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Wallpaper and ideas (art collection part 27)
This is a song I wrote as part of a longer play in the style of a Restoration comedy, and I'm quite proud of it!
If you like a good love song, I'm sure you'll like it too.
The mem'ry of your love's refrain Shall ever in my heart remain...
DORIMANT: Do you know 'em?
MEDLEY: Both very well; the mother's a great admirer of the forms and civility of the last age.
DORIMANT: An antiquated beauty may be allowed to be out of humour at the freedoms of the present.
George Etherege, The Man of Mode
Book 1 of 2020: The Rover
The Rover by Aphra Behn
"Had I remained in innocent security,
I should have thought all men were born my slaves,
And worn my power like lightning in my eyes,
To have destroyed at pleasure when offended."
I had to read The Rover for my British Women Writers class, so if you aren't familiar with the Restoration and Restoration comedies in specific, a quick google search might make this play a little more understandable. Also, if you get an extra minute, a quick google search on Aphra Behn might be well-advised, too, because she was certainly an interesting lady.
The Rover is a play - a comedy - about two sisters, two courtesans, and a handful of men exiled from England as a part of Charles II's militia. The two sisters, Hellena and Florinda, are upper-class women who both have weighty expectations on their shoulders: Hellena is expected to become a nun and Florinda is intended to marry an upper-class man recommended to her by her father. The play takes place in Naples (this was written in the 1670s so Italy was not incorporated as one country just yet) at the time of the Carnival before Lent begins. Because of this, many of the characters use costumes to disguise their identities and intentions. Hellena and Florinda dress as gypsy women and begin flirting with men of the militia. Florind has had an interest in Col. Belville, despite being intended for the much older and much wealthier Don Vincentio. Hellena, after dressing up, meets Willmore - another member of the militia - and they fall in love pretty much instantly. However, Willmore is also somewhat interested in the courtesan Angellica. Alongside all of these antics, the other men of the militia are also running around in masquing habits and causing all sorts of trouble.
Though the play is technically a comedy, it's not quite the type of comedy we're used to as a twenty-first century audience. For one thing, there's a lot of discussion of rape or sexual assault. For another, it's kind of confusing and not all that interesting. It's important to note that Aphra Behn wrote this when she was deeply in debt, so she was writing along the exact formula that most Restoration comedies were because she needed to write to her audience's interests if she was going to make money. Personally, I think there are some statements in here about rape and and the state of the laws concerning rape at the time. However, it could be argued that she was writing about these things because she thought the sexuality of Naples would draw in readership and that all men - particularly militia men - discussed these types of things. Overall, I enjoyed it once I read a summary and figured out what was going on, but it was really confusing and it's helpful to have a character list in front of you because everybody tends to get a little twisted up.
Trigger warnings for mentions of rape/sexual assault, prostitution, misogyny, discussions of sex, and mentions of religion. If 17th century cursing offends you, there's some of that as well but not much we would consider foul language these days.
My final opinion: Not a bad start to the year!
Women Acting Out : Gender Construction and The Performative Femininity
This Thursday, November 21, I was in my very first play. As an English major, one of my degree requirements is that I take six credits of 18th century literature, so this semester I enrolled in a course titled Restoration Drama, Comedy and Prose. The theme of the course this year was “Acting Women” and throughout the term we studied 4 plays about love, seduction, adultery, courtship, and libertinism and focused our literary analysis on the topic of female identity and the performativity of gender. As our final project, my class put on a costumed, on-book performance at the Bauer Theatre, acting out short scenes from each of the plays which we thought particularly highlighted the concept of performative gender and identity. It was very interesting to see how our play came together and how much - and more notably, how little - has changed for women throughout the course of the last 300 years. For example, we performed one courting scene between a young man and woman from George Etheridge’s play The Man of Mode in which the man attempts to flirt by telling the young woman she would be much more beautiful if only she would smile. There were also countless references to women being objects of men’s affection that were intended to be seen and not heard, as well as suggestions that a woman’s value depended only on her honour and suitability for marriage and domestication rather than her character. In reading Chapter 16 of our textbook for WMGS 100 titled Women’s Brains by Stephen Gould, it was interesting to see how the information Gould presents as the science of the 18th and 19th century corresponded with some of the sentiments expressed by the characters and writers of plays I studied in my Restoration English class. For example, the most disturbing “scientific finding” Gould presents is Gustav Le Bon’s 1879 publication that stated that “women represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and s*vages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason”. Ouch. While these sentiments were satirized by the authors of the plays I studied, it’s not hard to see why it was so socially acceptable to treat women as children or property, when some of the most prominent and celebrated scientists of the time were publishing this kind of content.
get your hot fresh Restoration Comedy AU right here...
shoutout to aphra behn, championing female sexuality since 1670 (and probably before that tbh)
if you don’t know about aphra behn
- she was the first published female playwright EVER
- and she wrote for a living, earning her own money and supporting herself with the profits of her plays
- before she got into writing, she was a special agent for the british secret service (a spy)
- she dedicated a play (the feigned courtesans, in which several women pretend to be prostitutes in order to woo/trick their loves, and also, due to several amusing mix-ups, two men kiss on stage) with a love letter to nell gwyn, king charles ii’s mistress
- she argued for female equality in all areas, and objected strongly to the idea which would prevail for many years after her death, that women should be valued for feminine qualities
- she wrote female characters who were by no means goody-goodies, but were witty, had sexual agency, could read, write and swordfight, and could scheme and plot with the best of them
- and she ridiculed men just as much as women in her comedies, which are laugh out loud hilarious
