rascally Scribler in Town, it had been a most admirable Play".

Her enemies criticized with virulence. Shadwell, for example, complained:

Such stupid humours now the Gallants seize
Women and Boys may write and yet may please.
Poetess Afra though she's damned to day
Tomorrow will put up another Play….

Shadwell at least acknowledged that Behn wrote her own plays. Others charged her with plagiarism, an amusing charge considering that in the Restoration everyone borrowed from everyone else, and everyone pillaged French and Spanish sources. When Behn adapted Killigrew's unwieldy closet drama Thomaso into The Rover, she was forced to defend herself in the Post-Script to the published play. Her acknowledgement of indebtedness to Killigrew is deliberately incomplete: "I … hang out the Sign of Angelica (the only Stol'n Object) to give Notice where a great part of the Wit dwelt." She then comments accurately that "the Plot and Bus'ness (not to boast on't) is my own" and throws out a clever challenge: "As for the Words and Characters, I leave the Reader to judge and compare 'em with Thomaso." Here Behn had her tongue in cheek, knowing that anyone with the fortitude to read Killigrew's play would see that she had transformed his "Words and Characters" infinitely for the better. She concludes by parrying the unspoken reason for accusations against her: "Had this succeeded ill, I shou'd have had no need of imploring that Justice from the Critics, who … wou'd doubtless have given me the whole Honour on't." She understood quite well that the charge of plagiarism was not an attack on her use of source material but an attack on her success.

The accusation of plagiarism turned smutty. Since it was unthinkable that a woman should write good plays, then of course a man must have written them for her; and why else would a man write her plays unless he was receiving her favors? The nastiest version of this line of thinking appears in an imaginary letter to Behn by Tom Brown:

It is no great wonder to me you should prove so witty, since so many sons of Parnassus, instead of climbing the Heliconian hill, should stoop so low, as to make your mount of Venus the barren object of their poetick fancies: I have heard some physicians say, the sweet sin of fornication draws mightily from the brain … if so, how could the spirit of poesy be otherwise than infus'd into you, since you always gain'd by what the fraternity of the muses lost in your embraces? … well might you be esteem'd a female wit, since the least return your versifying admirers could make you for your favours, was, first to lend you their assistance, and then oblige you with their applause: besides, how could you do otherwise than produce some wit to the world, since you were so often plough'd and sow'd by the kind husbandmen of Apollo?

Although this was originally published some years after Behn's death, it reflects what others said of her during her lifetime. It was rumored, for example, that John Hoyle wrote Behn's plays:

The censuring Age has thought it fit,
To damn a Woman, 'cause 'tis said
The Plays she vends she never made.
But that a Grays Inn lawyer does 'em
Who unto Her was Friend in Bosom….

Edward Ravenscroft was also suggested as the author of Behn's plays.

Another disguise for attack on Behn as a woman was the charge that her plays were obscene. This is even more amusing than the charge of plagiarism: Restoration comedy notoriously exploits sex. Behn, because she was less verbally dexterous than her famous contemporaries, was less adept at the double entendre. She was much better at erotic description of sexual delights, and she was noted for this. Dryden approved that she "so well cou'd love's kind Passion paint." Others disapproved: "She'd put luscious Bawdry off for Wit." Her plays offended those who are offended by bedroom farce:

Again, for Instance, that clean piece of wit,
The City Heiress, by chast Sappho writ,
Where the lewd Widow comes, with brazen face,
Just reeking from a Stallion's rank embrace,
T'acquaint the Audience with her slimy case.

The probable pun here on "case" (=vagina) shows the critic none too ingenuous.

Behn was often disingenuous herself in her defenses against the charge of obscenity, often denying double entendres or bedroom jokes where they obviously existed. But there was no reason for her to be more honest than her critics. She understood their real motives better than they themselves did. With her usual intelligent directness, she put her finger exactly on the point of the attack:

The little Obligation I have to some of the witty Sparks and Poets of the Town, has put me on a Vindication of this Comedy from those Censures that Malice, and ill Nature have thrown upon it, tho in vain: The Poets I heartily excuse, since there is a sort of Self-interest in their Malice, which I shou'd rather call a witty Way they have in this Age, of Railing at every thing they find with pain successful…. And nothing makes them so thorough-stitcht an Enemy as a full Third Day, that's Crime enough to load it with all manner of Infamy; and when they can no other way prevail with the Town, they charge it with the old never failing Scandal—That 'tis not fit for the Ladys.

(Preface, The Lucky Chance)

Behn saw that it was the success of her play rather than its content that offended her critics.

Attacks on Behn as a pornographer are attacks on her for writing as uninhibitedly as a man. She understood this clearly, pointing out that the jests in celebrated plays

are never taken Notice of, because a Man writ them, and they may hear that from them they blush at from a Woman…. Had I a Day or two's time … I would sum up all your Beloved Plays, and all the Things in them that are past with such Silence by; because written by Men: such Masculine Strokes in me, must not be allow'd.

(Preface, The Lucky Chance)

In another place she wrote:

I Printed this Play with all the impatient haste one ought to do, who would be vindicated from the most unjust and silly aspersion … which only my being a Woman has procured me; That it was Baudy, the least and most Excusable fault in Men writers, to whose Plays they all crowd, as if they came to no other end than to hear what they condemn in this: but from a Woman it was unnaturall.

(To the Reader, Sir Patient Fancy)

That goes straight to the heart of the three-hundred-year controversy about Behn's alleged pornography. Those who defend Behn from this "unjust and silly aspersion" say that she wrote exactly as her masculine contemporaries did. But this defense is precisely the reason for the attack. It is time to lay this old argument to rest, simply noting that Behn's works praise sexual pleasure and that she therefore does not display the kind of sexual nastiness found in the works of misogynists like, say, Wycherley.

During the late 1680s attacks on Behn became more viciously personal. She suffered from some painful crippling disease, she was chronically strapped for money, and her beauty had faded. Her enemies spared her on none of these misfortunes, suggesting that they were due to syphilis:

Doth that lewd Harlot, that Poetick Quean,
Fam'd through White Fryars, you know who I mean,
Mend for reproof, others set up in spight
To flux, take glisters, vomits, purge and write.
Long with a Sciatica she's beside lame,
Her limbs distortur'd, Nerves shrunk up with pain,
And therefore I'll all sharp reflections shun,
Poverty, Poetry, Pox, are plagues enough for one.

Her troubles were increased by the crushing of her political loyalties, for she lived to see James II deposed in the Glorious Revolution.

Aphra Behn died 16 April 1689, reputedly at the hands of "an unskilful Physician" ("Memoirs"), and was buried under two verses probably by Hoyle:

Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be
Defence enough against Mortality.

She died in poverty and out of favor politically, but she was the first woman whose pen won her burial in Westminster Abbey. Although all her life she had written to earn a living, once when defending herself against charges of plagiarism, she had complained, "I make Verses, and others have the Fame" (Post-Script, The Rover). Later she wrote, "I am not content to write for a Third day only. I value Fame as much as if I had been born a Hero; and if you rob me of that, I can retire from the ungrateful World, and scorn its fickle Favours" (Preface, The Lucky Chance). At the end of her life she inserted into a translation some verses of her own, an apostrophe to Daphne:

I, by a double right, thy bounties claim,
Both from my sex, and in Apollo's name.
Let me with Sappho and Orinda be,
Oh ever sacred nymph, adorned by thee.
And give my verses immortality.

She won the literary immortality she coveted. Although she died neglected, the posthumous appearance of a number of plays and novels, revivals of her plays, and dramatic adaptations of her novels established her reputation firmly. In 1691 Gerard Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatick Poets described "Mrs. Astraea Behn" as "A Person lately deceased, but whose Memory will be long fresh amongst the Lovers of Dramatick Poetry". In 1694 Thomas Southerne adapted Behn's novel History of the Nun into the highly successful play The Fatal Marriage. The next year Southerne made a hit play out of Oroonoko, this time making a handsome admission of his source: "I stand engaged to Mrs. Behn for the Occasion of a most Passionate Distress in my Last Play; and in a Conscience that I had not made her a sufficient Acknowledgment, I have run further into her Debt for Oroonoko, with a Design to oblige me to be honest; and that every one may find me out for Ingratitude, when I don't say all that's fit for me upon that Subject. She had a great Command of the Stage" (Epistle Dedicatory, Oroonoko). The first collection of her novels was published in 1696, and further novels were published in 1698 and 1700. In the eighteenth century the collected novels were printed repeatedly, Oroonoko was translated into French and German, and the collected plays went into a third edition.

Behn's success inspired a new generation of women playwrights, although at first it did not seem that this would happen. In 1689 a "Young Lady of Quality" wrote a broad-side "Elegy Upon the Death of Mrs. A. Behn; The Incomparable Astrea." The elegist lamented:

Of her own Sex, not one is found
Who dares her Laurel wear,
Witheld by Impotence or Fear….