#you have one very melodramatic honest couple (leticia and belmour) who narrowly escape ruinous disaster | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

britneyshakespeare · 9 months ago

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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.

#text post #tales from diana #aphra behn #susanna centlivre #the busybody #the lucky chance #i think i enjoyed the men and the relationships in the lucky chance moreso than i did in the rover or the feigned courtesans #(the other two behn plays i've read so far)#i loved her characterizations of the women in both plays of course but i didn't quite feel myself in their situations #it was also quite more reliant on the same character archetypes #the modest one ends up with the selfless lovesick hero and the more innocent libertine one ends up w a reformed dashing rake.#and i'm ok w that right? like those tropes make sense. the plots and the witty dialogue are still enjoyable #but i find the lucky chance really upped the stake of the melodrama as well as the foils between the two main couples were more complex #you have one very melodramatic honest couple (leticia and belmour) who narrowly escape ruinous disaster #and then lawfully make their love official (most luckily BEFORE leticia has slept w fainwould and consummated the marriage)#and then you have the much more complicated and comical relationship between mr. gayman and julia fulbank #lady fulbank's marriage is done and done. no averting it. but she unabashedly carries a torch for him #she admits as much to her husband that she still loves him and she doesn't really care who knows #but she wants to be honorable to her marriage bc that's the lot she's chosen in life—his material comfort #and she does use that to the benefit of gayman when he's in financial ruin.#but her two stupid men. her lover and her husband. more or less work together to make her work against her own honorable wishes #she's compromised. and she SORT of gets what she really wants. she willfully foreswears the bed of her gross husband forever #and it's ambiguous whether or not she chooses to cuck him for gayman while he's still alive or what #very interesting ambiguous ending and i've never seen another character quite like lady fulbank in literature from that time #the lucky chance is worthy of far more study and interest than it's received. it's so funny and incredibly challenging #also. men don't hide in treasure chests enough anymore #more plots where men hide in treasure chests. thank you cymbeline by shakespeare and the lucky chance by behn. you guys got it

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