"Rover" (New Mermaids)

by Aphra Behn (Author), Aphra Behn (Author), Robyn Bolam (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.43

  Callis: What, go in masquerade?...what would you do there? Hellena: That which all the world does...be as mad as the rest and take all innocent freedoms Aphra Behn was the first female professional writer in England and the most prolific playwright of the late 17th century, after Dryden. The Rover, her most popular play, is set in Naples during the misrule of carnival time, when prohibitions are temporarily removed, privileges and rank suspended, and women, from convent girls to courtesans, take the initiative. Behn has been credited with creating more daring dialogue between the sexes than many of her male contemporaries. The Rover explores issues of love, trickery and deception, forced marriage, male power, fidelity and the excesses of sexual passion. This student edition contains a lengthy Introduction with background on the author, date and sources, theme, critical interpretation and stage history.

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $3.23

  Aphra Behn was among the wittiest and most prolific playwrights of her day The Rover is the most popular of Behn's plays, a comedy set in a 17th century Spanish colony during carnival time. Scenes of infidelity, elopement and seduction are juxtaposed with images of elaborate sword play creating a mood of frantic, endless celebration. In The Rover, Behn recreates a male-dominated society but responds with clear-sighted and sympathetic portrayal of the female predicament. The female voice gave the play a distinctiveness in its time and portrays the fine line drawn and doodled around between the brutality of rape and the art of seduction (Michael Coveney, Financial Times). The Rover was revived by the RSC in 1986, directed by John Barton with Jeremy Sams and Imogen Stubbs in the lead roles. This volume contains expert notes on the author's life and work, historical and political background to the play and a glossary of difficult words and phrases. Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common...All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn. (Virginia Woolf on Aphra Behn)

• New

  Paperback
  1983

  $20.96

  I'm no tame sigher, but a rampant lion of the forest, says Willmore, the Rover, on shore after a long voyage. I have a world of love in store, he claims, searching through the streets for a woman to prove it. When he meets two young Spanish woman- I love mischief, says one-all the chemistry of comic satire lets loose.

  The Rover roamed the English stage for a century and has been rediscovered in our own time as a theatrical masterpiece of wit and daring. Aphra Behn (1640-1689) combined dramatic genius and training with personal experience that gave her rare insight into manners and roles. She spied on the Dutch for the English king and was once imprisoned for debt. Behn is one of the very few great English playwrights to be honored in life by popular scandal and in death by burial at Westminster Abbey. She was the first English woman to earn her living by writing.