Plagiarist and Professional Playwright.
Widely considered the first professional female playwright, the mystery surrounding Aphra Behn's personal life makes her an interesting study for the podcast. Though not much is known about her life pre-publishing, the breadth of her political plays allows us to see into her personal politics through restoration comedies.
Restoration comedies are so specific in style, it's hard to translate them to the modern stage. But, just because something is hard doesn't it can't be done. Restoration comedies can be brought into the production circuit, with considerations about race and message within the play itself.
Credits/Bibliography
Music by Tri-Tachyon - https://soundcloud.com/tri-tachyon/albums
Bell, Maureen. ""Literary Pimping" or Business as Usual? Aphra Behn and the Book Trade." Women's Writing : The Elizabethan to Victorian Period 2020. Pp 275-93.
Kreis-Schinck, Annette. Women, Writing, and the Theater in the Early Modern Period : The Plays of Aphra Behn and Suzanne Centlivre. Madison, N.J. London: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, Associated UPes, 2001.
Wiseman, Susan. Aphra Behn. Plymouth, Northcote House in Association with the British Council, 1996.
Transcript
AphraBehn
(intro music)
[00:00:00] Colleen: Hello. Hello. And welcome back to youUnderstudy-ied with your hosts: Dara Willmarth,
Dara: Hi.
Colleen: And Colleen Rooney. Dara let me do the intro today. So who are we talking about today?
Dara: Wow. You are really taking charge of this episode.
Colleen: Yep. (Dara laughs)
Dara: Today. We are talking about a very actually well-known in some circles playwright. Lady.
Colleen: Okay.
Dara: So she does kind of, and kind of not fit the bill for this. Her name is Aphra Behn. Do you know who she is?
Colleen: I do, but that's, I'm in the theater circle. So like within the community, a well-known person, I would say outside of theater, maybe not.
Dara: And even within the theater community, she is mostly only well-known in the theater scholar community.
[00:01:00] Colleen: Yeah. What's her most famous play.
Dara: Well, we, what do we know her from? We know her for her play the Emperor of the Moon, which was adapted here at the University of Oregon, in like 2015 by J K Rogers and was produced by the University. So that's what we know her from. And she was covered in the theater history, two class that the lovely Ellen Kress taught us. So yeah. That's how we know her. Why don't we just go over like who she is? So she is considered the first professional female playwright. Professional, meaning she was paid, she was published and she was paid and that is and isn't true. Like she's the most famous woman writing in this time. And she had the most commercial success, but there were other women who wrote at this time and were published and performed.
Colleen: I love history blocking out the lesser known folks.
Dara: Yeah. So she wrote during the restoration, which was in [00:02:00] 1660, to 1669,
Colleen: Oh! That's like the oldest playwright, or like farthest back,
Dara: Uh huh
Colleen: We've talked about so far.
Dara: We've been going back chronologically. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, religion was definitely tied up in it because all of the wars in England about religion. So she was like, what is considered a Tory.
So she was like-
Colleen: Oh, okay.
Dara: She was an apologist for the monarchy.
Colleen: Okay.
Dara: But that's when she was writing, but she's a very unclear personal history. Like there is not much known about her prior to when she became published. So there, the one thing that is known for sure, she was a spy for a brief time on the Dutch. For England.
Colleen: Wow. Multifaceted.
Dara: Yeah. That's like the only thing that has really known concrete, she was probably born in like 1640, and she went by a different name then, and she maybe got married to a Mr. Behn, but she was then widowed. It is widely contested in academia. [00:03:00] If her husband actually existed or if she faked it to have the status of a widow.
Colleen: Interesting. I wonder how easy it was to fake that back then.
Dara: I don't know.
Colleen: Cause she wouldn't have to like create any photoshopped pictures with a random man or any documents. Really. She could just be like, yeah, I was married. He died. Oops. My name's Aphra Behn
Dara: Yep
Colleen: Pretty cool name. That's a spy name if I ever did hear one.
Dara: It's a really good name this, but also her windowing and the contention around if her husband actually existed leads to some questioning her sexuality, which is kind of baseless, but yeah, it's kind of interesting also.
There's very little known about her like personal life.
Colleen: So she's she's pro monarchist.
Dara: Yeah.
Colleen: Okay.
Dara: She was an apologist for James the second and Charles the second, who were the monarchs who were part of the Restoration.
Colleen: So he was Catholic?
Dara: Yes, he was.
Colleen: Yeah, because Charles was the one who was booted.
Dara: Yes.
Colleen: Ah, okay.
Dara: He's the son of Charles.
[00:04:00] Colleen: Okay. Okay.
Dara: Charles was booted. The second is the person who comes after him. So we're post Elizabethan by about a hundred years. Charles, the first gets booted out of England. England briefly becomes a Republic type thing led by Oliver Cromwell, and then he dies. And then James, the second was invited back.
The monarchy is restored and then Charles the second takes over.
Colleen: Okay.
Dara: Cause I'm pretty sure he, James is second dies. England is Catholic.
Colleen: So Aphra Ben is probably Catholic.
Dara: Probably, yeah, she's probably Catholic.
Colleen: If she's a monarchist.
Dara: Yeah. And she was also very political in her place.
Colleen: Okay.
Dara: Which is interesting because she has this weird combination of conservative and progressive for the time politics. Because she wrote very freely about sexuality and the power of women, but also was a monarchist and wrote like very conservative plays.
Um, cause they were commercially published and commercially successful. So they held the dominant ideology of the time.
Colleen: Interesting.
Dara: Yeah. So she had a lot of commercial success and she was also [00:05:00] called a plagiarist, but most playwrights and writers at this time, plagiarized in some way or another from each other, because copyright was kind of not a thing, but also kind of was a thing with publishing.
So it was hard to prosecute someone for plagiarism. She was called the plagiarist at the time, likely because of her sex. And people trying to be like, oh woman, she steals! And she did plagiarize her play The Rover.
Colleen: Oh.
Dara: But that's not uncommon for the time. So she didn't do it any more than anyone else.
But she was the one that got called a plagiarist. Anyways, publishing at this time was really interesting. So what would happen is a publishing house would buy the rights for that edition of your piece of work plays for Aphra Behn in the early time. Then they would have like a cover page on your first page that would describe the rights and everything and who the publisher is.
And then they would send it off to get, um, [00:06:00] bound and booksellers would pick it up. Publishing was a lot riskier of a business at this time, because so much capital was needed upfront. And your book needed to be like a success in order to make money back to the publisher and for that money to get back to you.
So Aphra Behn was like, Kind of rarity in this time because she did make her living off of publishing.
Colleen: Yeah. I feel like that just to go back to, was there, was there not a Mr. Behn that makes me think that at least in some capacity she had some kind of access to a dead person's money. You know, like whether it's like family or dowery or just like money left from a dead husband or whatever.
Dara: She was upper class. So she, like,
Colleen: She had something she had gotten there somehow.
Dara: She did have money. She did come from like upper class. So she did have access to like being able to read and write, which is a big thing.
Colleen: Yeah.
Dara: But. Her being a woman in this time, like the reason we remember her as [00:07:00] like the first professional playwright, but women at this time were emerging as a market.
And as being marketable to everyone, like women writers had a whole, like a weird enthusiasm about them because they could write about women things and they could put that in the title. And then. Other women would buy it. This is the time that women were allowed back on stage in England because of this, this success that she had.
She was very popular at the time. Uh, like just. Super super popular at the time, her plays were profitable to publish and for people to read and perform. Cause this is a interesting time in playwright history because the rights of plays was moving from act acting companies who were producing their plays with their in-house playwrights and shifting to the power to the playwright themselves in publishing.
Colleen: Which is what stands today.
Dara: Yeah, that's the system we run on now with royalties and stuff. So-
[00:08:00] Colleen: Royalties.
Dara: Royalties.
Colleen: Bring back the Royals, bring in the royalties.
Dara: Yes.
Colleen: Nice.
Dara: Aphra Behn actually moved to writing prose, uh, after her like period of success with plays. Um, and so, but she still had like her name brand recognition and was still profitable.
And actually this led to volumes of her work being published with new work long after her death. Huh so up until like the 18 hundreds. So she died in 1689 and her work was published with new volumes. Well into the 18 hundreds. And so someone was making money off of that. Cause she didn't have any kids-
Colleen: It must've been, it must've been the publishers that's like the contract that you would agree to.
Dara: Yes. So there are like works that weren't actually hers that were included in those things. Cause she had like, that's what I mean by name brand recognition. People wanted to keep buying her work through [00:09:00] the 18 hundreds.
Colleen: So it's like how Queen . Who's the name recognition Queen the band um publicizing Adam Lambert also.
Dara: Well, no, because they were kind of, but also they were published under her name.
Colleen: Oh. So she wasn't even writing them?
Dara: No, she died in 1689. So, and then she kind of fell off after that and was like promptly forgotten.
Colleen: Like quickly.
Dara: Quickly, quickly forgotten after that. Um, It's kind of lost to history. Wasn't really taught in any theater history classes until one researcher named Janet Todd started publishing a lot of research about her.
And then she kind of like brought Aphra Behn back into the mainstream of scholarly research to be included in the restoration because a lot of modern productions of restoration comedies. Which is what Aphra Behn wrote the comedies written in the restoration. They have a very distinct [00:10:00] style. A lot of modern productions of restoration comedies are only plays written by men.
There were women playwrights writing restoration comedies right this time.
Colleen: And so this woman scholar was like, um, Hey, what about Aphra Behn?
Dara: Yeah.
Colleen: Who was actually popular during the time also.
Dara: Yeah. And sort of speaking to modern productions of restoration comedies. Modern productions, restoration comedies have historically not done well.
So this also kind of brings up this idea, especially in England of like modern productions of restoration comedies. The people who would have been on stage for the most part would have been white people. And so when you do modern productions of restoration comedies, do you only include white people in the casting.
And I think this kind of speaks to a really great book chapter by Ayana Thompson in her book, Passing Strange: Shakespeare Race and [00:11:00] Contemporary America. Um, the chapter is called Multiculturalism and it talks a lot about casting. Like it, it defines people of color being cast in. Specifically Shakespeare plays, but I believe we could sort of extrapolate it out to restoration companies as well.
There are like four different kinds of race, conscious casting. There's like colorblind casting, where you cast people of color in roles in restoration comedies, or Shakespeare ignoring race and ignoring all the connotations of race on stage, which I believe is the wrong way to go about this kind of thing.
Colleen: Hmm. Yeah. Cause if you're not conscious about race and you're just doing like, oh, who fits the role best your subconscious biases are going to put like a black person in a servant role or in a, like, poor person role, or whatever.
Dara: Or you're leaving it up to your audience to sort of figure out if race means something [00:12:00] in this play or not.
Colleen: I never thought about it with the audience-
Dara: That's what she talks about in her, in this chapter is really interesting. Um, and it like leaves your audience to sort of flounder in. Does it matter? Does it not matter because people are going to notice it and if you don't like define how race interacts with your text, then.
You're sort of leaving your audience hanging in a way, and you're not doing a good service to the POC actors that you are casting.
Colleen: That's interesting. I literally, I've never thought about it from like the perspective of what might the audience think based on what choice you make racially aware casting that feels like something out of the, uh, We See You white American Theater. Um, like posts. I don't know if it's like a blogger or a website or a group. Um, I know that it's like, there is a list of domains.
Dara: Yeah. I believe that it does fit into that. And I think that is [00:13:00] one way that maybe we could see restoration comedies and after Ben performed more frequently, Is by recognizing not only race, but also larger context of the time and making more deliberate choices about submersing your audience in the culture and period of the, of where this was produced instead of trying to make it more relatable.
Colleen: Yeah. And I think that doing it in the style of the time, like as in casting all white people or whatever, that's how you take it away from it being actually relevant to, today.
Cause like even Shakespeare, there is plenty of space for you to cast BIPOC actors. In any of those roles.
(transition music)
So Aphra Behn, what a cool, [00:14:00] interesting spy, widow, question mark? Lady.
Dara: Exclamation point!
Colleen: Exclamation point. Thank you for talking about her today. I feel like this is the most like engaged with the content I've been, because I do know about England and I don't know very much about, unfortunately I don't know very much about Ireland.
Very fun.
Dara: Yeah.
Colleen: Thank you for sharing.
Dara: Thank you for listening is your mind is my cup
Colleen: cup. My cup is full of knowledge, but as always, there's a little bit of room on top. For more knowledge to be gained.
Dara: Good. Cause it -
Colleen: Never can fully fill.
Good.
So thank you for putting together this series. I had a lot of fun.
Dara: Yeah. Maybe we'll pick it back up sometime.
Colleen: Maybe.
All right. That was Understudy-ied Theatre History, episode three. Thanks for tuning in tune in next time. If there is a next time.
Dara: Thank you so much. All right. [00:15:00]
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