| The Young King | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Written by | Aphra Behn |
| Date premiered | September 1679 |
| Place premiered | Dorset Garden Theatre, London |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Tragicomedy |
The Young King, or, The Mistake is a tragicomedy written by Aphra Behn. It was probably written during the 1660s (making it Behn's first play), but was not staged until 1679. [1] It explores notions of kingship and divine right, and gender and heroism.
Because an oracle predicted that her son Orsames would one day become a tyrant, the Queen of Dacia has him imprisoned and brought up in almost total isolation from the world. In contrast, her daughter Cleomena has been brought up as a warrior princess, ready to rule over Dacia in her brother's place.
As a test, Orsames is taken out of his prison and allowed to rule for a day. He tries to rape a woman, orders his tutor to be executed, and in general acts like a tyrant. Orsames is returned to prison, but is later restored to the throne with the help of Cleomena and the army. It is explained that the oracle has been fulfilled by Orsame's disastrous single day of rulership, and that he has now learnt to rule more sensibly.
Cleomena falls in love with Clemanthis (who is actually the disguised Scythian Prince Thersander), but mistakenly believes that he has been killed in war by Thersander. She goes to the Scythian camp in disguise and wounds Thersander, who she does not recognise. At the end of the play the couple are reunited, and a lasting peace is made between the Dacians and Scythians.
The Young King does not appear to have been a great success when it was first staged, and it was not printed until 1683. [2]
Scholars have explored the play's portrayal of monarchy and divine right. Anita Pacheco notes that Orsames 'is obviously a poor advertisement for divine right'. [1] Although Behn was herself a royalist, Derek Hughes and Janet Todd argue that The Young King's ambiguous portrayal of monarchy shows that she recognised the problematic aspects of royalist politics from a very early stage in her career. [3]
The divine right of kings, divine right, or God's mandate is a political and religious doctrine of political legitimacy of a monarchy. It stems from a specific metaphysical framework in which a monarch is, before birth, pre-ordained to inherit the crown. According to this theory of political legitimacy, the subjects of the crown have actively turned over the metaphysical selection of the king's soul – which will inhabit the body and rule them – to God. In this way, the "divine right" originates as a metaphysical act of humility and/or submission towards God. Divine right has been a key element of the legitimation of many absolute monarchies.
Aphra Behn was an English playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer 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. She wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her into legal trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart line, she 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.
Cleomenes was an Agiad King of Sparta in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC. During his reign, which started around 519 BC, he pursued an adventurous and at times unscrupulous foreign policy aimed at crushing Argos and extending Sparta's influence both inside and outside the Peloponnese. He was a brilliant tactician. It was during his reign that the Peloponnesian League came formally into existence. During his reign, he intervened twice successfully in Athenian affairs but kept Sparta out of the Ionian Revolt. He died in prison in mysterious circumstances, with the Spartan authorities claiming his death was suicide due to insanity.
A libertine is one devoid of most moral principles, a sense of responsibility, or sexual restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour sanctified by the larger society. Libertinism is described as an extreme form of hedonism. Libertines put value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in France and Great Britain. Notable among these were John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and the Marquis de Sade.
The Rover or The Banish'd Cavaliers is a play in two parts that is written by the English author Aphra Behn. It is a revision of Thomas Killigrew's play Thomaso, or The Wanderer (1664), and features multiple plot lines, dealing with the amorous adventures of a group of Englishmen and women in Naples at Carnival time. According to Restoration poet John Dryden, it "lacks the manly vitality of Killigrew's play, but shows greater refinement of expression." The play stood for three centuries as "Behn's most popular and most respected play."
Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave is a short work of prose fiction by Aphra Behn (1640–1689), published in 1688 by William Canning and reissued with two other fictions later that year. It was also adapted into a play. The eponymous hero is an African prince from Coramantien who is tricked into slavery and sold to European colonists in Surinam where he meets the narrator. Behn's text is a first-person account of Oroonoko's life, love, rebellion, and execution.
Restoration literature is the English literature written during the historical period commonly referred to as the English Restoration (1660–1689), which corresponds to the last years of Stuart reign in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In general, the term is used to denote roughly homogenous styles of literature that centre on a celebration of or reaction to the restored court of Charles II. It is a literature that includes extremes, for it encompasses both Paradise Lost and the Earl of Rochester's Sodom, the high-spirited sexual comedy of The Country Wife and the moral wisdom of The Pilgrim's Progress. It saw Locke's Treatises of Government, the founding of the Royal Society, the experiments and holy meditations of Robert Boyle, the hysterical attacks on theatres from Jeremy Collier, and the pioneering of literary criticism from John Dryden and John Dennis. The period witnessed news become a commodity, the essay develop into a periodical art form, and the beginnings of textual criticism.
Katherine or Catherine Philips, also known as "The Matchless Orinda", was an Anglo-Welsh royalist poet, translator, and woman of letters. She achieved renown as a translator of Pierre Corneille's Pompée and Horace, and for her editions of poetry after her death. She was highly regarded by many notable later writers, including John Dryden and John Keats, as being influential.
Protofeminism is a concept that anticipates modern feminism in eras when the feminist concept as such was still unknown. This refers particularly to times before the 20th century, although the precise usage is disputed, as 18th-century feminism and 19th-century feminism are often subsumed into "feminism". The usefulness of the term protofeminist has been questioned by some modern scholars, as has the term postfeminist.
The Double Marriage is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, and initially printed in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.
Scythian religion refers to the mythology, ritual practices and beliefs of the Scythians, an ancient Iranian people who dominated Central Asia and the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe throughout Classical Antiquity. What little is known of the religion is drawn from the work of the 5th century Greek historian and ethnographer Herodotus. Scythian religion is assumed to have been related to the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, and to have influenced later Slavic, Hungarian and Turkic mythologies, as well as some contemporary Eastern Iranian and Ossetian traditions.
Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister is an anonymously published three-volume roman à clef playing with events of the Monmouth Rebellion and exploring the genre of the epistolary novel. It has been attributed to Aphra Behn, but this attribution remains in dispute. The novel is "based loosely on an affair between Ford, Lord Grey of Werke, and his wife's sister, Lady Henrietta Berkeley, a scandal that broke in London in 1682". It was originally published as three separate volumes: Love-Letters Between a Noble-Man and his Sister (1684), Love-Letters from a Noble Man to his Sister: Mixt with the History of Their Adventures. The Second Part by the Same Hand (1685), and The Amours of Philander and Silvia (1687). The copyright holder was Joseph Hindmarsh, later joined by Jacob Tonson.
The Feign'd Curtizans 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.
The Fair Jilt: or, the Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda is a short novella by Aphra Behn published in 1688.
The Forc'd Marriage; or, The Jealous Bridegroom is a play by Aphra Behn, staged by the Duke's Company on 20 September 1670 in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, England. This sex tragicomedy ran for six nights, which granted Behn the house profits for both the third and six nights. It is considered her first staged play. Thomas Otway played a "probation part."
The Younger Brother, or, The Amorous Jilt is a comedy written by Aphra Behn. The play was first performed and published posthumously in 1696, but was probably written in the late 1680s.
The False Count, Or, A New Way to play An Old Game, is a comedic play written by Aphra Behn, first performed in 1681 and published in 1682. It was staged by the Duke's Company at the Dorset Garden Theatre in London. The cast included William Smith as Don Carlos, James Nokes as Francisco, John Freeman as Sebastian, John Wiltshire as Antonio, George Bright as Baltazer, Cave Underhill as Guzman, Anthony Leigh as Guilion, Elizabeth Currer as Isabella and Margaret Osborne as Jacinta.
The Roundheads or, The Good Old Cause, is a comedic play written by Aphra Behn, first performed in 1681 and published in 1682. An adaptation of John Tatum’s 1660 Tory farce The Rump, it is set shortly before the Restoration of the Monarchy.
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.
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