By Aphra Behn
Restoration Comedy Broadly Refers to English Comedies Written and Performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710
Restoration Comedy broadly refers to English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. Comedy of manners is used as a synonym of Restoration Comedy. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama. Restoration comedy is notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality encouraged by Charles II (1660-1685) personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of his court. The socially diverse audiences included aristocrats, their servants’ hangers-on, and a substantial middle-class segment. These playgoers were attracted to the comedies by up-to-the-minute topical writing, by crowded and bustling plots, by the introduction of the first professional actresses, and by the rise of the first celebrity actors. This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn.
Restoration comedy was strongly influenced by the introduction of the first professional actresses. Before the closing of the theatres, all female roles had been played by boys, and the predominantly male audiences of the 1660s and 1670s were curious, censorious, and delighted at the novelty of seeing real women engage in risque repartee and take part in physical seduction scenes. Samuel Pepys refers many times in his famous diary to visiting the playhouse to watch or re-watch the performance of particular actresses, and to how much he enjoys these experiences.
Socio- economic changes in England led to the rise of writing as a profession, with more and more writers becoming free agents, who wrote for the market. This greatly influenced their writings as the text now became a commodity, subject to criticism by the consumers, and vulnerable to being shaped by the same. In such a milieu, Aphra Behn was not only one of the first professional writers, but the earliest woman writer. Her very act of writing for money was a subversion of societal norms and expectations. In fact, it coincided with the introduction of women actors into English drama. Behn was thus a subversive entity herself, a woman operating in the world of literature, the domain of men. She exercised her wit- and made her women characters do the same- in a time when the predominant mindset decreed that women were sentimental creatures, “antagonistic to intellect”. (Introduction to World view edition of The Rover) There was a growing tendency, in theatre, to serve the interests of the audience slavishly by playing to their commodity fetish. The audience mostly consisted of market-oriented, pleasure-seeking individuals who watched plays not for contemplation, but merely for leisure. Behn, in many ways, played the same role as other playwrights, allowing the watcher to act as voyeur and serving him with a heady mix of eroticism, sex antagonism and materialism. However, what sets Behn apart is that she made sure her plays offered a critique of her times even while conforming to them. The fact that critics sometimes question Behn’s positionality while mocking the belittling of . women, when she herself was ‘putting herself out there’ as a published author, only serves to throw more light on the double standard accorded to the judgement of women since times immemorial. As Shyamala A. Narayan says in ‘The Rover as a Restoration Comedy’, “The Restoration aristocrats prided themselves on their bawdy wit. The male playwrights were applauded for it, but Aphra Behn, being a woman, was vilified for it.” It is a function of the same society that refused to pay equal wages to women actresses and criticised the same when they were forced to become mistresses for fear of poverty.
The Rover submits to many Restoration comic tropes but also flouts them, primarily by setting the text within the carnival- a space characterised by licensed licentiousness and shortlivedness. This heightens the spirit of Carpe Diem- Seize the Day- and the flouting of rules in true Restoration style, but also serves to problematize behaviours as all acts can be explained away as part of the masquerade. In Florinda and Helena we have the stock figures of the aristocratic virgin and the witty heroine, respectively. Florinda’s afraid to out rightly rebel against her brother and has to resort to entering the carnival to achieve her desires. She is aware of the value of her virginity and protects it to the very end to present to her beloved in marriage. The image of the youthful dame getting repulsed by a rich decrepit old man (conjured by Florinda’s refusal to marry either of the suitors approved by her brother) is also rather typical of the comedies of the time. The subversive aspect of Florinda’s behaviour is that she uses wanton means to achieve her ends. Florinda in the garden in a state of undress with a box of jewels in her hands is her moment of empowerment where she not only’asserts that she will settle for no less than what she is ‘worth’ but also that her sexual desire, contrary to her brother’s expectations, is a force to be reckoned with.
Helena’s wit is a significant tool for setting up the battle of the wits. With her intellect, she becomes the sole match for Willmore, who despite his Casanova nature is drawn repeatedly to her. Her wilful pursuit of Willmore becomes the subversive element in this case, with her admiration for his inconstancy becoming a threat to the patriarchal notion of women as sentimental beings. Of the Rover women, Helena fares best because, although she is lustful, her power is based not in her sexuality but in her wit for adventure. It is true that both women- like many other characters in the play- return to the folds of society towards the end by seeking legitimacy from the institution of marriage. Women are almost always at the receiving end in Behn’s plays, especially since Restoration literature sought to be realistic. However; the fact that her women put up a mighty fight against restrictive norms mirrors her own sense of agency. Angellica Bianca’s romantic longings and her act of gifting her sexuality as well as money to Wilmore not only disrupts the usual transaction in the space of the courtesan’s house, but also acts as a facilitator of the general vocabulary of commerce used in the play. Also many Restoration Comedies include a character “disappointed in love or fortune” who was written in especially to provide the extreme passion of despair (Angelica Bianca would be the model for s in The Rover). The rich prostitute Angelica Bianca, without chastity and modesty, thinks it is her privilege to seduce whomsoever she fancies. Behn’s radical awareness of the double standards of morality, by which men and women are enjoined to live, sounds most clearly in The Rover when Angelica points out that men effectively prostitute themselves in the marriage market when they marry a woman for her money and not for love. She tries to claim equal status with the men by using her sex as her power. Sadly, all her courtesan’s wealth cannot save Angelica from the bondage of “submissive passion” in which her true love for Willmore snares her.
Willmore, after whom the play is named, is the quintessential philandering rake, much like the model set by Charles II himself, imitated enthusiastically in many Restoration texts. However, Willmore is an alienated figure- an outsider, not tied down by any social roles- not because of deep cynicism (like other Restoration heroes) or an active disregard for norms, but simply because of his free spirit and epicurean tendency. It can even be said that his fickleness arises from his natural attraction to charming women. Readers in more recent times may be more aware of the inappropriateness of Willmore’s behaviour, with our awareness of the feminist movement against the double standards that society uses to judge women. Yet, in order for the play to succeed, the audience must enjoy Willmore. We do not need to approve of him; in fact a critique of his licentiousness is built into the structure of. the play as his chaotic sensuality almost destroys the happiness of the other characters, and does destroy Angelica. Antonio, for example, is a scheming, dishonourable two- timer who marries for money, betrays Florinda the day before her wedding and inveigles Belvile to fight his duel for him. By contrast, Willmore is neither calculating nor corrupt. He is naive. He assumes that everyone is motivated by the same indomitable, sensual Will as himself. His evil is more a blind spot than active malice. Willmore lives completely in the present tense. This frees him from the dominant motivations of greed and politics which Behn loathes in social relations. Willmore tells Don Pedro, “A Woman’s Honour is not worth guarding when she has a Mind to part with it”. By accepting Hellena at face value without her fortune and despite her warnings of intended inconstancy, Willmore roves outside the conventional Restoration fears of cuckoldry and material poverty. It is this spontaneity and honesty of spirit that Aphra Behn loved in him and which the audience must grasp at the same time that they see his shameful, dangerous sexism is unacceptable. The two rovers, Willmore and Hellena, share the same propensities; both are frank about their temperaments. Hellena’s attitude to female sexuality is as natural as that of Willmore. She has a natural urge to have a man who she likes. In fact she appropriates masculine discourse in her attempt to escape the nunnery. Willmore is undoubtedly the rakish hero, a Cavalier and flirts with women without any qualms of conscience, but it is Hellena who seems to be the real rover in the play. Behn wants to crown her with success in her revolt against the father’s decision to confine her to a life of nunnery.
Crisis in the aristocracy- of which Pedro’s character is a function- is also turned on its head by his ultimate acceptance of Florinda and Belvile’s marriage. At this point, it may be argued that the Belvile-Florinda romance itself, though very generic and typical of comedies, is problematized through the repeated attempts at the rape of Florinda, which Belvile reacts to a little too mildly, considering he has been set up the ‘knight in shining armour’. Belvile’s friends act as typical rakes by mocking his love for Florinda and claiming that women could only be used for sexual needs. Blunt initially seems to be purely a stock figure- one often found in Restoration comedies. He is an English country gentleman, rich but foolish, a ‘country bumpkin’, fooled by a wily prostitute. His attempts at projecting himself as a wit evoke much laughter from the reader. However the same character later become a mouthpiece for violent, horrific misogyny and his speech directed at Florinda where he threatens to rape her, beat her up and hang her from a window, disrupts the harmless bumpkin stereotype.
It cannot be refuted that the play ends in rather typical ways, with the prostitute returning to her trade, and the virgins being awarded with mar- riage- a proverbial ‘happy ending’. However, all men, women and institutions pass through the marketplace and are valued, just as the text, and even its author, is. Through the carnival, Behn gives space to her characters to explore their true natures, albeit behind masks. To quote Anand Prakash in his essay, ‘”Designing” Women Socially and Market- Wise: Glimpses of the Restoration Strategy in The Rover’, “… Behn is not attempting in The Rover a typical Restoration comedy with fops and wits in the fray out to merely titillate us but a representation that focuses upon serious issues of freedom, identity and physi- cality, particularly with respect to women.
