Behn, Aphra

Behn, Aphra (1640–89), playwright and novelist, and one of the first Englishwomen to make a living (albeit precarious) by her pen. Little is known of her early life, but she was evidently at some time in Surinam, the scene of her novel Oroonoko (c.1688), dramatized by Southerne in 1695. On her return to England in 1664 she married a merchant of Dutch extraction, but was left a widow after two years. She is known to have spied on the Continent for Charles II during the Dutch War, some of her dispatches being still extant. Her first play, a tragi-comedy entitled The Forced Marriage; or, The Jealous Bridegroom (1670), was presented at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, and well received; but it was in comedies of intrigue, often with some reference to a topical scandal, that she had her greatest successes, particularly with The Rover; or, The Banished Cavalier (1677). Her later plays were less successful. The Emperor in the Moon (1687), a pantomime-farce based on a commedia dell'arte scenario recently played in Paris, is historically interesting as being the forerunner of the many harlequinades which later led to the English pantomime.