The most popular playwright of the Restoration

APHRA “ASTREA” BEHN




Any day that she saw light, she read,

Pleased by the words that brought

Her a studied imagination

Royally bent toward the king.

A Tory she was and said,

“As you think, so shall you be.”

She thought she was equal any man

That wrote a line and showed her

Regal master the scripted play.

Every day was a turning point

And a validation for all women

Bent to will of patriarchies,

Even those of court and common.

Her legacy was that all were

Noble in possibility and reach.



--April-May, 2009

"Aphra 'Astrea' Behn" is an acrostic poem, one in the series about women, especially those who had to fight for recognition in a male world.  These are collected in the unpublished Women and Love.  When I first discovered Behn, I was quite annoyed that she had not been presented in any of my undergraduate courses.  I read her play The Rover, or The Banish'd Cavaliers (1677) and enjoyed it.  Like the Elizabethan playwrights, those of the Restoration wrote under the glow of a monarchy and wrote with it in mind.  They enjoyed puns and tropes and schemes as much as the Elizabethans.  Of course, she can't compare with Shakespeare (Who can?), but she is comparable to the other playwrights.
 
Aphra Behn served as a spy for England during the war with the Dutch. She also wrote many poems and Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave (1699), one of the earliest novels in English Literature.  Most of its main characters are black, and the narrative takes them from African royalty into slavery for the Europeans in the New World.  It is also a love story of loss, separation and rediscovery.
 
From what I have discovered, Aphra lived a bisexual life freely and openly, although she seemed to prefer women to men.  The Victorians could not abide such gender bending and shut her out of their canon of literature; therefore, her fame languished until the women's movement of the 20th century.
 
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