#aphra behn

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 48: Early Modernish and Earlier 3

These Questions are the result of suggestions a the previous iteration.This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct earlier time grouping. In some cases a culture lasted a really long time and I grouped them by whether it was likely the later or earlier grouping made the most sense with the information I had. (Invention ofs tend to fall in an earlier grouping if it's still open. Ones that imply height of or just before something tend to get grouped later, but not always. Sometimes I'll split two different things from the same culture into different polls because they involve separate research goals or the like).

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.

[antigonick]

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.

—Aphra Behn, in her preface to "The Lucky Chance"

[247reader]

Day 15: Aphra Behn!

The childhood of Aphra Behn is shrouded in mystery - much of it mystery of her own making. She was likely born to working-class parents in England; she likely spent some years living in colonial Suriname; she seems to have briefly been married to a merchant surnamed Behn. What is almost certain is that young Aphra was self-educated, lacking a classical education but becoming a ferocious and talented writer.

Aphra, born during the chaos of the English Civil War, was devoted to the restored monarchy. She willingly took up a dangerous occupation - foreign espionage. During the Second Anglo-Dutch war, she spied for England in the Netherlands, attempting to bring over double agents. But her target betrayed her, cash-strapped King Charles never paid the promised wages, and Aphra returned to England heavily in debt.

It was time to turn her writing into a career. Aphra wrote plays, rollicking Restoration comedies and tragicomedies. Many critics scorned the idea of a female playwright - particularly a somewhat raunchy female playwright- but a string of successes brought Aphra to the forefront.

If plays were her bread and butter, poetry was where she poured out her heart. Aphra wrote reflections on the female condition, love poems to both men and women, and even erotica - a topic common among the lettered libertines at court, but downright scandalous for a woman. Her greatest prose work, Oroonoko, a tragedy about the heroic leader of a doomed slave rebellion, is considered one of the first anti-slavery works in English. Aphra died in 1689; she was buried in Westminster Abbey.

[twodoorsnotone]

if you like Shakespeare, especially Much Ado About Nothing, you haaaaave to read The Rover by Aphra Behn btw. It slays so hard.

[britneyshakespeare]

not until i started reading restoration and post-restoration plays written by women like aphra behn and susanna centlivre did i fully understand romantic comedy on another level. the male love interests are just built better. like as much as i love a midsummer night's dream, if i were hermia i would never risk death or a forced life in a nunnery for lysander. no. hell no. he's just ken. but if i were miranda would i risk my thirty-thousand-pound inheritance to elope with sir george airy? if i were leticia would i contemplate leaving behind my country and my hated old husband i was tricked into marrying the second i learn that belmour is still alive, to live with his banished ass in exile? hm. let me thin—yes.

[mali-umkin]

'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn (...) for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.'

- A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

[loveindeeair]

"A spirit sweet, and in Love's very guise,

Who to the soul is ever saying, Sigh!” 

Ufffff!

[kristynstudies]

old photos from earlier this semester that i forgot to publish — from the rover by aphra behn.

[haggishlyhagging]

Aphra Behn's popularity was a constant source of embarrassment to the male literary establishment who consistently accused her of being uneducated and creatively and intellectually inferior. But they also used her sexuality as a means of defining her work, and as a means of devaluing both herself and her work. William Wycherley was among those who sought to put her in her place. Although much less successful at the time than Aphra Behn (he had only four plays produced to her seventeen), he has managed to remain part of our tradition (I remember having to study his dreadful plays) while she has not, and part of the reason she has not is because of the efforts made by Wycherley and his ilk to disparage her as disreputable. He wrote a poem addressed ‘To Sappho of the Age, Supposed to Lye-In’ and makes full use of his wit to sustain the argument that a woman who earns a ‘reputation’ loses her good name. His poem is but another version of ‘the only good woman is an invisible one’ and any woman who becomes visible therefore has her modesty, femininity, desirability, called into question.

While Aphra Behn kept writing her plays (and people kept flocking to see them) then, even though she was outside the structured centres of power (the literary establishment), she was still visible. Once she ceased to produce her plays, however, it was unlikely that anyone within the literary or scholarly establishment would ‘speak up’ for them, and help maintain their and her visibility. With her death, she could effectively be removed. There are, however, some derogatory references to her among the men, after her death. In ‘The Apotheosis of Milton’ in the Gentleman's Magazine (1738), there is a fictional account of a meeting to admit Milton to the 'Club' of all the writers who were buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. Aphra Behn tried to join in the meeting, but Chaucer tells her that no woman has a right to membership in the club. As none of the members present want her to stay, ‘she flings out of the assembly’ (p. 469). This is presumably a reference to her burial outside the mainstream of Poets' Corner, and unwittingly, a self-revealing male commentary on the position and treatment of women.

-Dale Spender, Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them

[poemoftheday]

Poem of the Day 13 August 2024

Song from Abdelazar BY Behn, Aphra (1640 - 1689)

Love in fantastic triumph sat,

Whilst bleeding hearts around him flow'd,

For whom fresh pains he did create,

And strange tyrannic power he shew'd;

From thy bright eyes he took his fire,

Which round about in sport he hurl'd;

But 'twas from mine he took desire

Enough to undo the amorous world.

From me he took his sighs and tears,

From thee his pride and cruelty;

From me his languishments and fears,

And every killing dart from thee;

Thus thou and I the God have arm'd,

And set him up a Deity;

But my poor heart alone is harm'd,

Whilst thine the victor is, and free.

[thatwritererinoriordan]

The poem:

All trembling in my arms Aminta lay,

Defending of the bliss I strove to take;

Raising my rapture by her kind delay,

Her force so charming was and weak.

The soft resistance did betray the grant,

While I pressed on the heaven of my desires;

Her rising breasts with nimbler motions pant;

Her dying eyes assume new fires.

Now to the height of languishment she grows,

And still her looks new charms put on;

Now the last mystery of Love she knows,

We sigh, and kiss: I waked, and all was done.

‘Twas but a dream, yet by my heart I knew,

Which still was panting, part of it was true:

Oh how I strove the rest to have believed;

Ashamed and angry to be undeceived!

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 42: Assorted Other Performances II

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

All time periods welcome. (Yes we have Live Aid).

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration.

I am looking for Shakespeare play premiere's you'd particularly like to see.

Shakespeare Plays Have their own poll. For purposes of this poll, Early Modern will arbitrarily be 1500-1799.

[redpensandplaywriting]

Meet Aphra Behn! She was a professional playwright and early novelist living in 17th-century England, and a real pioneer for women in these roles. She is known for her abolitionist-leaning novel Oroonoko: Or, The Royal Slave and a number of plays, one of her best-known being The Rover.

She was a fascinating woman, and I'd love to introduce you properly in the linked post!

[paranoiahaven]

Go hence to have more talk of these sad things:

Some shall be pardon'd and some punished.

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Thus died this great Man, worthy of a better Fate, and a more sublime Wit than mine to write his Praise: Yet, I hope, the Reputation of my Pen is considerable enough to make his glorious Name to survive to all Ages, with that of the brave, the beautiful and the constant Imoinda.

-Aphra Behn, Oroonko

[vamptoll]

While, Iris, I at distance gaze,

And feed my greedy eyes,

That wounded heart, that dyes for you,

Dull gazing can't suffice;

Hope is the Food of Love-sick minds,

On that alone 'twill Feast,

The nobler part which Love refines,

No other can digest.

-excerpt from "A song" by Mrs. A. B. (aphra behn)

[britneyshakespeare]

I can't believe the Younger Brother (1689) by Aphra Behn has the only one bed trope