on a rover

[calimac]

Our play-reading group having made its way through most of the Shakespeare we wanted to do, and a number of 18C plays both English and French (the latter in translation), I suggested we venture into Restoration comedy, English plays from when the theaters reopened after 1660. I don't know anything about Restoration comedies - they're not much done today, and I've never seen one - but I found a list of major works, noted that the principal female author was Aphra Behn, and that her most prominent play seemed to be The Rover, so I suggested we try that.

We've just finished it, and my word. It's my understanding that Behn did not create the plot for this one, but merely entirely rewrote (and the writing is very good) an older play. I would hope that's true. It features exiled English cavaliers during the Commonwealth, cavorting in Naples. I thought Shakespeare was full of bawdy, but this handily outdoes it. It gets worse. I found myself in one scene reading a character who spends the entire scene as a drunken rapist. I had to ask for a break after that. Later on, there's an attempted gang-bang. Apparently, the urgent question in these cases is whether the victim is a "woman of quality" or not. (The female characters spend a lot of time in disguise, so it can be hard to tell from their dress.) If she is a "woman of quality," it's not OK to rape her. If she isn't, it apparently is.

There is no way this play could be staged today. You couldn't even cut it: there would be nothing left.

Comments

[sartorias]

Yup!

[oursin]

I seem to recall - I'd have to go through our massive collection of theatre programmes to check - seeing at least 2 productions of The Rover in London, one at a fringey venue near Waterloo Station, and one somewhere more mainstream - possibly even the National or the Barbican? But this would have been the 80s or the 90s I guess. There was a bit of a Behn flurry at one point.

[oursin]

I've just looked it up on Theatricalia, which is far from exhaustive (doesn't include the backstreets of SE1 production), but does have the RSC 1987 production - we must have caught that at the Mermaid, rings a bell. I also see that the RSC produced it in Stratford within the last decade.