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Aphra Behn was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a probable brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. Behn wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her legal trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart line, Behn declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming poem to the new king William III. She died shortly after.
"Restoration comedy" is English comedy written and performed in the Restoration period of 1660–1710. Comedy of manners is used as a synonym for this. After public stage performances were banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, reopening of the theatres in 1660 marked a renaissance of English drama. Sexually explicit language was encouraged by King Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish style of his court. Historian George Norman Clark argues:
The best-known fact about the Restoration drama is that it is immoral. The dramatists did not criticize the accepted morality about gambling, drink, love, and pleasure generally, or try, like the dramatists of our own time, to work out their own view of character and conduct. What they did was, according to their respective inclinations, to mock at all restraints. Some were gross, others delicately improper.... The dramatists did not merely say anything they liked: they also intended to glory in it and to shock those who did not like it.
Fop became a pejorative term for a man excessively concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th-century England. Some of the many similar alternative terms are: coxcomb, fribble, popinjay, dandy, fashion-monger, and ninny. Macaroni was another term of the 18th century more specifically concerned with fashion.
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The Feign'd Curtizans, or, A Nights Intrigue is a 1679 comedic stage play by the English author Aphra Behn. Behn dedicated the play, originally performed at the Duke's Company in London, to the well-known actress and mistress of King Charles II, Nell Gwyn.
Anne Shadwell was an English stage actor of the seventeenth century. She was one of the first English actresses to appear on stage following the Restoration She was one of six actors recruited in 1660 by William Davenant for the new Duke's Company, acting under her maiden name Anne Gibbs. Sometime between 1663 and 1667 she married the playwright Thomas Shadwell with whom she had four children. While some sources have her acting late into the century, it may be she effectively retired with the formation of the United Company in 1682. Her appearances had decreased since 1672. Following her husband's death in 1692 she was left the bulk of his estate. She had an investment in the Drury Lane Theatre in 1709, when she joined a petition to Queen Anne by the manager Christopher Rich, but nothing is known about her after this point.
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Elizabeth Currer was an Irish stage actress of the Restoration Era. She was a member of the Duke's Company during the 1670s and subsequently part of the merged United Company from 1682. Although she was likely acting in London several years earlier than this, her first known role was in The Conquest of China in 1675. Due to the irregular spelling of the time her surname is sometimes written as Carrier, Corer and Currier amongst other variants.
George Bright was an English stage actor of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. He specialised in playing "comic dullards, fops and bouncy servants". After beginning his career in Dublin he joined the Duke's Company at the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1679 and then became part of the merged United Company in 1682.
John Crosby was an English stage actor of the Restoration Period. He first recorded performance is in 1662 when he appeared in Ignoramus at Whitehall Palace, likely as a child actor. It was further eight years before he was solidly established in the Duke's Company in 1670 beginning with The Forc'd Marriage by Aphra Behn. He became a regular with the company over the following decade, often playing young lover roles. He retired from the stage in 1679 and later became a justice of the peace for Middlesex. He died on 8 April 1724 and was buried in St Sepulchre.
References
- ↑ Behn, Aphra; Wilkins, George (1677). The town-fopp, or, Sir Timothy Tawdrey: a comedy as it is acted at His Royal Highness the Duke's Theatre. Boston Public Library. London: printed by T.N. for James Magnes and Rich. Bentley in Russel-street in Covent-garden near the Piazzás, M.DC.LXXVII. [1677].
- ↑ "The town-fopp, or, Sir Timothy Tawdrey a comedy: as it is acted at His Royal Highness the Duke's theatre / written by Mrs. A. Behn". quod.lib.umich.edu. Retrieved 22 December 2021.
- ↑ Wiseman, S. J. (31 December 2006). Aphra Behn. Northcote House Publishers Ltd. p. 34. doi:10.2307/j.ctv5rf1zn. ISBN 9781786942944.
- ↑ "Mrs. Aphra Behn". Temple Bar: With Which is Incorporated Bentley's Miscellany. 71: 388–402 (399). July 1884 – via ProQuest.
- ↑ Montague Summers (ed.) (1915). The Works of Aphra Behn (Volume 1 of 6). p. 37.
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