[Footnotes]
[1.] Kalendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1666-7.—ed. Mrs. M. A. E. Green (1864).
[2.] This is inaccurate. Mrs. Behn’s first play, The Forc’d Marriage, was produced in December, 1670.
[3.] e.g. to Waller’s daughter-in-law; to Tonson. cf. also the Warrant of 12 August, 1682; the Pindaric to Burnet, &c.
[4.] Aphra now appears on Mrs. Behn’s gravestone, and is the accepted form. This is, however, in all probability the third inscription. The Antiquities of Westminster (1711), quoting the inscription, gives Aphara. Sometime in the eighteenth century a certain Thomas Waine restored the inscription and added to the two lines two more:—
Great Poetess, O thy stupendous lays
The world admires and the Muses praise.
The name was then Aphara. The Biog. Brit., whilst insisting on Aphara as correct and citing the stone as evidence, none the less prints Apharra. Her works usually have Mrs. A. Behn. One Quarto misprints ‘Mrs. Anne Behn’. There are, of course, many variants of the name. Afara, and Afra are common. Oldys in his MS. notes on Langbaine writes Aphra or Aphora, whilst the Muses Mercury, September, 1707, has a special note upon a poem by Mrs. Behn to say ‘this Poetess’ true Name was Apharra.’ Even Aphaw (Behen, in the 1682 warrant,) and Fyhare (in a petition) occur.
[5.] He died in 1642.
[6.] The Vicar of Wye, the Rev. Edgar Lambert, in answer to my inquiries courteously writes: ‘In company with Mr. C. S. Orwin, whose book, The History of Wye Church and College, has just been published, I have closely examined the register and find no mention of “Johnson”, nor of the fact that Aphara Amis’ father was a “barber”.’