THE WORKS
OF
APHRA BEHN

Edited by

MONTAGUE SUMMERS

VOL. I

The Rover (Part i); or, The Banish’d Cavaliers
The Rover (Part ii); or, The Banish’d Cavaliers
The Dutch Lover
The Round-Heads; or, The Good Old Cause

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
STRATFORD-ON-AVON: A. H. BULLEN
MCMXV

To Francis James,
this the first collected edition of
Aphra Behn.

CONTENTS.

Items in italics were added by the transcriber. The plays are located in two separate files, together with their respective Notes, as explained in the “Notes” section of this file.

“The Rover” Parts I and II are separate plays; Part II is a sequel.

Students should note that the editorial material (1915) is sometimes significantly at variance with current (2007) Behn scholarship.

[PREFACE.]

It is perhaps not altogether easy to appreciate the multiplicity of difficulties with which the first editor of Mrs. Behn has to cope. Not only is her life strangely mysterious and obscure, but the rubbish of half-a-dozen romancing biographers must needs be cleared away before we can even begin to see daylight. Matter which had been for two centuries accepted on seemingly the soundest authority is proven false; her family name itself was, until my recent discovery, wrongly given; the very question of her portrait has its own vexed (and until now unrecognized) dilemmas. In fine there seems no point connected with our first professional authoress which did not call for the nicest investigation and the most incontrovertible proof before it could be accepted without suspicion or reserve. The various collections of her plays and novels which appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century give us nothing; nay, they rather cumber our path with the trash of discredited Memoirs. Pearson’s reprint (1871) is entirely valueless: there is no attempt, however meagre, at editing, no effort to elucidate a single allusion; moreover, several of the Novels—and the Poems in their entirety—are lacking. I am happy to give (Vol. V) one of the Novels, and that not the least important, The History of the Nun, for the first time in any collected edition. Poems, in addition to those which appeared in Mrs. Behn’s lifetime, and were never reprinted after, have been gathered with great care from many sources (of which some were almost forgotten).

It is hoped that this new issue of Mrs. Behn may prove adequate. Any difficulties in the editing have been more than amply compensated for by the interest shown by many friends. Foremost, my best thanks are due to Mr. Bullen, whose life-long experience of the minutiæ of editing our best dramatic literature, has been ungrudgingly at my service throughout, to the no small advantage of myself and my work. Mr. Edmund Gosse, C.B., has shown the liveliest interest in the book from its inception, and I owe him most grateful recognition for his kindly encouragement and aid. Nay, more, he did not spare to lend me treasured items from his library so rich in first, and boasting unique, editions of Mrs. Behn. Mr. G. Thorn Drury, K.C., never wearied of answering my enquiries, and in discussion solved many a knotty point. To him I am obliged for the transcript of Mrs. Behn’s letter to Waller’s daughter-in-law, and also the Satire on Dryden. He even gave of his valuable time to read through the Memoir and from the superabundance of his knowledge made suggestions of the first importance. The unsurpassed library of Mr. T. J. Wise, the well-known bibliographer, was freely at my disposal. In other cases where I have received any assistance in clearing a difficulty I have made my acknowledgement in the note itself.

[MEMOIR OF MRS. BEHN.]

The personal history of Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to earn her livelihood by authorship, is unusually interesting but very difficult to unravel and relate. In dealing with her biography writers at different periods have rushed headlong to extremes, and we now find that the pendulum has swung to its fullest stretch. On the one hand, we have prefixed to a collection of the Histories and Novels, published in 1696, ‘The Life of Mrs. Behn written by one of the Fair Sex’, a frequently reprinted (and even expanded) compilation crowded with romantic incidents that savour all too strongly of the Italian novella, with sentimental epistolography and details which can but be accepted cautiously and in part. On the other there have recently appeared two revolutionary essays by Dr. Ernest Bernbaum of Harvard, ‘Mrs. Behn’s Oroonoko’, first printed in Kittredge Anniversary Papers, 1913; and—what is even more particularly pertinent—’Mrs. Behn’s Biography a Fiction,’ Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxviii, 3: both afterwards issued as separate pamphlets, 1913. In these, the keen critical sense of the writer has apparently been so jarred by the patent incongruities, the baseless fiction, nay, the very fantasies (such as the fairy pavilion seen floating upon the Channel), which, imaginative and invented flotsam that they are, accumulated and were heaped about the memory of Aphra Behn, that he is apt to regard almost every record outside those of her residence at Antwerp[1] with a suspicion which is in many cases surely unwarranted and undue. Having energetically cleared away the more peccant rubbish, Dr. Bernbaum became, it appears to us, a little too drastic, and had he then discriminated rather than swept clean, we were better able wholly to follow the conclusions at which he arrives. He even says that after ‘1671’[2] when ‘she began to write for the stage ... such meagre contemporary notices as we find of her are critical rather than biographical’. This is a very partial truth; from extant letters,[3] to which Dr. Bernbaum does not refer, we can gather much of Mrs. Behn’s literary life and circumstances. She was a figure of some note, and even if we had no other evidence it seems impossible that her contemporaries should have glibly accepted the fiction of a voyage to Surinam and a Dutch husband named Behn who had never existed.

Ayfara, or Aphara[4] (Aphra), Amis or Amies, the daughter of John and Amy Amis or Amies, was baptized together with her brother Peter in the Parish Church of SS. Gregory and Martin, Wye, 10 July, 1640, presumably by Ambrose Richmore, curate of Wye at that date.[5] Up to this time Aphra’s maiden name has been stated to be Johnson, and she is asserted to have been the daughter of a barber, John Johnson. That the name was not Johnson (an ancient error) is certain from the baptismal register, wherein, moreover, the ‘Quality, Trade, or Profession’ is left blank; that her father was a barber rests upon no other foundation than a MS. note of Lady Winchilsea.[6] Mr. Gosse, in a most valuable article (Athenæum, 6 September, 1884), was the first to correct the statement repeatedly made that Mrs. Behn came from ‘the City of Canterbury in Kent’. He tells how he acquired a folio volume containing the MS. poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea,[7] ‘copied about 1695 under her eye and with innumerable notes and corrections in her autograph’. In a certain poem entitled The Circuit of Apollo[8] the following lines occur:—

And standing where sadly he now might descry
From the banks of the Stowre the desolate Wye,
He lamented for Behn, o’er that place of her birth,
And said amongst Women there was not on the earth,
Her superior in fancy, in language, or witt,
Yet own’d that a little too loosely she writt.

To these is appended this note: ‘Mrs. Behn was Daughter to a Barber, who liv’d formerly in Wye, a little Market Town (now much decay’d) in Kent. Though the account of her life before her Works pretends otherwise; some Persons now alive Do testify upon their Knowledge that to be her Original.’ It is a pity that whilst the one error concerning Aphra’s birthplace is thus remedied, the mistake as to the nature of her father’s calling should have been initiated.

Aphra Amis, then, was born early in July, 1640, at Wye, Kent. When she was of a tender age the Amis family left England for Surinam; her father, who seems to have been a relative of Francis, Lord Willoughby of Parham, sometime administrator of several British colonies in the West Indies, having been promised a post of some importance in these dependencies. John Amis died on the voyage out, but his widow and children necessarily continued their journey, and upon their arrival were accommodated at St. John’s Hill, one of the best houses in the district. Her life and adventures in Surinam Aphra has herself realistically told in that wonderfully vivid narrative, Oroonoko. [9] The writer’s bent had already shown itself. She kept a journal as many girls will, she steeped herself in the interminable romances fashionable at that time, in the voluminous Pharamond, Cléopatre, Cassandre, Ibrahim, and, above all, Le Grand Cyrus, so loved and retailed to the annoyance of her worthy husband by Mrs. Pepys; with a piece of which Dorothy Osborne was ‘hugely pleased’.

It was perhaps from the reading of La Calprenède and Mlle de Scudéri Aphra gained that intimate knowledge of French which served her well and amply in after years during her literary life; at any rate she seems early to have realized her dramatic genius and to have begun a play drawn from one of the most interesting episodes in Cléopatre, the love story of the Scythian King Alcamène, scenes which, when they had ‘measured three thousand leagues of spacious ocean’, were, nearly a quarter of a century later, to be taken out of her desk and worked up into a baroque and fanciful yet strangely pleasing tragi-comedy, The Young King.

In Surinam she witnessed the fortunes and fate of the Royal Slave, Oroonoko, of whom she writes (with all due allowance for pardonable exaggeration and purely literary touches), so naturally and feelingly, that ‘one of the Fair Sex’ with some acerbity makes it her rather unnecessary business to clear Aphra from any suspicion of a liaison. It was Surinam which supplied the cognate material for the vivid comedy, the broad humour and early colonial life, photographic in its realism, of The Widow Ranter; or, The History of Bacon in Virginia. Mistakes there may be, errors and forgetfulness, but there are a thousand touches which only long residence and keen observation could have so deftly characterized.

We now approach a brief yet important period in Mrs. Behn’s life, which unless we are content to follow (with an acknowledged diffidence and due reservations) the old Memoir and scattered tradition, we find ourselves with no sure means whatsoever of detailing. It seems probable, however, that about the close of 1663, owing no doubt to the Restoration and the subsequent changes in affairs, the Amis family returned to England, settling in London, where Aphra, meeting a merchant of Dutch extraction named Behn, so fascinated him by her wit and comeliness that he offered her his hand and fortune. During her married life she is said to have been in affluence, and even to have appeared at the gay licentious Court, attracting the notice of and amusing the King himself by her anecdotes and cleverness of repartee; but when her husband died, not impossibly of the plague in the year of mortality, 1665, she found herself helpless, without friends or funds. In her distress it was to the Court she applied for assistance; and owing to her cosmopolitan experience and still more to the fact that her name was Dutch, and that she had been by her husband brought into close contact with the Dutch, she was selected as a meet political agent to visit Holland and there be employed in various secret and semi-official capacities. The circumstance that her position and work could never be openly recognized nor acknowledged by the English government was shortly to involve her in manifold difficulties, pecuniary and otherwise, which eventually led to her perforce abandoning so unstable and unsatisfactory a commission.

In the old History of the Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn (1696; and with additions 1698, &c.), ushered into the world by Charles Gildon, a romance full as amorous and sensational as any novel of the day, has been woven about her sojourn at Antwerp. A ’Spark whom we must call by the name of Vander Albert of Utrecht’ is given to Aphra as a fervent lover, and from him she obtains political secrets to be used to the English advantage. He has a rival, an antique yclept Van Bruin, ‘a Hogen Mogen ... Nestorean’ admirer, and the intrigue becomes fast and furious. On one occasion Albert, imagining he is possessing his mistress, is cheated with a certain Catalina; and again when he has bribed an ancient duenna to admit him to Aphra’s bed, he is surprised there by a frolicsome gallant. [10] There are even included five letters from Mrs. Behn and a couple of ridiculous effusions purporting to be Van Bruin’s. It would seem that all this pure fiction, the sweepings of Aphra’s desk, was intended by her to have been worked up into a novel; both letters and narrative are too good to be the unaided composition of Gildon himself, but possibly Mrs. Behn in her after life may have elaborated and told him these erotic episodes to conceal the squalor and misery of the real facts of her early Dutch mission. It is proved indeed in aim and circumstance to have been far other.

Her chief business was to establish an intimacy with William Scott, son of Thomas Scott, the regicide who had been executed 17 October, 1660. This William, who had been made a fellow of All Souls by the Parliamentary Visitors of Oxford, and graduated B.C.L. 4 August, 1648, was quite ready to become a spy in the English service and to report on the doings of the English exiles who were not only holding treasonable correspondence with traitors at home and plotting against the King, but even joining with the Dutch foe to injure their native land. Scott was extremely anxious for his own pardon and, in addition, eager to earn any money he could.

Aphra then, taking with her some forty pounds in cash, all she had, set sail with Sir Anthony Desmarces [11] either at the latter end of July or early in August, 1666, and on 16 August she writes from Antwerp to say she has had an interview with William Scott (dubbed in her correspondence Celadon), even having gone so far as to take coach and ride a day’s journey to see him secretly. Though at first diffident, he is very ready to undertake the service, only it will be necessary for her to enter Holland itself and reside on the spot, not in Flanders, as Colonel Bampfield, who was looked upon as head of the exiled English at the Hague, watched Scott with most jealous care and a growing suspicion. Aphra, whose letters give a vivid picture of the spy’s life with its risks and impecuniosity, addresses herself to two correspondents, Tom Killigrew and James Halsall, cupbearer to the King.

On 27 August she was still at Antwerp, and William Scott wrote to her there but did not venture to say much lest the epistle might miscarry. He asks for a cypher, a useful and indeed necessary precaution in so difficult circumstances. It was about this time that Mrs. Behn began to employ the name of Astrea, which, having its inception in a political code, was later to be generally used by her and recognized throughout the literary world. Writing to Halsall, she says that she has been unable to effect anything, but she urgently demands that money be sent, and confesses she has been obliged even to pawn her ring to pay messengers. On 31 August she writes to Killigrew declaring she can get no answer from Halsall, and explaining that she has twice had to disburse Scott’s expenses, amounting in all to £20, out of her own pocket, whilst her personal debts total another £25 or £30, and living itself is ten guilders a day. If she is to continue her work satisfactorily, £80 at least will be needed to pay up all her creditors; moreover, as a preliminary and a token of good faith, Scott’s official pardon must be forwarded without compromise or delay. Scott himself was, it seems, playing no easy game at this juncture, for a certain Carney, resident at Antwerp, ‘an unsufferable, scandalous, lying, prating fellow’, piqued at not being able to ferret out the intrigue, had gone so far as to molest poor Celadon and threaten him with death, noising up and down meanwhile the fact of his clandestine rendezvous with Aphra. No money, however, was forthcoming from England, and on 4 September Mrs. Behn writing again to Killigrew tells him plainly that she is reduced to great straits, and unless funds are immediately provided all her work will be nugatory and vain. The next letter, dated 14 September, gives Halsall various naval information. On 17 September she is obliged to importune Killigrew once more on the occasion of sending him a letter from Scott dealing with political matters. Halsall, she asserts, will not return any answer, and although she is only in private lodgings she is continually being thwarted and vilipended by Carney, ‘whose tongue needs clipping’. Four days later she transmits a five page letter from Scott to Halsall. On 25 September she sends under cover yet another letter from Scott with the news of De Ruyter’s illness. Silence was her only answer. Capable and indeed ardent agent as she was, there can be no excuse for her shameful, nay, criminal, neglect at the hands of the government she was serving so faithfully and well. Her information[12] seems to have been received with inattention and disregard; whether it was that culpable carelessness which wrecked so many a fair scheme in the second Charles’ days, or whether secret enemies at home steadfastly impeded her efforts remains an open question. In any case on 3 November she sends a truly piteous letter to Lord Arlington, Secretary of State, and informs him she is suffering the extremest want and penury. All her goods are pawned, Scott is in prison for debt, and she herself seems on the point of going to the common gaol. The day after Christmas Aphra wrote to Lord Arlington for the last time. She asks for a round £100 as delays have naturally doubled her expenses and she has had to obtain credit. Now she is only anxious to return home, and she declares that if she did not so well know the justness of her cause and complaint, she would be stark wild with her hard treatment. Scott, she adds, will soon be free.[13] Even this final appeal obtained no response, and at length—well nigh desperate—Mrs. Behn negotiated in England, from a certain Edward Butler, a private loan of some £150 which enabled her to settle her affairs and start for home in January, 1667.

But the chapter of her troubles was by no means ended. Debt weighed like a millstone round her neck. As the weary months went by and Aphra was begging in vain for her salary, long overdue, to be paid, Butler, a harsh, dour man with heart of stone, became impatient and resorted to drastic measures, eventually flinging her into a debtor’s prison. There are extant three petitions, undated indeed, but which must be referred to the early autumn of 1668, from Mrs. Behn to Charles II. Sadly complaining of two years’ bitter sufferings, she prays for an order to Mr. May[14] or Mr. Chiffinch[15] to satisfy Butler, who declares he will stop at nothing if he is not paid within a week. In a second document she sets out the reasons for her urgent claim of £150. Both Mr. Halsall and Mr. Killigrew know how justly it is her due, and she is hourly threatened with an execution. To this is annexed a letter from the poor distracted woman to Killigrew, which runs as follows:—

Sr.

if you could guess at the affliction of my soule you would I am sure Pity me ’tis to morrow that I must submitt my self to a Prison the time being expird & though I indeauerd all day yesterday to get a ffew days more I can not because they say they see I am dallied w^th all & so they say I shall be for euer: so I can not reuoke my doome I haue cryd myself dead & could find in my hart to break through all & get to y^e king & neuer rise till he weare pleasd to pay this; but I am sick & weake & vnfitt for yt; or a Prison; I shall go to morrow: But I will send my mother to y^e king w^th a Pitition for I see euery body are words: & I will not perish in a Prison from whence he swears I shall not stirr till y^e uttmost farthing be payd: & oh god, who considers my misery & charge too, this is my reward for all my great promises, & my indeauers. Sr if I have not the money to night you must send me som thing to keepe me in Prison for I will not starue.

A. Behn.

Endorsed:

For Mr. Killigrew this.

[Closer view of letter]
[Detail of stamp]

There was no immediate response however, even to this pathetic and heart-broken appeal, and in yet a third petition she pleads that she may not be left to suffer, but that the £150 be sent forthwith to Edward Butler, who on Lord Arlington’s declaring that neither order nor money had been transmitted, threw her straightway into gaol.

It does not seem, however, that her imprisonment was long. Whether Killigrew, of whom later she spoke in warm and admiring terms, touched at last, bestirred himself on her behalf and rescued her from want and woe, whether Mrs. Amy Amis won a way to the King, whether help came by some other path, is all uncertain. In any case the debt was duly paid, and Aphra Behn not improbably received in addition some compensation for the hardships she had undergone.

’The rest of her Life was entirely dedicated to Pleasure and Poetry; the Success in which gain’d her the Acquaintance and Friendship of the most Sensible Men of the Age, and the Love of not a few of different Characters; for tho’ a Sot have no Portion of Wit of his own, he yet, like old Age, covets what he cannot enjoy.’

More than dubious and idly romancing as the early Memoirs are, nevertheless this one sentence seems to sum up the situation thenceforth pretty aptly, if in altogether too general terms. Once extricated from these main difficulties Mrs. Behn no doubt took steps to insure that she should not, if it lay in her power, be so situated again. I would suggest, indeed, that about this period, 1669, she accepted the protection of some admirer. Who he may have been at first, how many more there were than one, how long the various amours endured, it is idle to speculate. She was for her period as thoroughly unconventional as many another woman of letters has been since in relation to later times and manners, as unhampered and free as her witty successor, Mrs. de la Riviere Manley, who lived for so long as Alderman Barber’s kept mistress and died in his house. Mrs. Behn has given us poetic pseudonyms for many of her lovers, Lycidas, Lysander, Philaster, Amintas, Alexis, and the rest, but these extended over many years, and attempts at identification, however interesting, are fruitless.[16]

There has been no more popular mistake, nor yet one more productive, not merely of nonsense and bad criticism but even of actual malice and evil, than the easy error of confounding an author with the characters he creates. Mrs. Behn has not been spared. Some have superficially argued from the careless levity of her heroes: the Rover, Cayman, Wittmore, Wilding, Frederick; and again from the delightful insouciance of Lady Fancy, Queen Lucy, and the genteel coquette Mirtilla, or the torrid passions of Angelica Bianca, Miranda and la Nuche; that Aphra herself was little better, in fact a great deal worse, than a common prostitute, and that her works are undiluted pornography.

In her own day, probably for reasons purely political, a noisy clique assailed her on the score of impropriety; a little later came Pope with his jaded couplet

The stage how loosely does Astrea tread
Who fairly puts all characters to bed;

and the attack was reinforced by an anecdote of Sir Walter Scott and some female relative who, after having insisted upon the great novelist lending her Mrs. Behn, found the Novels and Plays too loose for her perusal, albeit in the heyday of the lady’s youth they had been popular enough. As one might expect, Miss Julia Kavanagh, in the mid-Victorian era[17] (English Women of Letters 1863), is sad and sorry at having to mention Mrs. Behn—’Even if her life remained pure,[18] it is amply evident her mind was “tainted to the very core. Grossness was congenial to her.... Mrs. Behn’s indelicacy was useless and worse than useless, the superfluous addition of a corrupt mind and vitiated taste”.’ One can afford to smile at and ignore these modest outbursts, but it is strange to find so sound and sane a critic as Dr. Doran writing of Aphra Behn as follows: ‘No one equalled this woman in downright nastiness save Ravenscroft and Wycherley.... With Dryden she vied in indecency and was not overcome.... She was a mere harlot, who danced through uncleanness and dared them [the male dramatists] to follow.’ Again, we have that she was ‘a wanton hussy’; her ‘trolloping muse’ shamefacedly ‘wallowed in the mire’; but finally the historian is bound to confess ‘she was never dull’.

The morality of her plays is au fond that of many a comedy of to-day: that the situations and phrasing in which she presents her amorous intrigues and merry cuckoldoms do not conform with modern exposition of these themes we also show yet would not name, is but our surface gloss of verbal reticence; we hint, point, and suggest, where she spoke out broad words, frank and free; the motif is one and the same. If we judge Mrs. Behn’s dramatic output in the only fair way by comparing it legitimately with the theatre of her age, we simply shall not find that superfluity of naughtiness the critics lead us to expect and deplore. There are not infrequent scenes of Dryden, of Wycherley, of Vanbrugh, Southerne, Otway, Ravenscroft, Shadwell, D’Urfey, Crowne, full as daring as anything Aphra wrote; indeed, in some instances, far more wanton. Particularizing, it has been objected that although in most Restoration comedies the hero, however vicious (even such a mad scrapegrace as Dryden’s Woodall), is decently noosed up in wedlock when the curtain is about to fall, Mrs. Behn’s Willmore (Rover II), Gayman (The Lucky Chance), Wittmore (Sir Patient Fancy) end up without a thought of, save it be jest at, the wedding ring. But even this freedom can be amply paralleled. In the Duke of Buckingham’s clever alteration of The Chances (1682), we have Don John pairing off with the second Constantia without a hint of matrimony; we have the intrigue of Bellmour and Laetitia in Congreve’s The Old Bachelor (1693), the amours of Horner in The Country Wife (1675), of Florio and Artall in Crowne’s City Politics (1683), and many another beside. As for the cavilling crew who carped at her during her life Mrs. Behn has answered them and she was thoroughly competent so to do. Indeed, as she somewhat tartly remarked to Otway on the occasion of certain prudish dames pleasing to take offence at The Soldier’s Fortune, she wondered at the impudence of any of her sex that would pretend to understand the thing called bawdy. A clique were shocked at her; it was not her salaciousness they objected to but her success.

In December, 1670, Mrs. Behn’s first play,[19] The Forc’d Marriage; or, the Jealous Bridegroom, was produced at the Duke’s Theatre, Lincoln’s Inn Field’s, with a strong cast. It is a good tragi-comedy of the bastard Fletcherian Davenant type, but she had not hit upon her happiest vein of comedy, which, however, she approached in a much better piece, The Amorous Prince, played in the autumn of 1671 by the same company. Both these had excellent runs for their day, and she obtained a firm footing in the theatrical world. In 1673[20] The Dutch Lover[21] was ready, a comedy which has earned praise for its skilful technique. She here began to draw on her own experiences for material, and Haunce van Ezel owes not a little to her intimate knowledge of the Hollanders.

These three plays brought her money, friends, and reputation. She was already beginning to be a considerable figure in literary circles, and the first writers of the day were glad of the acquaintance of a woman who was both a wit and a writer. There is still retailed a vague, persistent, and entirely baseless tradition that Aphra Behn was assisted in writing her plays by Edward Ravenscroft,[22] the well known dramatist. Mrs. Behn often alludes in her prefaces to the prejudice a carping clique entertained against her and the strenuous efforts that were made to damn her comedies merely because they were ‘writ by a woman’. Accordingly, when her plays succeeded, this same party, unable to deny such approved and patent merit, found their excuse in spreading a report that she was not inconsiderably aided in her scenes by another hand. Edward Ravenscroft’s name stands to the epilogue of Sir Timothy Tawdrey, and he was undoubtedly well acquainted with Mrs. Behn. Tom Brown (I suggest) hints at a known intrigue,[23] but, even if my surmise be correct, there is nothing in this to warrant the oft repeated statement that many of her scenes are actually due to his pen. On the other hand, amongst Aphra’s intimates was a certain John Hoyle, a lawyer, well known about the town as a wit. John Hoyle was the son of Thomas Hoyle, Alderman and Lord Mayor of, and M.P. for York, who hanged himself[24] at the same hour as Charles I was beheaded. In the Gray’s Inn Admission Register we have: ‘1659/60 Feb. 27. John Hoyle son and heir of Thomas H. late of the city of York, Esq. deceased.’ Some eighteen years after he was admitted to the Inner Temple: ‘1678/9 Jan. 26. Order that John Hoyle formerly of Gray’s Inn be admitted to this society ad eundem statum. (Inner Temple Records, iii, 131.) There are allusions not a few to him in Mrs. Behn’s poems; he is the Mr. J. H. of Our Cabal; and in ‘A Letter to Mr. Creech at Oxford, Written in the last great Frost,’ which finds a place in the Miscellany of 1685, the following lines occur:—

To Honest H——le I shou’d have shown ye,
A Wit that wou’d be proud t’ have known ye;
A Wit uncommon, and Facetious,
A great admirer of Lucretius.

There can be no doubt he was on terms of the closest familiarity[25] with Mrs. Behn, and he (if any), not Ravenscroft, assisted her (though we are not to suppose to a real extent) in her plays. There is a very plain allusion to this in Radcliffe’s The Ramble: News from Hell (1682):—

Amongst this Heptarchy of Wit
The censuring Age have thought it fit,
To damn a Woman, ’cause ’tis said
The Plays she vends she never made.
But that a Greys Inn Lawyer does ’em
Who unto her was Friend in Bosom,
So not presenting Scarf and Hood
New Plays and Songs are full as good.[26]

Unfortunately Hoyle was reputed to be addicted to the grossest immorality, and rumours of a sinister description were current concerning him.[27] There is, in fact, printed a letter[28] of Mrs. Behn’s wherein she writes most anxiously to her friend stating that the gravest scandals have reached her ears, and begging him to clear himself from these allegations. Hoyle was murdered in a brawl 26 May, 1692, and is buried in the vault belonging to the Inner Temple, which is presumably in the ground attached to the Temple Church. The entry in the Register runs as follows: ‘John Hoyle, esq., of the Inner Temple was buried in the vault May ye 29, 1692.’ Narcissus Luttrell in his Diary, Saturday, 28 May, 1692, has the following entry: ‘Mr. Hoil of the Temple on Thursday night was at a tavern with other gentlemen, and quarrelling with Mr. Pitts’ eldest son about drinking a health, as they came out Mr. Hoil was stabb’d in the belly and fell down dead, and thereon Pitts fled; and the next morning was taken in a disguise and is committed to Newgate.’[29] 30 June, 1692, the same record says: ‘This day Mr. Pitts was tryed at the Old Bailey for the murder of Mr. Hoil of the Temple, and the jury found it manslaughter but the next heir has brought an appeal.’

In September, 1676, The Town Fop was acted with applause, and the following year Mrs. Behn was very busy producing two comedies (of which one is a masterpiece) and one tragedy. The Debauchee, which was brought out this year at the Duke’s House, a somewhat superficial though clever alteration of Brome’s Mad Couple Well Match’d, is no doubt from her pen. It was published anonymously, 4to, 1677, and all the best critics with one accord ascribe it to Mrs. Behn. In the autumn of 1677 there was produced by the Duke’s Company a version of Middleton’s No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s, entitled, The Counterfeit Bridegroom; or, The Defeated Widow (4to, 1677); it is smart and spirited. Genest was of opinion it is Aphra’s work. He is probably right, for we know that she repeatedly made use of Middleton, and internal evidence fully bears out our stage historian.[30] Both Abdelazer[31] and The Town Fop evidence in a marked degree her intimate knowledge of the earlier dramatists, whilst The Rover (I) is founded on Killigrew. None the less, here she has handled her materials with rare skill, and successfully put new wine into old bottles. The critics, however, began to attack her on this point, and when The Rover (I) appeared in print (4to 1677), she found it necessary to add a postscript, defending her play from the charge of merely being ’Thomaso alter’d’. With reference to Abdelazer there is extant a very interesting letter[32] from Mrs. Behn to her friend, Mrs. Emily Price. She writes as follows:—

My Dear,

In your last, you inform’d me, that the World treated me as a Plagiery, and, I must confess, not with Injustice: But that Mr. Otway shou’d say, my Sex wou’d not prevent my being pull’d to Pieces by the Criticks, is something odd, since whatever Mr. Otway now declares, he may very well remember when last I saw him, I receiv’d more than ordinary Encomiums on my Abdelazer, But every one knows Mr. Otway’s good Nature, which will not permit him to shock any one of our Sex to their Faces. But let that pass: For being impeach’d of murdering my Moor, I am thankful, since, when I shall let the World know, whenever I take the Pains next to appear in Print, of the mighty Theft I have been guilty of; But however for your own Satisfaction, I have sent you the Garden from whence I gather’d, and I hope you will not think me vain, if I say, I have weeded and improv’d it. I hope to prevail on the Printer to reprint The Lust’s Dominion, &c., that my theft may be the more publick. But I detain you. I believe I sha’n’t have the Happiness of seeing my dear Amillia ’till the middle of September: But be assur’d I shall always remain as I am,

Yours, A. Behn.

The Rover (I) is undoubtedly the best known of Aphra Behn’s comedies. It long remained a popular favourite in the theatre, its verve, bustle and wit, utterly defiant of the modest Josephs and qualmy prudes who censured these lively scenes. Steele has mention of this in an archly humorous paper, No. 51, Spectator, Saturday, 28 April, 1711. He pictures a young lady who has taken offence at some negligent expression in that chastest of ice-cold proprieties, The Funeral, and he forthwith more or less seriously proceeds to defend his play by quoting the example of both predecessors and contemporaries. Amongst the writers who are ‘best skilled in this luscious Way’, he informs us that ‘we are obliged to the Lady who writ Ibrahim [33] for introducing a preparatory Scene to the very Action, when the Emperor throws his Handkerchief as a Signal for his Mistress to follow him into the most retired Part of the Seraglio.... This ingenious Gentlewoman in this piece of Baudry refined upon an Author of the same Sex, who in The Rover makes a Country Squire strip to his Holland Drawers. For Blunt is disappointed, and the Emperor is understood to go on to the utmost.... It is not here to be omitted, that in one of the above-mentioned Female Compositions the Rover is very frequently sent on the same Errand; as I take it above once every Act. This is not wholly unnatural; for, they say, the Men-Authors draw themselves in their Chief Characters, and the Women-Writers may be allowed the same Liberty.’

Early in 1678, in either the first or second week of January, Sir Patient Fancy was received with great applause. A hint from Brome, more than a hint from Molière, much wit, vivacity, and cleverness make up this admirable comedy. Throughout the whole of her career it is amply evident that Mrs. Behn, an omnivorous reader, kept in constant touch with and profited by the French literature and theatre of her day. The debt of the English stage to France at this period is a fact often not sufficiently acknowledged, but one which it would really be difficult to over-emphasize. No adequate critical knowledge of much of our English song, fiction and drama of the Restoration can be attained without a close study of their French models and originals.

During the latter part of this year Mrs. Behn found time to revise and write up the romantic scenes she had composed two decades before as a girl in Surinam, and the result was a tragi-comedy, The Young King, which won considerable favour. Produced in March or early April,[34] 1679, it was not published till 1683, but a second edition was called for in 1698.[35]

In March, The Feign’d Courtezans, one of Mrs. Behn’s happiest efforts, appeared on the boards of the Duke’s House. Not one tittle is borrowed, and its success gives striking proof of the capacity of her unaided powers. When printed, the comedy was dedicated in adulatory terms to Nell Gwynne. With the great Betterton, handsome Will Smith, Nokes, Underhill, Leigh, an inimitable trio, the famous Mrs. Barry, pretty and piquante Betty Currer, the beautiful and serenely gracious Mrs. Mary Lee, in the cast, it had a perfect galaxy of genius to give it life and triumph.

In 1681 a second part continued the adventures of The Rover, and surprisingly good the sequel is.

From 1678 to 1683 were years of the keenest political excitement and unrest. Fomented to frenzy by the murderous villainies of Gates and his accomplices, aggravated by the traitrous ambition and rascalities of Shaftesbury, by the deceit and weakness of Monmouth, and the open disloyalty of the Whiggish crew, party politics and controversy waxed hotter and fiercer until riots were common and a revolution seemed imminent. Fortunately an appeal in a royal declaration to the justice of the nation at large allayed the storm, and an overwhelming outburst of genuine enthusiasm ensued. Albeit the bill against him was thrown out with an ‘ignoramus’ by a packed jury 24 November, 1681, a year later, 28 November, 1682, Shaftesbury found it expedient to escape to Holland. Monmouth, who had been making a regal progress through the country, was arrested. Shortly after he was bailed out by his political friends, but he presently fled in terror lest he should pay the penalty of his follies and crimes, inasmuch as a true bill for high treason had been found against him. It was natural that at such a crisis the stage and satire (both prose and rhyme), should become impregnated with party feeling; and the Tory poets, with glorious John Dryden at their head, unmercifully pilloried their adversaries. In 1682 Mrs. Behn produced three comedies, two of which are mainly political. The Roundheads, a masterly pasquinade, shows the Puritans, near ancestors of the Whigs, in their most odious and veritable colours. The City Heiress lampoons Shaftesbury and his cit following in exquisite caricature. The wit and humour, the pointed raillery never coarsening into mere invective and zany burlesque, place this in the very front rank of her comedies.[36] The False Count, the third play of this year, is non-political, and she has herein borrowed a suggestion from Molière. It is full of brilliant dialogue and point, whilst the situations are truly ludicrous and entertaining. As might well be surmised, The Roundheads and The City Heiress were not slow to wake the rancour of the Whigs, who looked about for an opportunity of vengeance which they shortly found. On 10 August, 1682, there was produced at the Duke’s Theatre an anonymous tragedy Romulus and Hersilia; or, The Sabine War. It is a vigorous play of no small merit and attracted considerable attention at the time.[37] Mrs. Behn contributed both Prologue and Epilogue, the former being spoken by that sweet-voiced blonde, winsome Charlotte Butler, the latter by Lady Slingsby, who acted Tarpeia. There was matter in the Epilogue which reflected upon the disgraced Duke of Monmouth, for whom, in spite of his known treachery and treasons, Charles still retained the fondest affection. Warm representations were made in high quarters, and the following warrant was speedily issued:—

Whereas the Lady Slingsby Comoedian and Mrs. Aphaw Behen have by acting and writeing at his Royall Highnesse Theatre committed severall Misdemeanors and made abusive reflections upon persons of Quality, and have written and spoken scandalous speeches without any License or Approbation of those that ought to peruse and authorize the same, These are therefore to require you to take into yo’r Custody the said Lady Slingsby and Mrs. Aphaw Behen and bring them before mee to answere the said Offence, And for soe doeing this shalbe yo’r sufficient Warr’t. Given und’r my hand and seale this 12’th day of August, 1682.

To Henry Legatt Messenger
of His Mat’ties Chamber, etc.

The lines particularly complained of ran as follows:

of all Treasons, mine was most accurst;
Rebelling ’gainst a KING and FATHER first.
A Sin, which Heav’n nor Man can e’re forgive;
Nor could I Act it with the face to live.
.......
There’s nothing can my Reputation save
With all the True, the Loyal and the Brave;
Not my Remorse or death can Expiate
With them a Treason ’gainst the KING and State.

Coming from the mouth of the perjured Tarpeia they were of course winged with point unmistakable. It is not probable, however, that either authoress or actress was visited with anything more than censure and a fright. In any case their detention[38] (if brought about) must have been very shortliv’d, for the partizans of Monmouth, although noisy and unquiet, were not really strong, and they met with the most effective opposition at every turn.

In this same year the Whigs in spite of their utmost efforts signally failed to suppress, and could only retard the production of Dryden and Lee’s excellent tragedy The Duke of Guise, first performed 4 December. The play created a furore, and its political purport as a picture of the baffled intrigues of Shaftesbury in favour of Lucy Walter’s overweening son is obvious, nor is it rendered less so by Dryden’s clever and caustic Vindication of the Duke of Guise (1683). It is interesting to note that Lady Slingsby, who played the Queen Mother, Catherine de’ Medici, in this play, has some very sardonic speeches put in her mouth; indeed, as Henri III aptly remarks,’she has a cruel wit’.

In 1684 were published the famous Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister. The letters, supposed to have passed between Forde, Lord Grey,[39] and his sister-in-law Lady Henrietta Berkeley, fifth daughter of the Earl, are certainly the work of Mrs. Behn. Romantic and sentimental, with now and again a pretty touch that is almost lyrical in its sweet cadence, they enjoyed the same extraordinary popularity which very similar productions have attained at a recent date. A third edition was called for in 1707.

Mrs. Behn was also busy seeing her poems through the press. The title page is dated 1684, and they were issued with a dedication to the Earl of Salisbury.[40] In the same volume is included her graceful translation of the Abbé Tallemant’s Le Voyage de l’Isle d’Amour, entitled, A Voyage to The Isle of Love.

The following undated letter (preserved at Bayfordbury) addressed to Jacob Tonson, and first published in the Gentleman’s Magazine, May, 1836, pleads hard for an extra payment of five pounds for her book. She writes:—

Deare Mr. Tonson

I am mightly obleg^d to you for y^e service you have don me to Mr. Dryden; in whose esteeme I wou’d chuse to be rather then any bodys in the world; and I am sure I never, in thought, word, or deed merritted other from him, but if you had heard w^t was told me, you wou’d have excus’d all I said on that account. Thank him most infinitly for y^e hon. he offers, and I shall never think I can do any thing that can merritt so vast a glory; and I must owe it all to you if I have it. As for Mr. Creech, I would not have you afflict him w^th a thing can not now be help’d, so never let him know my resentment. I am troubled for y^e line that’s left out of Dr. Garth,[41] and wish yo^r man wou’d write it in y^e margent, at his leasure, to all you sell.

As for y^e verses of mine, I shou’d really have thought ’em worth thirty pound; and I hope you will find it worth 25l; not that I shou’d dispute at any other time for 5 pound wher I am so obleeged; but you can not think w^t a preety thing y^e Island will be, and w^t a deal of labor I shall have yet with it: and if that pleases, I will do the 2nd Voyage, w^ch will compose a little book as big as a novel by it self. But pray speake to yor Bro^r to advance the price to one 5lb more, ’twill at this time be more then given me, and I vow I wou’d not aske it if I did not really believe it worth more. Alas I wou’d not loose my time in such low gettings, but only since I am about it I am resolv’d to go throw w^th it tho I shou’d give it. I pray go about it as soone as you please, for I shall finish as fast as you can go on. Methinks y^e Voyage shou’d com last, as being y^e largest volume. You know Mr. Couly’s Dauid is last, because a large poem, and Mrs. Philips her Plays for y^e same reason. I wish I had more time, I wou’d ad something to y^e verses y^t I have a mind too, but, good deare Mr. Tonson, let it be 5lb more, for I may safly swere I have lost y^e getting of 50lb by it, tho that’s nothing to you, or my satisfaction and humour: but I have been w^thout getting so long y^t I am just on y^e poynt of breaking, espesiall since a body has no creditt at y^e Playhouse for money as we usd to have, fifty or 60 deepe, or more; I want extreamly or I wo’d not urge this.

Yo^rs A. B.

Pray send me y^e loose papers to put to these I have, and let me know w^ch you will go about first, y^e songs and verses or that. Send me an answer to-day.

It is probable that about this date, 1683-4, she penned her little novel The Adventure of the Black Lady, and also that excellent extravaganza The King of Bantam.[42] Both these and The Unfortunate Happy Lady are written as if they had certainly been completed before the death of Charles II, in which case they must have lain by, MSS, in Mrs. Behn’s desk.

The King, at the height of his power, after a short illness, died 6 February, 1685, an event that together with the accession of James naturally evoked a plethora of State Poems, to which flood Mrs. Behn contributed. Her Pindarics rank high amongst the semi-official, complimentary, threnodic or pastoral pseudo-Dithyrambs, of which the age was so bounteous; but it needed the supreme genius of a Dryden sustainedly to instil lyric fire and true poetry into these hybrid forms.[43] The nadir is sounded by the plumbeous productions of Shadwell, Nahum Tate, and ‘Persons of Quality’. Aphra’s Pindarick on the Death of Charles II ran through two editions in 1685, and her Poem to the Queen Dowager Catherine was published the same year. James II was crowned on St. George’s Day, and she greeted her new monarch and old patron with a Poem on the Happy Coronation of His Sacred Majesty. A little later she published a Miscellany of poems by various hands: amongst whom were Etheredge, Edmund Arwaker, Henry Crisp, and Otway, including not a few from her own pen, ‘Together with Reflections on Morality, or Seneca Unmasqued. Translated from the Maximes of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld’, a number of clever apophthegms tersely turned.

The following note,[44] however, affords ample evidence that at this juncture, maugre her diligence and unremitting toils, she was far from being in easy circumstances:—

’Where as I am indebted to Mr. Bags the sum of six pownd for the payment of which Mr. Tonson has obleged him self. Now I do here by impowre Mr. Zachary Baggs, in case the said debt is not fully discharged before Michaelmas next, to stop what money he shall hereafter have in his hands of mine, upon the playing my first play till this aforesaid debt of six pownd be discharged. Witness my hand this 1st August, —85.

A. Behn.’

Early in 1686 a frolicksome comedy of great merit, The Lucky Chance, was produced by her at the Theatre Royal, the home of the United Companies. A Whiggish clique, unable to harm her in any other way, banded together to damn the play and so endeavoured to raise a pudic hubbub, that happily proved quite ineffective. The Lucky Chance, which contends with The Rover (I), and The Feign’d Courtezans for the honour of being Mrs. Behn’s highest flight of comic genius, has scenes admittedly wantoning beyond the bounds of niggard propriety, but all are alive with a careless wit and a brilliant humour that prove quite irresistible. Next appeared those graceful translations from de Bonnecorse’s La Montre ... seconde partie contenant La Boëte et Le Miroir, which she termed The Lover’s Watch and The Lady’s Looking-Glass.

In 1687 the Duke of Albemarle’s voyage to Jamaica[45] to take up the government in the West Indies gave occasion for a Pindaric, but we only have one dramatic piece from Mrs. Behn, The Emperor of the Moon, a capital three act farce, Italian in sentiment and origin. For some little time past her health had begun to trouble her.[46] Her three years of privation and cares had told upon her physically, and since then, ‘forced to write for bread and not ashamed to own it,’ she had spared neither mind nor bodily strength. Graver symptoms appeared, but yet she found time to translate from Fontenelle his version of Van Dale’s De Oraculis Ethnicorum as The History of Oracles and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests, a book of great interest. There was also published in 1687 an edition in stately folio of Æesop’s Fables with his Life in English, French and Latin, ‘illustrated with One hundred and twelve Sculptures’ and ‘Thirty One New Figures representing his Life’, by Francis Barlow, the celebrated draughtsman of birds and animals. Each plate to the Life has a quatrain appended, and each fable with its moral is versified beneath the accompanying picture. In his brief address to the Reader Barlow writes: ‘The Ingenious Mrs. A. Behn has been so obliging as to perform the English Poetry, which in short comprehends the Sense of the Fable and Moral; Whereof to say much were needless, since it may sufficiently recommend it self to all Persons of Understanding.’ To this year we further assign the composition of no fewer than four novels, The Unfortunate Bride, The Dumb Virgin, The Wandering Beauty, The Unhappy Mistake. She was working at high pressure, and 1688 still saw a tremendous literary output. Waller had died 21 October, 1687, at the great age of eighty-one, and her Elegiac Ode to his Memory begins:—

How to thy Sacred Memory, shall I bring
(Worthy thy Fame) a grateful Offering?
I, who by Toils of Sickness, am become
Almost as near as thou art to a Tomb?
While every soft and every tender strain
Is ruffl’d, and ill-natur’d grown with Pain.

This she sent to his daughter-in-law with the following letter[47]:—

Madam,

At such losses as you have sustain’d in that of yo^r Glorious ffather in Law M^r. Waller, the whole world must wait on your sighs & mournings, tho’ we must allow yours to be the more sensible by how much more (above your Sex) you are Mistriss of that Generous Tallent that made him so great & so admird (besids what we will allow as a Relation) tis therfore at your ffeet Madam we ought to lay all those Tributary Garlands, we humbler pretenders to the Muses believe it our Duty to offer at his Tombe—in excuse for mine Madam I can only say I am very ill & have been dying this twelve month, that they want those Graces & that spiritt w^ch possible I might have drest em in had my health & dulling vapors permitted me, howeuer Madam they are left to your finer judgment to determin whether they are worthy the Honour of the Press among those that cellibrat M^r. Wallers great fame, or of being doomed to the fire & whateuer you decree will extreamly sattisfy

Madam

I humbly beg pardon for my yll writing Madam for tis with a Lame hand scarce able to hold a pen.

yo^r most Devoted &
most Obeadient
Seruant
A. Behn.

Her weakness, lassitude, and despondency are more than apparent; yet bravely buckling to her work, and encouraged by her success with Fontenelle, she Englished with rare skill his Theory of the System of Several New Inhabited Worlds, prefixing thereto a first-rate ‘Essay on Translated Prose.’ She shows herself an admirable critic, broad-minded, with a keen eye for niceties of style. The Fair Jilt (licensed 17 April, 1688),[48] Oroonoko, and Agnes de Castro, followed in swift succession. She also published Lycidus, a Voyage from the Island of Love, returning to the Abbé Tallemant’s dainty preciosities. On 10 June, James Francis Edward, Prince of Wales, was born at St. James’s Palace, and Mrs. Behn having already written a Congratulatory Poem[49] to Queen Mary of Modena on her expectation of the Prince, was ready with a Poem on his Happy Birth.

One of the most social and convivial of women, a thorough Tory, well known to Dryden, Creech, Otway and all the leading men of her day, warm helper and ally of every struggling writer, Astrea began to be completely overpowered by the continual strain, the unremittent tax upon both health and time. Overworked and overwrought, in the early months of 1689 she put into English verse the sixth book (of Trees) from Cowley’s Sex Libri Plantarum (1668). Nahum Tate undertook Books IV and V and prefaced the translation when printed. As Mrs. Behn knew no Latin no doubt some friend, perhaps Tate himself, must have paraphrased the original for her. She further published The Lucky Mistake and The History of the Nun; or, The Fair Vow Breaker,[50] licensed 22 October, 1688. On the afternoon of 12 February, Mary, wife of William of Orange, had with great diffidence landed at Whitehall Stairs, and Mrs. Behn congratulated the lady in her Poem To Her Sacred Majesty Queen Mary on her Arrival in England. One regrets to find her writing on such an occasion, and that she realized the impropriety of her conduct is clear from the reference to the banished monarch. But she was weary, depressed, and ill, and had indeed for months past been racked with incessant pain. An agonizing complication of disorders now gave scant hope of recovery. It is in the highest degree interesting to note that during her last sickness Dr. Burnet, a figure of no little importance at that moment, kindly enquired after the dying woman. The Pindaric in which she thanks him, and which was printed March, 1689, proved the last poem she herself saw through the press. At length exhausted nature failed altogether, and she expired 16 April, 1689, the end hastened by a sad lack of skill in her physician. She is buried in the east cloisters of Westminster Abbey. A black marble slab marks the spot. On it are graven ‘Mrs. Aphra Behn Dyed April, 16, A.D. 1689,’ and two lines, ‘made by a very ingenious Gentleman tho’ no Poet’:—[51]

Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be
Defence enough against Mortality.[52]

’She was of a generous and open Temper, something passionate, very serviceable to her Friends in all that was in her Power; and could sooner forgive an Injury, than do one. She had Wit, Honour, Good-Humour, and Judgment. She was Mistress of all the pleasing Arts of Conversation, but us’d ’em not to any but those who love Plain-dealing.’ So she comes before us. A graceful, comely woman,[53] merry and buxom, with brown hair and bright eyes, candid, sincere, a brilliant conversationalist in days when conversation was no mere slipshod gabble of slang but cut and thrust of poignant epigram and repartee; warm-hearted, perhaps too warm-hearted, and ready to lend a helping hand even to the most undeserving, a quality which gathered all Grub Street round her door. At a period when any and every writer, mean or great, of whatsoever merit or party, was continually assailed with vehement satire and acrid lampoons, lacking both truth and decency, Aphra Behn does not come off scot-free, nobody did; and upon occasion her name is amply vilified by her foes. There are some eight ungenerous lines with a side reference to the ‘Conquests she had won’ in Buckingham’s A Trial of the Poets for the Bays, and a page or two of insipid spiritless rhymes, The Female Laureat, find a place in State Poems. The same collection contains A Satyr on the Modern Translators. ‘Odi Imitatores servum pecus,’ &c. By Mr. P——r,[54] 1684. It begins rather smartly:—

Since the united Cunning of the Stage,
Has balk’d the hireling Drudges of the Age;
Since Betterton of late so thrifty ’s grown,
Revives Old Plays, or wisely acts his own;

the modern poets

Have left Stage-practice, chang’d their old Vocations,
Atoning for bad Plays with worse Translations.

In some instances this was true enough, but when the writer attacks Dryden he becomes ridiculous and imprecates

May he still split on some unlucky Coast,
And have his Works or Dictionary lost:
That he may know what Roman Authors mean,
No more than does our blind Translatress Behn,[55]
The Female Wit, who next convicted stands,
Not for abusing Ovid’s verse but Sand’s:
She might have learn’d from the ill-borrow’d Grace,
(Which little helps the Ruin of her Face)
That Wit, like Beauty, triumphs o’er the Heart
When more of Nature’s seen, and less of Art:
Nor strive in Ovid’s Letters to have shown
As much of Skill, as Lewdness in her own.
Then let her from the next inconstant Lover,
Take a new Copy for a second Rover.
Describe the Cunning of a jilting Whore,
From the ill Arts herself has us’d before;
Thus let her write, but Paraphrase no more.

These verses are verjuiced, unwarranted, unfair. Tom Brown too in his Letters from the Dead to the Living has a long epistle ‘From worthy Mrs. Behn the Poetess, to the famous Virgin Actress,’ (Mrs. Bracegirdle), in which the Diana of the stage is crudely rallied. ‘The Virgin’s Answer to Mrs. Behn’ contains allusions to Aphra’s intrigue with some well-known dramatic writer, perhaps Ravenscroft, and speaks of many an other amour beside. But then for a groat Brown would have proved Barbara Villiers a virgin, and taxed Torquemada with unorthodoxy. Brown has yet another gird at Mrs. Behn in his The Late Converts Exposed, or the Reason of Mr. Bays’s Changing his Religion &c. Considered in a Dialogue (1690, a quarto tract; and reprinted in a Collection of Brown’s Dialogues, 8vo, 1704). Says Eugenius: ‘You may remember Mr. Bays, how the famed Astrea, once in her Life-time unluckily lighted upon such a Sacred Subject, and in a strange fit of Piety, must needs attempt a Paraphrase on the Lord’s Prayer. But alas poor Gentlewoman! She had scarce travell’d half way, when Cupid served her as the Cut-Purse did the Old Justice in Bartholmew Fair, tickled her with a Straw in her Ear, and then she could not budge one foot further, till she had humbly requested her Maker to grant her a private Act of Toleration for a little Harmless Love, otherwise called Fornication.’ There is a marginal note to this passage: ‘Mrs. Behn’s Miscell. Printed by Jos. Hindmarsh.’ In a Letter from the Dead Thomas Brown to the Living Heraclitus (1704), a sixpenny tract, this wag is supposed to meet Mrs. Behn in the underworld, and anon establishes himself on the most familiar terms with his ‘dear Afra’; they take, indeed, ‘an extraordinary liking to one another’s Company’ for ‘good Conversation is not so overplentiful in these Parts.’ A bitterer attack yet, An Epistle to Julian (c. 1686-7), paints her as ill, feeble, dying:—

Doth that lewd Harlot, that Poetick Quean,
Fam’d through White Fryars, you know who I mean,
Mend for reproof, others set up in spight,
To flux, take glisters, vomits, purge and write.
Long with a Sciatica she’s beside lame,
Her limbs distortur’d, Nerves shrunk up with pain,
And therefore I’ll all sharp reflections shun,
Poverty, Poetry, Pox, are plagues enough for one.

In truth, Aphra Behn’s life was not one of mere pleasure, but a hard struggle against overwhelming adversity, a continual round of work. We cannot but admire the courage of this lonely woman, who, poor and friendless, was the first in England to turn to the pen for a livelihood, and not only won herself bread but no mean position in the world of her day and English literature of all time. For years her name to a new book, a comedy, a poem, an essay from the French, was a word to conjure with for the booksellers. There are anecdotes in plenty. Some true, some not so reliable. She is said to have introduced milk-punch into England.[56] We are told that she could write a page of a novel or a scene of a play in a room full of people and yet hold her own in talk the while.[57] Her popularity was enormous, and edition after edition of her plays and novels was called for.

In 1690, there was brought out on the stage a posthumous comedy, The Widow Ranter.[58] But without her supervision, it was badly cast, the script was mauled, and it failed. In 1696 Charles Gildon, who posed as her favourite protégé (and edited her writings), gave The Younger Brother. He had, however, himself tampered with the text. The actors did it scant justice and it could not win a permanent place in the theatrical repertory. In May, 1738, The Gentleman’s Magazine published The Apotheosis of Milton, a paper, full of interest, which ran through several numbers. It is a Vision, in which the writer, having fallen asleep in Westminster Abbey, is conducted by a Genius into a spacious hall, ‘sacred to the Spirits of the Bards, whose Remains are buried, or whose Monuments are erected within this Pile. To night an Assembly of the greatest Importance is held upon the Admission of the Great Milton into this Society.’ The Poets accordingly appear either in the habits which they were wont to wear on earth, or in some suitable attire. We have Chaucer, Drayton, Beaumont, Ben Jonson, and others who are well particularized, but when we get to the laureates and critics of a later period there are some really valuable touches. In 1738 there must have been many alive who could well remember Dryden, Shadwell, Otway, Prior, Philips, Sheffield Duke of Buckinghamshire, Dennis, Atterbury, Lee, Congreve, Rowe, Addison, Betterton, Gay. In the course of his remarks the guide exclaims to the visitor: ‘Observe that Lady dressed in the loose Robe de Chambre with her Neck and Breasts bare; how much Fire in her Eye! what a passionate Expression in her Motions; And how much Assurance in her Features! Observe what an Indignant Look she bestows on the President [Chaucer], who is telling her, that none of her Sex has any Right to a Seat there. How she throws her Eyes about, to see if she can find out any one of the Assembly who inclines to take her Part. No! not one stirs; they who are enclined in her favour are overawed, and the rest shake their Heads; and now she flings out of the Assembly. That extraordinary Woman is Afra Behn.’ The passage is not impertinent, even though but as showing how early condemnatory tradition had begun to incrustate around Astrea. Fielding, however, makes his Man of the World tell a friend that the best way for a man to improve his intellect and commend himself to the ladies is by a course of Mrs. Behn’s novels. With the oncoming of the ponderous and starched decorum of the third George’s reign her vogue waned apace, but she was still read and quoted. On 12 December, 1786, Horace Walpole writes to the Countess of Upper Ossory, ‘I am going to Mrs. Cowley’s new play,[59] which I suppose is as instructive as the Marriage of Figaro, for I am told it approaches to those of Mrs. Behn in Spartan delicacy; but I shall see Miss Farren, who, in my poor opinion is the first of all actresses.’ Sir Walter Scott admired and praised her warmly. But the pinchbeck sobriety of later times was unable to tolerate her freedom. She was condemned in no small still voice as immoral, loose, scandalous; and writer after writer, leaving her unread, reiterated the charge till it passed into a byword of criticism, and her works were practically taboo in literature, a type and summary of all that was worst and foulest in Restoration days. The absurdities and falsity or this extreme are of course patent now, and it was inevitable the recoil should come.

It is a commonplace to say that her novels are a landmark in the history of fiction. Even Macaulay allowed that the best of Defoe was ‘in no respect... beyond the reach of Afra Behn’. Above all Oroonoko can be traced directly and indirectly, perhaps unconsciously, in many a descendant. Without assigning her any direct influence on Wilberforce, much of the feeling of this novel is the same as inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe. She has been claimed to be the literary ancestress of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Chateaubriand; nor is it any exaggeration to find Byron and Rousseau in her train. Her lyrics, it has been well said, are often of ‘quite bewildering beauty’, but her comedies represent her best work and she is worthy to be ranked with the greatest dramatists of her day, with Vanbrugh and Etheredge; not so strong as Wycherley, less polished than Congreve. Such faults as she has are obviously owing to the haste with which circumstances compelled her to write her scenes. That she should ever recover her pristine reputation is of course, owing to the passing of time with its change of manners, fashions, thought and style, impossible. But there is happily every indication that —long neglected and traduced—she will speedily vindicate for herself, as she is already beginning to do, her rightful claim to a high and honourable place in our glorious literature.

[The Text.]

The text of the dramatic work is primarily based upon the edition of 1724, four volumes, by far the best and most reliable edition of the collected theatre. Each play, however, has been carefully collated with the original quartos, some of which are of excessive rarity, and if, in the case of any divergence, the later reading is preferred, reason why is given in the Textual Notes upon that specific passage. To the Dramatis Personae are in each case added those characters which hitherto were negligently omitted: I have, further, consistently numbered the scenes and supplied (where necessary) the locales. In the order of the plays the 1724 edition has been followed as preserving the traditional and accepted arrangement. The only change herein made is the transferring of The Emperor of the Moon from Vol. IV to Vol. Ill, and the placing of The Amorous Prince before The Widow Ranter, so that the two posthumous plays may thus be found in their due order together at the end of Vol. IV.

With regard to metrical division, I have (unless a special note on any one particular line draws attention to the contrary) in this difficult matter followed the first quartos, as at this point 1724 proves not so satisfactory, and prints much as prose which the earlier separate editions give as verse. A notable instance may be found in The Amorous Prince. To the above rule I adhere so strictly as even not to divide into lines several scenes in The Widow Ranter and The Younger Brother which are palpably blank verse, but yet which are not so set in the quartos of 1690 and 1696. I felt that the metrical difficulties and kindred questions involved were so capable of almost infinite variations, that to attempt a new and decisive text in this matter would not merely be hazardous but also unproductive of any real benefit or ultimately permanent result.

The valuable Dedications and Prefaces, never before given in the collected editions, are here reprinted for the first time from the originals. With regard to the novels the first separate edition has in every case been collated. When impossible, however, so to do (as in the exception of Oroonoko), the earliest accessible text has been taken, and if any difficulty arose, all editions of any value whatsoever were likewise consulted. For La Montre (The Lover’s Watch), the original edition of 1686 was used. Any difference in text which has been adopted from later editions is duly noted in the textual apparatus to that piece. The Poems have in every case been printed from the first—which are generally the only—editions. Where they appeared as broadsides, these, when traceable, have been collated.

[ The Portraits Of Mrs. Behn.]

Of Mrs. Behn there exist three portraits, one by Mary Beale, a second by John Riley, and the third by Sir Peter Lely.

The Beale portrait has been engraved: ‘Aphra Behn. From a Picture by Mary Beale in the collection of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham. Drawn by T. Uwins. Engraved by J. Fittler, A.R.A. London. 1 March, 1822. Published by W. Walker, 8 Grays Inn Square.’ The original oil painting was purchased at the Stow Sale in 1848 (No. 57 in the sale catalogue), by J. S. Caldwell, a literary antiquarian, Linley Wood, Staffordshire. A letter which I wrote to The Times Literary Supplement (26 November, 1914) on the subject of these portraits brought me a most courteous permission from Major-General F. C. Heath Caldwell, the present owner of Linley Wood, to view the picture.

With regard to the well-known and most frequently reproduced portrait by Riley, this, engraved by R. Wise, figures as frontispiece to The Unfortunate Bride (title page, 1700, and second title page, 1698). It is also given before the Novels (1696, 1698, and other editions). Engraved by B. Cole, the same portrait fronts the Plays, 4 vols., 1724, and the Novels, 2 vols., 1735. It again appears ‘H. R. Cook, Sculp.’, published 1 August, 1813, by I. W. H. Payne, when it was included as an illustration to the Lady’s Monthly Museum.

The portrait by Sir Peter Lely, which is reproduced as frontispiece to this edition of Mrs. Behn, was exhibited at the South Kensington Portrait Exhibition of 1866 by Philip Howard, Esq., of Corby Castle, the head of the Corby branch of the Howard family.

The portrait of Mrs. Behn which appears as frontispiece to the Plays, 2 vols., 1716, is none other than Christina of Sweden from Sebastian Bourdon’s drawing now in the Louvre.

A so-called portrait of Mrs. Behn, ‘pub. Rob’t Wilkinson’, no date, is of no value, being, at best, a bad pastiche from some very poor engraving.

[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”.’

[7.] Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1660-1720), sometime Maid of Honour to Queen Mary of Modena. She had true lyric genius. For a generous appreciation see Gosse, Gossip in a Library (1891).

[8.] Then unprinted but now included in the very voluminous edition of Lady Winchilsea’s Poems, ed. M. Reynolds, Chicago, 1903.

[9.] In ‘Mrs. Behn’s Oroonoko’ Dr. Bernbaum elaborately endeavours to show that this story is pure fiction. His arguments, in many cases advanced with no little subtlety and precision, do not appear (to me at least) to be convincing. We have much to weigh in the contrary balance: Mrs. Behn’s manifest first-hand knowledge of, and extraordinary interest in, colonial life; her reiterated asseverations that every experience detailed in this famous novel is substantially true; the assent of all her contemporaries. It must further be remembered that Aphra was writing in 1688, of a girlhood coloured by and seen through the enchanted mists of a quarter of a century. That there are slight discrepancies is patent; the exaggerations, however, are not merely pardonable but perfectly natural. One of Dr. Bernbaum’s most crushing arguments, when sifted, seems to resolve itself into the fact that whilst writing Oroonoko Mrs. Behn evidently had George Warren’s little book, An Impartial Description of Surinam (London, 1667), at hand. Could anything be more reasonable than to suppose she would be intimately acquainted with a volume descriptive of her girlhood’s home? Again, Dr. Bernbaum bases another line of argument on the assumption that Mrs. Behn’s father was a barber. Hence the appointment of such a man to an official position in Surinam was impossible, and, ‘if Mrs. Behn’s father was not sent to Surinam, the only reason she gives for being there disappears’. We know from recent investigation that John Amis did not follow a barber’s trade, but was probably of good old stock. Accordingly, the conclusions drawn by Dr. Bernbaum from this point cannot now be for a moment maintained.

[10.] Both these incidents are the common property of Italian novelle and our own stage. Although not entirely impossible, they would appear highly suspicious in any connection.

[11.] He was at Margate 25 July, and at Bruges 7 August.

[12.] There do not appear to be any grounds for the oft-repeated assertions that Mrs. Behn communicated the intelligence when the Dutch were planning an attack (afterwards carried out) on the Thames and Medway squadrons, and that her warning was scoffed at.

[13.] Had he been imprisoned for political reasons it is impossible that there should have been so speedy a prospect of release.

[14.] Baptist May, Esq. (1629-98), Keeper of the Privy Purse.

[15.] William Chiffinch, confidential attendant and pimp to Charles II.

[16.] Amintas repeatedly stands for John Hoyle. In Our Cabal, however (vide Vol. VI, p. 160), Hoyle is dubbed Lycidas.

[17.] The Retrospective Review, however (Vol. I, November, 1852), has an article, ‘Mrs. Behn’s Dramatic Writings,’ which warmly praises her comedies. The writer very justly observes that ‘they exhibit a brilliance of conversation in the dialogue, and a skill in arranging the plot and producing striking situations, in which she has few equals.’ He frequently insists upon her ‘great skill in conducting the intrigue of her pieces’, and with no little acumen declares that ‘her comedies may be cited as the most perfect models of the drama of the latter half of the seventeenth century.’

[18.] Which it certainly was not secundum mid-Victorian morals.

[19.] Mr. Gosse in the Dictionary of National Biography basing upon the preface to The Young King, says that after knocking in vain for some time at the doors of the theatres with this tragi-comedy that could find neither manager nor publisher, she put it away and wrote The Forc’d Marriage, which proved more successful. Dr. Baker follows this, but I confess I cannot see due grounds for any such hypothesis.

[20.] The Duke’s Company opened at their new theatre, Dorset Garden, 9 November, 1671.

[21.] 4to, 1673. Mrs. Behn’s accurate knowledge of the theatre and technicalties theatrical as shown in the preface to this early play is certainly remarkable. It is perhaps worth noting that her allusion to the popularity of 1 Henry IV was not included in Shakspere Allusion-Book (ed. Furnivall and Munro, 1909), where it should have found a place.

[22.] In view of the extremely harsh treatment Ravenscroft has met with at the hands of the critics it may be worth while emphasizing Genest’s opinion that his ‘merit as a dramatic writer has been vastly underrated’. Ravenscroft has a facility in writing, an ease of dialogue, a knack of evoking laughter and picturing the ludicrous, above all a vitality which many a greater name entirely lacks. As a writer of farce, and farce very nearly akin to comedy, he is capital.

[23.] Letters from the Dead to the Living: The Virgin’s [Mrs. Bracegirdle] Answer to Mrs. Behn. ‘You upbraid me with a great discovery you chanc’d to make by peeping into the breast of an old friend of mine; if you give yourself but the trouble of examining an old poet’s conscience, who went lately off the stage, and now takes up his lodgings in your territories, and I don’t question but you’ll there find Mrs. Behn writ as often in black characters, and stand as thick in some places, as the names of the generation of Adam in the first of Genesis.’ How far credence may be given to anything of Brown’s is of course a moot point, but the above passage and much that follows would be witless and dull unless there were some real suggestion of scandal. Moreover, it cannot here be applied to Hoyle, whereas it very well fits Ravenscroft. This letter which speaks of ‘the lash of Mr. C——r’ must have been written no great time after the publication of Jeremy Collier’s A Short View of the Immorality of the English Stage (March, 1698), probably in 1701-2. Ravenscroft’s last play, The Italian Husband, was produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1697, and he is supposed to have died a year or two later, which date exactly suits the detail given by Brown. Ravenscroft’s first play, Mamamouchi, had been produced in 1672, and the ‘an old poet’ would be understood.

[24.] This occurrence is the subject of some lines in The Rump (1662): ‘On the happy Memory of Alderman Hoyle that hang’d himself.’

[25.] The Muses Mercury, December, 1707, refers to verses made on Mrs. Behn ‘and her very good friend, Mr. Hoyle’.

[26.] My attention was drawn to these lines by Mr. Thorn Drury, who was, indeed, the first to suggest that Hoyle is the person aimed at. I have to thank him, moreover, for much valuable information on this important point.

[27.] cf. Luttrell’s Diary, February, 1686-7, which records that an indictment for misconduct was actually presented against him at the Old Bailey, but the Grand Jury threw out the bill and he was discharged. The person implicated in the charge against Hoyle seems to have been a poulterer, cf. A Faithful Catalogue of our Most Eminent Ninnies, said to have been written by the Earl of Dorset in 1683, or (according to another edition of Rochester’s works in which it occurs) 1686. In any case the verses cannot be earlier than 1687.

Which made the wiser Choice is now our Strife,
Hoyle his he-mistress, or the Prince his wife:
Those traders sure will be beiov’d as well,
As all the dainty tender Birds they sell.

The ‘Prince’ is George Fitzroy, son of Charles II by the Duchess of Cleveland, who was created Duke of Northumberland and married Catherine, daughter of Robert Wheatley, a poulterer, of Bracknell, Berks; and relict of Robert Lucy of Charlecote, Warwickshire.

[28.] Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry, etc. There are several editions. I have used that of 1718, 2 vols.

[29.] In his MS. Commonplace Book (now in the possession of G. Thorn Drury, Esq., K.C.), Whitelocke Bulstrode writes:—

’27 May 92.

’M^r Hoyle of y’e Temple, coming this morning about two of y^e Clock frõ y^e Young Divel Tavern, was killed w^th a sword; He died Instantly: It proceeded frõ a quarrell about Drincking a Health; Killed by M^r Pitt of Graies Inne y^t Dranck w^th them. M^r Hoyle was an Atheist, a Sodomite professed, a corrupter of youth, & a Blasphemer of Christ.’

The Young (or Little) Devil Tavern was in Fleet Street, on the south side, near Temple Bar, adjoining Dick’s Coffee House. It was called Young (or Little) to distinguish it from the more famous house, The Devil (or Old Devil) Tavern, which stood between Temple Bar and the Inner Temple Gate.

[30.] Betterton’s adaption of Marston’s The Dutch Courtezan, which the actor calls The Revenge; or, A Match in Newgate, has sometimes been erroneously ascribed to Mrs. Behn by careless writers. She has also been given The Woman Turn’d Bully, a capital comedy with some clever characterization, which was produced at Dorset Garden in June, 1675, and printed without author’s name the same year. Both Prologue and Epilogue, two pretty songs, Oh, the little Delights that a Lover takes; and Ah, how charming is the shade, together with a rollicking catch ‘O London, wicked London-Town!’ which is ‘to be sung a l’yvronge, in a drunken humour’, might all well be Mrs. Behn’s, and the whole conduct of the play is very like her early manner. Beyond this, however, there is no evidence to suggest it is from her pen.

[31.] The overture, act-tunes, incidental music, were composed by Henry Purcell.

[32.] Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry, etc., Vol. I (1718), pp. 31-2.

[33.] Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperor of the Turks, produced in 1696 (410, 1696), a commendable tragedy by Mrs. Mary Pix, née Griffiths (1666-1720?). The plot is based on Sir Paul Ricaut’s continuation of the Turkish history.

[34.] The date is fixed by the Epilogue ‘at his R.H. second exile into Flanders’. The Duke of York sailed for Antwerp 4 March, 1679. He returned in August owing to the King’s illness.

[35.] This fact sufficiently explodes the quite untenable suggestion that The Young King in earlier days could find neither producer nor publisher. That the quarto did not appear until four years after the play had been seen on the stage is no argument of non-success. Ravenscroft’s Mamamouchi was produced early in 1672, and ‘continu’d Acting 9 Days with a full house’. It specially delighted the King and Court. It was not printed, however, until 1675.

[36.] Gould in The Play House, a Satyr, stung by Mrs. Behn’s success, derides that

clean piece of Wit
The City Heiress by chaste Sappho Writ,
Where the Lewd Widow comes with Brazen Face,
Just seeking from a Stallion’s rank Embrace,
T’ acquaint the Audience with her Filthy Case.
Where can you find a Scene for juster Praise,
In Shakespear, Johnson, or in Fletcher’s Plays?

[37.] Publication was delayed. Brooks’ Impartial Mercury, Friday, 17 Nov., 1682, advertises: ‘To be published on Monday next, the last new play called Romulus.’ The 4to is dated 1683. A broad sheet, 1682, gives both Prologue ‘spoken by Mrs. Butler, written by Mrs. Behn,’ and Epilogue ‘spoken by the Lady Slingsby.’ The 4to gives ‘Prologue, spoken by Mrs. Butler,’ ‘Epilogue, Writ by Mrs. A. Behn. Spoken by Tarpeia.’

[38.] Curtis’ Protestant Mercury, August 12-6, 1682, notices that both Lady Slingsby and Mrs. Behn have been ordered into custody in respect of this Epilogue.

[39.] Forde, Lord Grey of Werke, Earl of Tankerville, who succeeded to the title in 1675, was married to Lady Mary Berkeley. He eloped, however, with Lady Henrietta Berkley, and great scandal ensued. When he and his minions were brought to trial, 23 November, 1682, his mistress and a number of staunch Whigs boldly accompanied him into court. He was found guilty, but as his friends banded together to resist, something very like a riot ensued. He died 25 June, 1701. Lady Henrietta Berkeley, who never married, survived her lover nine years.

[40.]

Astrea with her soft gay sighing Swains
And rural virgins on the flowery Plains,
The lavish Peer’s profuseness may reprove
Who gave her Guineas for the Isle of Love.

—Contemporary Satire,—(Harleian MSS.)

[41.] This of course cannot be correct, but it is so transcribed. In the transcript of this letter made by Malone, and now in the possession of G. Thorn Drury, Esq., K.C., over the word ‘Garth’s’ is written ‘Q’, and at the foot of the page a note by Mitford says: ‘This name seems to have been doubtful in the MSS.’ I have thought it best not to attempt any emendation.

[42.] Neither of these was printed until eight years after her death. They first appear, each with its separate title page, 1697, bound up in the Third Edition, ‘with Large Additions,’ of All the Histories and Novels, Written by the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn, Entire in One Volume, 1698. After Nos. vii, viii, ix, Memoirs of the Court of the King of Bantam, The Nun; or, the Perjured Beauty, The Adventure of the Black Lady follows a note: ‘These last three never before published.’ Some superficial bibliographers (e.g. Miss Charlotte E. Morgan in her unreliable monograph, The English Novel till 1749) have postulated imaginary editions of 1683-4 for The Little Black Lady and The King of Bantam. The Nun; or, the Perjured Beauty is universally confounded with The History of the Nun (vide Vol. V, p. 259, Introduction to that novel) and dated 1689.

With reference to The King of Bantam we have in the 1698 collected edition of the Novels the following ’Advertisement to the Reader. The Stile of the Court of the King of Bantam, being so very different from Mrs. Behn’s usual way of Writing, it may perhaps call its being genuine in Question; to obviate which Objection, I must inform the Reader, that it was a Trial of Skill upon a Wager, to shew that she was able to write in the Style of the Celebrated Scarron, in Imitation of whom ’tis writ, tho’ the Story be true. I need not say any thing of the other Two, they evidently confessing their admirable Author.’

[43.] Swift, although he amply fulfilled Dryden’s famous prophecy, ‘Cousin Swift, you will never be a Pindaric poet’, was doubtless thinking of these Pindarics when in The Battle of the Books he wrote: ‘Then Pindar slew ——, and ——, and Oldham, and ——, and Afra the Amazon light of foot.’

[44.] First published in The Gentleman’s Magazine, May, 1836.

[45.] Christopher Monck, second Duke of Albermarle, was appointed Governor-General of Jamaica, 26 November, 1687. He died there early in the following autumn.

[46.] ’Sappho famous for her Gout and Guilt,’ writes Gould in The Poetess, a Satyr.

[47.] Now published for the first time by the courtesy of G. Thorn Drury, Esq., K.C., who generously obliged me with a transcript of the original.

[48.] In the original edition of The Fair Jilt (1688), we have advertised: ‘There is now in the Press, Oroonoko; or, The History of the Royal Slave. Written by Madam Behn.’

[49.] In the second edition (1688), of this Congratulatory Poem to Queen Mary of Modena we have the following advertisement:—’On Wednesday next will be Published the most Ingenious and long Expected History of Oroonoko; or, the Royal Slave. By Mrs. Behn.’

[50.] The title page has 1689, but it was possibly published late in 1688.

[51.] Traditionally said to be John Hoyle.

[52.] Sam Briscoe, the publisher, in his Dedicatory Epistle to Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry, etc. (2 vols., 1718), says: ‘Had the rough Days of K. Charles II newly recover’d from the Confusion of a Civil War, or the tempestuous Time of James the Second, had the same Sence of Wit as our Gentlemen now appear to have, the first Impressions of Milton’s Paradise Lost had never been sold for Waste Paper; the Inimitable Hudibras had never suffered the Miseries of a Neglected Cavalier; Tom Brown the merriest and most diverting’st man, had never expir’d so neglected; Mr. Dryden’s Religion would never have lost him his Pension; or Mrs. Behn ever had but two Lines upon her Grave-stone.’

[53.] ‘She was a most beautiful woman, and a more excellent poet’. Col. Colepeper. Adversaria, Vol. ii (Harleian MSS.)

[54.] This piece finds a place in the unauthorised edition of Prior’s Poems, 1707, a volume the poet himself repudiated. In the Cambridge edition of Prior’s Works (1905-7), reason is given, however, to show that the lines are certainly Prior’s, and that he withdrew this and other satires (says Curll, the bookseller), owing to ‘his great Modesty’. The Horatian tag (Epistles i, xiv, 19) is of course ‘O Imitatores servum pecus’.

[55.] In his Preface Concerning Ovid’s Epistles affixed to the translation of the Heroides (Ovid’s Epistles), ‘by Several Hands’ (1680), Dryden writes: ‘The Reader will here find most of the Translations, with some little Latitude or variation from the Author’s Sence: That of Oenone to Paris, is in Mr. Cowley’s way of Imitation only. I was desir’d to say that the Author who is of the Fair Sex, understood not Latine. But if she does not, I am afraid she has given us occasion to be asham’d who do.’

[56.] ‘Old Mr. John Bowman, the player, told me that Mrs. Behn was the First Person he ever knew or heard of who made the Liquor call’d Milk Punch.’—Oldys; MS. note in Langbaine. In a tattered MS. recipe book, the compilation of a good housewife named Mary Rockett, and dated 1711, the following directions are given how to brew this tipple. ‘To make Milk Punch. Infuse the rinds of 8 Lemons in a Gallon of Brandy 48 hours then add 5 Quarts of Water and 2 pounds of Loaf Sugar then Squize the Juices of all the Lemons to these Ingredients add 2 Quarts of new milk Scald hot stirring the whole till it crudles grate in 2 Nutmegs let the whole infuse 1 Hour then refine through a flannel Bag.’

[57.] ‘She always Writ with the greatest ease in the world, and that in the midst of Company, and Discourse of other matters. I saw her my self write Oroonoko, and keep her own in Discoursing with several then present in the Room.’—Gildon: An Account of the Life of the Incomparable Mrs. Behn, prefixed to The Younger Brother (4to 1696). Southerne says, with reference to Oroonoko, ‘That she always told his Story, more feelingly than she writ it.’

[58.] It is ushered in by one ‘G. J. her friend’. This was almost certainly George Jenkins.

[59.] The School for Greybeards, produced at Drury Lane, 25 November, 1786. It owes much of its business to The Lucky Chance. See the Theatrical History of that comedy (Vol. iii, p. 180). Miss Farren acted Donna Seraphina, second wife of Don Alexis, one of the Greybeards. She also spoke the epilogue.

[Explanation of “Notes”]

In the printed book, all Notes were grouped at the end of the volume in two sections: “Notes on the Plays” and “Notes: Critical and Explanatory”. Passages cited were identified only by page and line number.

For this e-text, the Notes have been placed after their respective plays, retaining the division between textual notes (generally short, one or two lines) and critical notes (often several paragraphs). The original page numbers are shown in brackets [ ].

References to Acts and Scenes were added by the transcriber. Page and line numbers have been retained for completeness, but all links lead directly to the cited text. Annotated passages are identified in the body text with two kinds of link: dotted underlining for “Notes on the Plays”; solid underlining for “Notes: Critical and Explanatory”. Passages that have both kinds of note are linked to the critical note.

[THE ROVER]; OR,
THE BANISH’D CAVALIERS.
PART I.

Scenes described in (parentheses) are unnumbered.

[ARGUMENT.]

During the exile of Charles II a band of cavaliers, prominent amongst whom are Willmore (the Rover), Belvile, Frederick, and Ned Blunt, find themselves at Naples in carnival time. Belvile, who at a siege at Pampluna has rescued a certain Florinda and her brother Don Pedro, now loves the lady, and the tender feeling is reciprocated. Florinda’s father, however, designs her for the elderly Vincentio, whilst her brother would have her marry his friend Antonio, son to the Viceroy. Florinda, her sister Hellena (who is intended for the veil), their cousin Valeria, and duenna Callis surreptitiously visit the carnival, all in masquerade, and there encounter the cavaliers. Florinda arranges to meet Belvile that night at her garden-gate. Meanwhile a picture of Angelica Bianca, a famous courtezan, is publicly exposed, guarded by bravos. Antonio and Pedro dispute who shall give the 1000 crowns she demands, and come to blows. After a short fray Willmore, who has boldly pulled down the picture, is admitted to the house, and declares his love, together with his complete inability to pay the price she requires. Angelica, none the less, overcome with passion, yields to him. Shortly after, meeting Hellena in the street, he commences an ardent courtship, which is detected by the jealous Angelica, who has followed him vizarded. Florinda that night at the garden-gate encounters Willmore, who, having been toping in the town, is far from sober, and her cries at his advances attract her brother and servants, whom she eludes by escaping back to the house. After a brawl, Willmore has to endure the reproaches of Belvile, who has appeared on the scene. During their discussion Antonio makes as about to enter Angelica’s house before which they are, and Willmore, justling him to one side, wounds him. He falls, and the officers who run up at the clash of swords, arrest Belvile, who has returned at the noise, as the assailant, conveying him by Antonio’s orders to the Viceroy’s palace. Antonio, in the course of conversation, resigns Florinda to his rival, and Belvile, disguised as Antonio, obtains Florinda from Don Pedro. At this moment Willmore accosts him, and the Spaniard perceiving his mistake, soon takes his sister off home. Angelica next comes in hot pursuit of Willmore, but they are interrupted by Hellena, dressed as a boy, who tells a tale of the Rover’s amour with another dame and so rouses the jealous courtezan to fury, and the twain promptly part quarrelling. Florinda, meanwhile, who has escaped from her brother, running into an open house to evade detection, finds herself in Ned Blunt’s apartments. Blunt, who is sitting half-clad, and in no pleasant mood owing to his having been tricked of clothes and money and turned into the street by a common cyprian, greets her roughly enough, but is mollified by the present of a diamond ring. His friends and Don Pedro, come to laugh at his sorry case, now force their way into the chamber, and Florinda, whom her brother finally resigns to Belvile, is discovered. She is straightway united to her lover by a convenient priest. Willmore is then surprised by the apparition of Angelica, who, loading him with bitter reproaches for his infidelity, is about to pistol him, when she is disarmed by Antonio, and accordingly parts in a fury of jealous rage, to give place to Hellena who adroitly secures her Rover in the noose of matrimony.

[SOURCE.]

The entire plan and many details of both parts of The Rover are taken openly and unreservedly from Tom Killigrew’s Thomaso, or The Wanderer, an unacted comedy likewise in two parts, published for the first time in his collected works by Henry Herringman (folio, 1663-4). It is to be noticed, however, that whilst Killigrew’s work is really one long play of ten closely consecutive acts, the scene of which is continually laid in Madrid, without any break in time or action, Mrs. Behn, on the other hand, admirably contrives that each separate part of The Rover is complete and possesses perfect unity in itself, the locale being respectively, and far more suitably, in two several places, Naples and Madrid, rather than confined to the latter city alone. Mrs. Behn, moreover, introduces new characters and a new intrigue in her second part, thus not merely sustaining but even renewing the interest which in Thomaso jades and flags most wearily owing to the author’s prolixity and diffuseness.

Killigrew, a royalist to the core, participated in the protracted exile of Charles II, and devoting this interim to literature, wrote Thomaso whilst at Madrid, probably about the year 1654-5. Although undeniably interesting in a high degree, and not ill written, it shares in no small measure the salient faults of his other productions, boundless and needless verbosity, slowness of action, unconscionable length.

For all its wit and cleverness, such blemishes would, without trenchant cutting, have been more than sufficient to prohibit it from any actual performance, and, indeed, Thomaso may be better described as a dramatic romance than a comedy intended for the boards. Clumsy and gargantuan speeches, which few actors could have even memorized, and none would have ventured to utter on the stage, abound in every scene. This lack of technical acumen (unless, as may well be the case, Killigrew wrote much of these plays without any thought of presentation) is more than surprising in an author so intimately connected with the theatre and, after the Restoration, himself manager of the King’s Company.

Nor is Thomaso without its patent plagiarisms. Doubtless no small part is simply autobiographical adventuring, but, beside many a reminiscence of the later Jacobeans, Killigrew has conveyed entire passages and lyrics wholesale without attempt at disguise. Thus the song, ‘Come hither, you that love,’ Act ii, Scene 3, is from Fletcher’s Captain, Act iv, the scene in Lelia’s chamber. Again, the procedure and orations of Lopus the mountebank are but the flimsiest alterations of Volpone, Act ii, Scene I, nor could Killigrew change Jonson for anything but the worse. He has even gone so far as to name his quack’s spouse Celia, a distinct echo of Corvino’s wife.

In dealing with these two plays Mrs. Behn has done a great deal more than merely fit the pieces for the stage. Almost wholly rewriting them, she has infused into the torpid dialogue no small portion of wit and vivacity, whilst the characters, prone to devolve into little better than prosy and wooden marionettes, with only too apparent wires, are given life, vigour movement, individuality and being. In fact she has made the whole completely and essentially her own. In some cases the same names are retained. We find Phillipo, Sancho, Angelica Bianca, Lucetta, Callis, in Killigrew. But as Willmore is a different thing altogether to Thomaso, so Ned Blunt is an infinitely more entertaining figure than his prototype Edwardo. Amongst other details Killigrew, oddly and stupidly enough, gives his English gentlemen foreign names:—Thomaso, Ferdinando, Rogero, Harrigo[*]. This jar is duly corrected in The Rover.

Mrs. Behn has further dealt with the Lucetta intrigue in a far more masterly way than Killigrew’s clumsily developed episode. In Thomaso it occupies a considerable space, and becomes both tedious and brutally unpleasant. The apt conclusion of the amour in The Rover with Blunt’s parlous mishap is originally derived from Boccaccio, Second Day, Novel 5, where a certain Andreuccio finds himself in the same unsavoury predicament as the Essex squireen. However, even this was by no means new to the English stage. In Blurt Master Constable, Lazarillo de Tormes, at the house of the courtezan Imperia, meets with precisely the same accident, Act iii, Scene 3, Act iv, Scenes 2 and 3, and it is probable that Mrs. Behn did not go directly to the Decameron but drew upon Middleton, of whom she made very ample use on another occasion, borrowing for The City Heiress no small portion of A Mad World, My Masters, and racily reproducing in extenso therefrom Sir Bounteous Progress, Dick Folly-Wit, the mock grandee, and that most excellent of all burglaries good enough for Fielding at his best.

In dealing with Thomaso Astrea did not hesitate, with manifest advantage, to transfer incidents from Part II to Part I, and vice versa. Correcting, pruning, augmenting, enlivening, rewriting, she may indeed (pace the memory of the merry jester of Charles II) be well said to have clothed dry bones with flesh, and to have given her creation a witty and supple tongue.

[*] There is a strange commixture here. The character is familiarly addressed as ‘Hal’, the scene is Madrid, and he rejoices in the Milanese (not Italian) nomenclature Arrigo = Henry in that dialect.

[THEATRICAL HISTORY.]

The first part of The Rover was produced at the Duke’s House, Dorset Gardens, in the summer of 1677, and licensed for printing on 2 July of the same year. It met, as it fully deserved, with complete success, and remained one of the stock plays of the company. Smith, the original Willmore, and the low comedian Underhill as Blunt were especially renowned in their respective rôles. Another famous Willmore was Will Mountford, of whom Dibdin relates, ‘When he played Mrs. Behn’s dissolute character of The Rover, it was remarked by many, and particularly by Queen Mary, that it was dangerous to see him act, he made vice so alluring.’

Amongst the more notable representations of the eighteenth century we find:— Drury Lane; 18 February, 1703. Willmore by Wilks; Hellena, Mrs. Oldfield; repeated on 15 October of the same year. Haymarket; 20 January, 1707. Willmore by Verbruggen; Blunt, Underhill; Hellena, Mrs. Bracegirdle; Angelica, Mrs. Barry; Florinda, Mrs. Bowman. Drury Lane; 22 April, 1708. Willmore by Wilks; Blunt, Estcourt; Frederick, Cibber; Hellena, Mrs. Oldfield; Angelica, Mrs. Barry; Florinda, Mrs. Porter. Drury Lane; 30 December, 1715. Willmore, Wilks; Blunt, Johnson; Hellena, Mrs. Mountfort; Angelica, Mrs. Porter. Drury Lane; 6 March, 1716. Don Pedro, Quin; Frederick, Ryan; Florinda, Mrs. Horton. Lincoln’s Inn Fields; 5 April, 1725. ‘Never acted there.’ Performed for Ryan’s benefit. Willmore, Ryan; Belvile, Quin; Blunt, Spiller; Hellena, Mrs. Bullock; Angelica, Mrs. Parker. Covent Garden; 9 November, 1748. Willmore, Ryan; Blunt, Bridgewater; Hellena, Mrs. Woffington; Angelica, Mrs. Horton. To make this performance more attractive there was also presented ‘a musical entertainment’, entitled, Apollo and Daphne, which had been originally produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1726. Covent Garden; 19 February, 1757. ‘Not acted twenty years.’ Willmore, Smith; Belvile, Ridout; Frederick, Clarke; Don Antonio, Dyer; Blunt, Shuter; Hellena, Mrs. Woffington; Angelica, Mrs. Hamilton; Florinda, Mrs. Elmy. This, the latest revival, was performed with considerable expense, and proved successful, being repeated no less than ten times during the season. Wilkinson says that Shuter acted Blunt very realistically, and, as the stage directions of Act iii require, stripped to his very drawers.

On 8 March, 1790, J. P. Kemble presented at Drury Lane a pudibond alteration of The Rover, which he dubbed Love in Many Masks (8vo, 1790). It was well received, and acted eight times; in the following season once. Willmore was played by Kemble himself; Belvile, Wroughton; Blunt, Jack Bannister; Stephano, Suett; Hellena, Mrs. Jordan; Angelica, Mrs. Ward; Florinda, Mrs. Powell; Valeria, Mrs. Kemble; Lucetta, Miss Tidswell. It is not entirely worthless from a purely technical point of view, but yet very modest and mediocre. As might well be surmised, the raciness and spirit of The Rover entirely evaporate in the insipidity of emasculation. This is the last recorded performance of Mrs. Behn’s brilliant comedy in any shape.

[THE ROVER;]
or, the Banish’d Cavaliers.

PART I.

[PROLOGUE,]
Written by a Person of Quality.

WITS, like Physicians, never can agree,

When of a different Society;

And [Rabel’s Drops] were never more cry’d down

By all the Learned Doctors of the Town,

Than a new Play, whose Author is unknown:

Nor can those Doctors with more Malice sue

(And powerful Purses) the dissenting Few,

Than those with an insulting Pride do rail

At all who are not of their own Cabal.

If a Young Poet hit your Humour right,

You judge him then out of Revenge and Spite;

So amongst Men there are ridiculous Elves,

Who Monkeys hate for being too like themselves:

So that the Reason of the Grand Debate,

Why Wit so oft is damn’d, when good Plays take,

Is, that you censure as you love or hate.

Thus, like a learned Conclave, Poets sit

Catholick Judges both of Sense and Wit,

And damn or save, as they themselves think fit.

Yet those who to others Faults are so severe,

Are not so perfect, but themselves may err.

Some write correct indeed, but then the whole

(Bating their own dull Stuff i’th’ Play) is stole:

As Bees do suck from Flowers their Honey-dew,

So they rob others, striving to please you.

Some write their Characters genteel and fine,

But then they do so toil for every Line,

That what to you does easy seem, and plain,

Is the hard issue of their labouring Brain.

And some th’ Effects of all their Pains we see,

Is but to mimick good Extempore.

Others by long Converse about the Town,

Have Wit enough to write a leud Lampoon,

But their chief Skill lies in a Baudy Song.

In short, the only Wit that’s now in Fashion

Is but the Gleanings of good Conversation.

As for the Author of this coming Play,

I ask’d him what he thought fit I should say,

In thanks for your good Company to day:

He call’d me Fool, and said it was well known,

You came not here for our sakes, but your own.

New Plays are stuff’d with Wits, and with Debauches,

That croud and sweat like [Cits in May-day Coaches].

[DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.]

SCENE Naples, in Carnival-time.

[ ACT I.]

[ Scene I. A chamber.]

Enter Florinda and Hellena.

Flor. What an impertinent thing is a young Girl bred in a Nunnery! How full of Questions! Prithee no more, Hellena; I have told thee more than thou understand’st already.

Hell. The more’s my Grief; I wou’d fain know as much as you, which makes me so inquisitive; nor is’t enough to know you’re a Lover, unless you tell me too, who ’tis you sigh for.

Flor. When you are a Lover, I’ll think you fit for a Secret of that nature.

Hell. ’Tis true, I was never a Lover yet— but I begin to have a shreud Guess, what ’tis to be so, and fancy it very pretty to sigh, and sing, and blush and wish, and dream and wish, and long and wish to see the Man; and when I do, look pale and tremble; just as you did when my Brother brought home the fine English Colonel to see you— what do you call him? Don Belvile.

Flor. Fie, Hellena.

Hell. That Blush betrays you—I am sure ’tis so—or is it Don Antonio the Vice-Roy’s Son?—or perhaps the rich old Don Vincentio, whom my father designs for your Husband?—Why do you blush again?

Flor. With Indignation; and how near soever my Father thinks I am to marrying that hated Object, I shall let him see I understand better what’s due to my Beauty, Birth and Fortune, and more to my Soul, than to obey those unjust Commands.

Hell. Now hang me, if I don’t love thee for that dear Disobedience. I love Mischief strangely, as most of our Sex do, who are come to love nothing else—But tell me, dear Florinda, don’t you love that fine Anglese?—for I vow next to loving him my self, ’twill please me most that you do so, for he is so gay and so handsom.

Flor. Hellena, a Maid design’d for a Nun ought not to be so curious in a Discourse of Love.

Hell. And dost thou think that ever I’ll be a Nun? Or at least till I’m so old, I’m fit for nothing else. Faith no, Sister; and that which makes me long to know whether you love Belvile, is because I hope he has some mad Companion or other, that will spoil my Devotion; nay I’m resolv’d to provide my self this Carnival, if there be e’er a handsom Fellow of my Humour above Ground, tho I ask first.

Flor. Prithee be not so wild.

Hell. Now you have provided your self with a Man, you take no Care for poor me—Prithee tell me, what dost thou see about me that is unfit for Love—have not I a world of Youth? a Humour gay? a Beauty passable? a Vigour desirable? well shap’d? clean limb’d? sweet breath’d? and Sense enough to know how all these ought to be employ’d to the best Advantage: yes, I do and will. Therefore lay aside your Hopes of my Fortune, by my being a Devotee, and tell me how you came acquainted with this Belvile; for I perceive you knew him before he came to Naples.

Flor. Yes, I knew him at the [Siege of Pampelona], he was then a Colonel of French Horse, who when the Town was ransack’d, nobly treated my Brother and my self, preserving us from all Insolencies; and I must own, (besides great Obligations) I have I know not what, that pleads kindly for him about my Heart, and will suffer no other to enter—But see my Brother.

Enter Don Pedro, Stephano, with a Masquing Habit, and Callis.

Pedro. Good morrow, Sister. Pray, when saw you your Lover Don Vincentio?

Flor. I know not, Sir—Callis, when was he here? for I consider it so little, I know not when it was.

Pedro. I have a Command from my Father here to tell you, you ought not to despise him, a Man of so vast a Fortune, and such a Passion for you—Stephano, [my things]— [Puts on his Masquing Habit.

Flor. A Passion for me! ’tis more than e’er I saw, or had a desire should be known—I hate Vincentio, and I would not have a Man so dear to me as my Brother follow the ill Customs of our Country, and make a Slave of his Sister—And Sir, my Father’s Will, I’m sure, you may divert.

Pedro. I know not how dear I am to you, but I wish only to be rank’d in your Esteem, equal with the English Colonel Belvile—Why do you frown and blush? Is there any Guilt belongs to the Name of that Cavalier?

Flor. I’ll not deny I value Belvile: when I was expos’d to such Dangers as the licens’d Lust of common Soldiers threatned, when Rage and Conquest flew thro the City—then Belvile, this Criminal for my sake, threw himself into all Dangers to save my Honour, and will you not allow him my Esteem?

Pedro. Yes, pay him what you will in Honour—but you must consider Don Vincentio’s Fortune, and the Jointure he’ll make you.

Flor. Let him consider my Youth, Beauty and Fortune; which ought not to be thrown away on his Age and Jointure.

Pedro. ’Tis true, he’s not so young and fine a Gentleman as that Belvile—but what Jewels will that Cavalier present you with? those of his Eyes and Heart?

Hell. And are not those better than any Don Vincentio has brought from the Indies?

Pedro. Why how now! Has your Nunnery-breeding taught you to understand the Value of Hearts and Eyes?

Hell. Better than to believe Vincentio deserves Value from any woman—He may perhaps encrease her Bags, but not her Family.

Pedro. This is fine—Go up to your Devotion, you are not design’d for the Conversation of Lovers.

Hell. Nor Saints yet a while I hope. [Aside.] Is’t not enough you make a Nun of me, but you must cast my Sister away too, exposing her to a worse confinement than a religious Life?

Pedro. The Girl’s mad—Is it a Confinement to be carry’d into the Country, to an antient Villa belonging to the Family of the Vincentio’s these five hundred Years, and have no other Prospect than that pleasing one of seeing all her own that meets her Eyes—a fine Air, large Fields and Gardens, where she may walk and gather Flowers?

Hell. When? By Moon-Light? For I’m sure she dares not encounter with the heat of the Sun; that were a Task only for Don Vincentio and his Indian Breeding, who loves it in the Dog-days—And if these be her daily Divertisements, what are those of the Night? to lie in a wide Moth-eaten Bed-Chamber with Furniture in Fashion in the Reign of [King Sancho the First]; the Bed that which his Forefathers liv’d and dy’d in.

Pedro. Very well.

Hell. This Apartment (new furbisht and fitted out for the young Wife) he (out of Freedom) makes his Dressing-room; and being a frugal and a jealous Coxcomb, instead of a Valet to uncase his feeble Carcase, he desires you to do that Office—Signs of Favour, I’ll assure you, and such as you must not hope for, unless your Woman be out of the way.

Pedro. Have you done yet?

Hell. That Honour being past, the Giant stretches it self, yawns and sighs a Belch or two as loud as a Musket, throws himself into Bed, and expects you in his foul Sheets, and e’er you can get your self undrest, calls you with a Snore or two— And are not these fine Blessings to a young Lady?

Pedro. Have you done yet?

Hell. And this man you must kiss, nay, you must kiss none but him too—and nuzle thro his Beard to find his Lips—and this you must submit to for threescore Years, and all for a Jointure.

Pedro. For all your Character of Don Vincentio, she is as like to marry him as she was before.

Hell. Marry Don Vincentio! hang me, such a Wedlock would be worse than Adultery with another Man: I had rather see her in the [Hostel de Dieu], to waste her Youth there in Vows, and be a Handmaid to Lazers and Cripples, than to lose it in such a Marriage.

Pedro. You have consider’d, Sister, that Belvile has no Fortune to bring you to, is banisht his Country, despis’d at home, and pity’d abroad.

Hell. What then? the Vice-Roy’s Son is better than that Old Sir Fisty. Don Vincentio! Don Indian! he thinks he’s trading to [Gambo] still, and wou’d barter himself (that Bell and Bawble) for your Youth and Fortune.

Pedro. Callis, take her hence, and lock her up all this Carnival, and at Lent she shall begin her everlasting Penance in a Monastery.

Hell. I care not, I had rather be a Nun, than be oblig’d to marry as you wou’d have me, if I were design’d for’t.

Pedro. Do not fear the Blessing of that Choice—you shall be a Nun.

Hell. Shall I so? you may chance to be mistaken in my way of Devotion—A Nun! yes I am like to make a fine Nun! I have an excellent Humour for a Grate: No, I’ll have a Saint of my own to pray to shortly, if I like any that dares venture on me. [Aside.

Pedro. Callis, make it your Business to watch this wild Cat. As for you, Florinda, I’ve only try’d you all this while, and urg’d my Father’s Will; but mine is, that you would love Antonio, he is brave and young, and all that can compleat the Happiness of a gallant Maid—This Absence of my Father will give us opportunity to free you from Vincentio, by marrying here, which you must do to morrow.

Flor. To morrow!

Pedro. To morrow, or ’twill be too late—’tis not my Friendship to Antonio, which makes me urge this, but Love to thee, and Hatred to Vincentio—therefore resolve upon’t to morrow.

Flor. Sir, I shall strive to do, as shall become your Sister.

Pedro. I’ll both believe and trust you—Adieu. [Ex. Ped. and Steph.

Hell. As become his Sister!—That is, to be as resolved your way, as he is his— [Hell. goes to Callis.

Flor. I ne’er till now perceiv’d my Ruin near,

I’ve no Defence against Antonio’s Love,

For he has all the Advantages of Nature,

The moving Arguments of Youth and Fortune.

Hell. But hark you, Callis, you will not be so cruel to lock me up indeed: will you?

Call. I must obey the Commands I hate—besides, do you consider what a Life you are going to lead?

Hell. Yes, Callis, that of a Nun: and till then I’ll be indebted a World of Prayers to you, if you let me now see, what I never did, the Divertisements of a Carnival.

Call. What, go in Masquerade? ’twill be a fine farewell to the World I take it—pray what wou’d you do there?

Hell. That which all the World does, as I am told, be as mad as the rest, and take all innocent Freedom—Sister, you’ll go too, will you not? come prithee be not sad—We’ll out-wit twenty Brothers, if you’ll be ruled by me—Come put off this dull Humour with your Clothes, and assume one as gay, and as fantastick as the Dress my Cousin Valeria and I have provided, and let’s ramble.

Flor. Callis, will you give us leave to go?

Call. I have a youthful Itch of going my self. [Aside.] —Madam, if I thought your Brother might not know it, and I might wait on you, for by my troth I’ll not trust young Girls alone.

Flor. Thou see’st my Brother’s gone already, and thou shalt attend and watch us.

Enter Stephano.

Steph. Madam, the Habits are come, and your Cousin Valeria is drest, and stays for you.

Flor. ’Tis well—I’ll write a Note, and if I chance to see Belvile, and want an opportunity to speak to him, that shall let him know what I’ve resolv’d in favour of him.

Hell. Come, let’s in and dress us. [Exeunt.

[ Scene II. A Long Street.]

Enter Belvile, melancholy, Blunt and Frederick.

Fred. Why, what the Devil ails the Colonel, in a time when all the World is gay, to look like mere Lent thus? Hadst thou been long enough in Naples to have been in love, I should have sworn some such Judgment had befall’n thee.

Belv. No, I have made no new Amours since I came to Naples.

Fred. You have left none behind you in Paris.

Belv. Neither.

Fred. I can’t divine the Cause then; unless the old Cause, the want of Mony.

Blunt. And another old Cause, the want of a Wench— Wou’d not that revive you?

Belv. You’re mistaken, Ned.

Blunt Nay, ’Sheartlikins, then thou art past Cure.

Fred. I have found it out; thou hast renew’d thy Acquaintance with the Lady that cost thee so many Sighs at the Siege of Pampelona—pox on’t, what d’ye call her—her Brother’s a noble Spaniard—Nephew to the dead General—Florinda—ay, Florinda—And will nothing serve thy turn but that damn’d virtuous Woman, whom on my Conscience thou lov’st in spite too, because thou seest little or no possibility of gaining her?

Belv. Thou art mistaken, I have Interest enough in that lovely Virgin’s Heart, to make me proud and vain, were it not abated by the Severity of a Brother, who perceiving my Happiness—

Fred. Has civilly forbid thee the House?

Belv. ’Tis so, to make way for a powerful Rival, the Vice-Roy’s Son, who has the advantage of me, in being a Man of Fortune, a Spaniard, and her Brother’s Friend; which gives him liberty to make his Court, whilst I have recourse only to Letters, and distant Looks from her Window, which are as soft and kind [as those which Heav’n sends down on Penitents.]

Blunt. Hey day! ’Sheartlikins, Simile! by this Light the Man is quite spoil’d—Frederick, what the Devil are we made of, that we cannot be thus concern’d for a Wench?—’Sheartlikins, our Cupids are like the Cooks of the Camp, they can roast or boil a Woman, but they have none of the fine Tricks to set ’em off, no [Hogoes] to make the Sauce pleasant, and the Stomach sharp.

Fred. I dare swear I have had a hundred as young, kind and handsom as this Florinda; and Dogs eat me, if they were not as troublesom to me i’th’ Morning as they were welcome o’er night.

Blunt. And yet, I warrant, he wou’d not touch another Woman, if he might have her for nothing.

Belv. That’s thy Joy, a cheap Whore.

Blunt. Why, ’dsheartlikins, I love a frank Soul—When did you ever hear of an honest Woman that took a Man’s Mony? I warrant ’em good ones—But, Gentlemen, you may be free, you have been kept so poor with Parliaments and Protectors, that the little Stock you have is not worth preserving—but I thank my Stars, I have more Grace than to forfeit my Estate by Cavaliering.

Belv. Methinks only following the Court should be sufficient to entitle ’em to that.

Blunt. ’Sheartlikins, they know I follow it to do it no good, unless they pick a hole in my Coat for lending you Mony now and then; which is a greater Crime to my Conscience, Gentlemen, than to the Common-wealth.

Enter Willmore.

Will. Ha! dear Belvile! noble Colonel!

Belv. Willmore! welcome ashore, my dear Rover!—what happy Wind blew us this good Fortune?

Will. Let me salute you my dear Fred, and then command me—How is’t honest Lad?

Fred. Faith, Sir, the old Complement, infinitely the better to see my dear mad Willmore again—Prithee why camest thou ashore? and where’s the Prince?

Will. He’s well, and reigns still Lord of the watery Element—I must aboard again within a Day or two, and my Business ashore was only to enjoy my self a little this Carnival.

Belv. Pray know our new Friend, Sir, he’s but bashful, a raw Traveller, but honest, stout, and one of us. [Embraces Blunt.

Will. That you esteem him, gives him an Interest here.

Blunt. Your Servant, Sir.

Will. But well—

Faith I’m glad to meet you again in a warm Climate, where the kind Sun has its god-like Power still over the Wine and Woman.—Love and Mirth are my Business in Naples; and if I mistake not the Place, here’s an excellent Market for Chapmen of my Humour.

Belv. See here be those kind Merchants of Love you look for.

Enter several Men in masquing Habits, some playing on Musick, others dancing after; Women drest like Curtezans, with Papers pinn’d to their Breasts, and Baskets of Flowers in their Hands.

Blunt. ’Sheartlikins, what have we here!

Fred. Now the Game begins.

Will. Fine pretty Creatures! may a stranger have leave to look and love?—What’s here—Roses for every Month! [Reads the Paper.

Blunt. Roses for every Month! what means that?

Belv. They are, or wou’d have you think they’re Curtezans, who herein Naples are to be hir’d by the Month.

Will. Kind and obliging to inform us—Pray where do these Roses grow? I would fain plant some of ’em in a Bed of mine.

Wom. Beware such Roses, Sir.

Will. A Pox of fear: I’ll be bak’d with thee between a pair of Sheets, and that’s thy proper Still, so I might but strow such Roses over me and under me—Fair one, wou’d you wou’d give me leave to gather at your Bush this idle Month, I wou’d go near to make some Body smell of it all the Year after.

Belv. And thou hast need of such a Remedy, for thou stinkest of Tar and Rope-ends, like a Dock or Pesthouse.

[The Woman puts herself into the Hands of a Man, and Exit.

Will. Nay, nay, you shall not leave me so.

Belv. By all means use no Violence here.

Will. Death! just as I was going to be damnably in love, to have her led off! I could pluck that Rose out-of his Hand, and even kiss the Bed, the Bush it grew in.

Fred. No Friend to Love like a long Voyage at Sea.

Blunt. Except a Nunnery, Fred.

Will. Death! but will they not be kind, quickly be kind? Thou know’st I’m no tame Sigher, but a rampant Lion of the Forest.

Two Men drest all over with Horns of several sorts, making Grimaces at one another, with Papers pinn’d on their Backs, advance from the farther end of the Scene.

Belv. Oh the fantastical Rogues, how they are dress’d! ’tis a Satir against the whole Sex.

Will. Is this a Fruit that grows in this warm Country?

Belv. Yes: ’Tis pretty to see these Italian start, swell, and stab at the Word Cuckold, and yet stumble at Horns on every Threshold.

Will. See what’s on their Back—Flowers for every Night. [Reads.
—Ah Rogue! And more sweet than Roses of ev’ry Month! This is a Gardiner of Adam’s own breeding. [They dance.

Belv. What think you of those grave People?—is a Wake in Essex half so mad or extravagant?

Will. I like their sober grave way, ’tis a kind of legal authoriz’d Fornication, where the Men are not chid for’t, nor the Women despis’d, as amongst our dull English; even the Monsieurs want that part of good Manners.

Belv. But here in Italy a Monsieur is the humblest best-bred Gentleman—Duels are so baffled by Bravo’s that an age shews not one, but between a Frenchman and a Hang-man, who is as much too hard for him on the Piazza, as they are for a Dutchman on the new Bridge— But see another Crew.

Enter Florinda, Hellena, and Valeria, drest like Gipsies; Callis and Stephano, Lucetta, Phillippo and Sancho in Masquerade.

Hell. Sister, there’s your Englishman, and with him a handsom proper Fellow—I’ll to him, and instead of telling him his Fortune, try my own.

Will. Gipsies, on my Life—Sure these will prattle if a Man cross their Hands. [Goes to Hellena] —Dear pretty (and I hope) young Devil, will you tell an amorous Stranger what Luck he’s like to have?

Hell. Have a care how you venture with me, Sir, lest I pick your Pocket, which will more vex your English Humour, than an Italian Fortune will please you.

Will. How the Devil cam’st thou to know my Country and Humour?

Hell. The first I guess by a certain forward Impudence, which does not displease me at this time; and the Loss of your Money will vex you, because I hope you have but very little to lose.

Will. Egad Child, thou’rt i’th’ right; it is so little, I dare not offer it thee for a Kindness—But cannot you divine what other things of more value I have about me, that I would more willingly part with?

Hell. Indeed no, that’s the Business of a Witch, and I am but a Gipsy yet—Yet, without looking in your Hand, I have a parlous Guess, ’tis some foolish Heart you mean, an inconstant English Heart, as little worth stealing as your Purse.

Will. Nay, then thou dost deal with the Devil, that’s certain—Thou hast guess’d as right as if thou hadst been one of that Number it has languisht for—I find you’ll be better acquainted with it; nor can you take it in a better time, for I am come from Sea, Child; and Venus not being propitious to me in her own Element, I have a world of Love in store—Wou’d you would be good-natur’d, and take some on’t off my Hands.

Hell. Why—I could be inclin’d that way—but for a foolish Vow I am going to make—to die a Maid.

Will. Then thou art damn’d without Redemption; and as I am a good Christian, I ought in charity to divert so wicked a design—therefore prithee, dear Creature, let me know quickly when and where I shall begin to set a helping hand to so good a Work.

Hell. If you should prevail with my tender Heart (as I begin to fear you will, for you have horrible loving Eyes) there will be difficulty in’t that you’ll hardly undergo for my sake.

Will. Faith, Child, I have been bred in Dangers, and wear a Sword that has been employ’d in a worse Cause, than for a handsom kind Woman—Name the Danger—let it be any thing but a long Siege, and I’ll undertake it.

Hell. Can you storm?

Will. Oh, most furiously.

Hell. What think you of a Nunnery-wall? for he that wins me, must gain that first.

Will. A Nun! Oh how I love thee for’t! there’s no Sinner like a young Saint—Nay, now there’s no denying me: the old Law had no Curse (to a Woman) like dying a Maid; witness Jephtha’s Daughter.

Hell. A very good Text this, if well handled; and I perceive, Father Captain, you would impose no severe Penance on her who was inclin’d to console her self before she took Orders.

Will. If she be young and handsom.

Hell. Ay, there’s it—but if she be not—

Will. By this Hand, Child, I have an implicit Faith, and dare venture on thee with all Faults—besides, ’tis more meritorious to leave the World when thou hast tasted and prov’d the Pleasure on’t; then ’twill be a Virtue in thee, which now will be pure Ignorance.

Hell. I perceive, good Father Captain, you design only to make me fit for Heaven—but if on the contrary you should quite divert me from it, and bring me back to the World again, I should have a new Man to seek I find; and what a grief that will be—for when I begin, I fancy I shall love like any thing: I never try’d yet.

Will. Egad, and that’s kind—Prithee, dear Creature, give me Credit for a Heart, for faith, I’m a very honest Fellow—Oh, I long to come first to the Banquet of Love; and such a swinging Appetite I bring—Oh, I’m impatient. Thy Lodging, Sweetheart, thy Lodging, or I’m a dead man.

Hell. Why must we be either guilty of Fornication or Murder, if we converse with you Men?—And is there no difference between leave to love me, and leave to lie with me?

Will. Faith, Child, they were made to go together.

Lucet. Are you sure this is the Man? [Pointing to Blunt.

Sancho. When did I mistake your Game?

Lucet. This is a stranger, I know by his gazing; if he be brisk he’ll venture to follow me; and then, if I understand my Trade, he’s mine: he’s English too, and they say that’s a sort of good natur’d loving People, and have generally so kind an opinion of themselves, that a Woman with any Wit may flatter ’em into any sort of Fool she pleases.

Blunt. ’Tis so—she is taken—I have Beauties which my false Glass at home did not discover.

[She often passes by Blunt and gazes on him; he struts, and cocks, and walks, and gazes on her.]

Flor. This Woman watches me so, I shall get no Opportunity to discover my self to him, and so miss the intent of my coming—But as I was saying, Sir—by this Line you should be a Lover. [Looking in his Hand.

Belv. I thought how right you guess’d, all Men are in love, or pretend to be so—Come, let me go, I’m weary of this fooling. [Walks away.

Flor. I will not, till you have confess’d whether the Passion that you have vow’d Florinda be true or false. [She holds him, he strives to get from her.

Belv. Florinda! [Turns quick towards her.

Flor. Softly.

Belv. Thou hast nam’d one will fix me here for ever.

Flor. She’ll be disappointed then, who expects you this Night at the Garden-gate, and if you’ll fail not—as let me see the other Hand—you will go near to do—she vows to die or make you happy. [Looks on Callis, who observes ’em.

Belv. What canst thou mean?

Flor. That which I say—Farewel. [Offers to go.

Belv. Oh charming Sybil, stay, complete that Joy, which, as it is, will turn into Distraction!—Where must I be? at the Garden-gate? I know it—at night you say— I’ll sooner forfeit Heaven than disobey.

Enter Don Pedro and other Masquers, and pass over the Stage.

Call. Madam, your Brother’s here.

Flor. Take this to instruct you farther. [Gives him a Letter, and goes off.

Fred. Have a care, Sir, what you promise; this may be a Trap laid by her Brother to ruin you.

Belv. Do not disturb my Happiness with Doubts. [Opens the Letter.

Will. My dear pretty Creature, a Thousand Blessings on thee; still in this Habit, you say, and after Dinner at this Place.

Hell. Yes, if you will swear to keep your Heart, and not bestow it between this time and that.

Will. By all the little Gods of Love I swear, I’ll leave it with you; and if you run away with it, those Deities of Justice will revenge me. [Ex. all the Women except Lucetta.]

Fred. Do you know the Hand?

Belv. ’Tis Florinda’s. All Blessings fall upon the virtuous Maid.

Fred. Nay, no Idolatry, a sober Sacrifice I’ll allow you.

Belv. Oh Friends! the welcom’st News, the softest Letter!—nay, you shall see it; and could you now be serious, I might be made the happiest Man the Sun shines on.

Will. The Reason of this mighty Joy.

Belv. See how kindly she invites me to deliver her from the threaten’d Violence of her Brother—will you not assist me?

Will. I know not what thou mean’st, but I’ll make one at any Mischief where a Woman’s concerned—but she’ll be grateful to us for the Favour, will she not?

Belv. How mean you?

Will. How should I mean? Thou know’st there’s but one way for a Woman to oblige me.

Belv. Don’t prophane—the Maid is nicely virtuous.

Will. Who pox, then she’s fit for nothing but a Husband; let her e’en go, Colonel.

Fred. Peace, she’s the Colonel’s Mistress, Sir.

Will. Let her be the Devil; if she be thy Mistress, I’ll serve her—name the way.

Belv. Read here this Postscript. [Gives him a Letter.

Will. [Reads.] At Ten at night—at the Garden-Gate—of which, if I cannot get the Key, I will contrive a way over the Wall—come attended with a Friend or two.—Kind heart, if we three cannot weave a String to let her down a Garden-Wall,’twere pity but the Hangman wove one for us all.

Fred. Let her alone for that: your Woman’s Wit, your fair kind Woman, will out-trick a Brother or a Jew, and contrive like a Jesuit in Chains—but see, Ned Blunt is stoln out after the Lure of a Damsel. [Ex. Blunt and Lucet.

Belv. So he’ll scarce find his way home again, unless we get him cry’d by the Bell-man in the Market-place, and ’twou’d sound prettily—a lost English Boy of Thirty.

Fred. I hope ’tis some common crafty Sinner, one that will fit him; it may be she’ll sell him for Peru, the Rogue’s sturdy and would work well in a Mine; at least I hope she’ll dress him for our Mirth; cheat him of all, then have him well-favour’dly bang’d, and turn’d out naked at Midnight.

Will. Prithee what Humour is he of, that you wish him so well?

Belv. Why, of an English Elder Brother’s Humour, educated in a Nursery, with a Maid to tend him till Fifteen, and lies with his Grand-mother till he’s of Age; one that knows no Pleasure beyond riding to the next Fair, or going up to London with his right Worshipful Father in Parliament-time; wearing gay Clothes, or making honourable Love to his Lady Mother’s Landry-Maid; gets drunk at a Hunting-Match, and ten to one then gives some Proofs of his Prowess—A pox upon him, he’s our Banker, and has all our Cash about him, and if he fail we are all broke.

Fred. Oh let him alone for that matter, he’s of a damn’d stingy Quality, that will secure our Stock. I know not in what Danger it were indeed, if the Jilt should pretend she’s in love with him, for ’tis a kind believing Coxcomb; otherwise if he part with more than a [Piece of Eight]—geld him: for which offer he may chance to be beaten, if she be a Whore of the first Rank.

Belv. Nay the Rogue will not be easily beaten, he’s stout enough; perhaps if they talk beyond his Capacity, he may chance to exercise his Courage upon some of them; else I’m sure they’ll find it as difficult to beat as to please him.

Will. ’Tis a lucky Devil to light upon so kind a Wench!

Fred. Thou hadst a great deal of talk with thy little Gipsy, coud’st thou do no good upon her? for mine was hard-hearted.

Will. Hang her, she was some damn’d honest Person of Quality, I’m sure, she was so very free and witty. If her Face be but answerable to her Wit and Humour, I would be bound to Constancy this Month to gain her. In the mean time, have you made no kind Acquaintance since you came to Town?—You do not use to be honest so long, Gentlemen.

Fred. Faith Love has kept us honest, we have been all fir’d with a Beauty newly come to Town, the famous Paduana Angelica Bianca.

Will. What, the Mistress of the dead Spanish General?

Belv. Yes, she’s now the only ador’d Beauty of all the Youth in Naples, who put on all their Charms to appear lovely in her sight, their Coaches, Liveries, and themselves, all gay, as on a Monarch’s Birth-Day, to attract the Eyes of this fair Charmer, while she has the Pleasure to behold all languish for her that see her.

Fred. ’Tis pretty to see with how much Love the Men regard her, and how much Envy the Women.

Will. What Gallant has she?

Belv. None, she’s exposed to Sale, and four Days in the Week she’s yours—for so much a Month.

Will. The very Thought of it quenches all manner of Fire in me—yet prithee let’s see her.

Belv. Let’s first to Dinner, and after that we’ll pass the Day as you please—but at Night ye must all be at my Devotion.

Will. I will not fail you. [Exeunt.

[ ACT II.]

[ Scene I. The Long Street.]

Enter Belvile and Frederick in Masquing-Habits, and Willmore in his own Clothes, with a Vizard in his Hand.

Will. But why thus disguis’d and muzzl’d?

Belv. Because whatever Extravagances we commit in these Faces, our own may not be oblig’d to answer ’em.

Will. I should have chang’d my Eternal Buff too: but no matter, my little Gipsy wou’d not have found me out then: for if she should change hers, it is impossible I should know her, unless I should hear her prattle—A Pox on’t, I cannot get her out of my Head: Pray Heaven, if ever I do see her again, she prove damnable ugly, that I may fortify my self against her Tongue.

Belv. Have a care of Love, for o’ my conscience she was not of a Quality to give thee any hopes.

Will. Pox on ’em, why do they draw a Man in then? She has play’d with my Heart so, that ’twill never lie still till I have met with some kind Wench, that will play the Game out with me—Oh for my Arms full of soft, white, kind—Woman! such as I fancy Angelica.

Belv. This is her House, if you were but in stock to get admittance; they have not din’d yet; I perceive the Picture is not out.

Enter Blunt.

Will. I long to see the Shadow of the fair Substance, a Man may gaze on that for nothing.

Blunt. Colonel, thy Hand—and thine, Fred. I have been an Ass, a deluded Fool, a very Coxcomb from my Birth till this Hour, and heartily repent my little Faith.

Belv. What the Devil’s the matter with thee Ned?

Blunt. Oh such a Mistress, Fred, such a Girl!

Will. Ha! where?

Fred. Ay where!

Blunt. So fond, so amorous, so toying and fine! and all for sheer Love, ye Rogue! Oh how she lookt and kiss’d! and sooth’d my Heart from my Bosom. I cannot think I was awake, and yet methinks I see and feel her Charms still—Fred.—Try if she have not left the Taste of her balmy Kisses upon my Lips— [Kisses him.

Belv. Ha, ha, ha!

Will. Death Man, where is she?

Blunt. What a Dog was I to stay in dull England so long—How have I laught at the Colonel when he sigh’d for Love! but now the little Archer has reveng’d him, and by his own Dart, I can guess at all his Joys, which then I took for Fancies, mere Dreams and Fables—Well, I’m resolved to sell all in Essex, and plant here for ever.

Belv. What a Blessing ’tis, thou hast a Mistress thou dar’st boast of; for I know thy Humour is rather to have a proclaim’d Clap, than a secret Amour.

Will. Dost know her Name?

Blunt. Her Name? No,’sheartlikins: what care I for Names?—
She’s fair, young, brisk and kind, even to ravishment: and what a Pox care I for knowing her by another Title?

Will. Didst give her anything?

Blunt. Give her!—Ha, ha, ha! why, she’s a Person of Quality—That’s a good one, give her! ’sheartlikins dost think such Creatures are to be bought? Or are we provided for such a Purchase? Give her, quoth ye? Why she presented me with this Bracelet, for the Toy of a Diamond I us’d to wear: No, Gentlemen, Ned Blunt is not every Body—She expects me again to night.

Will. Egad that’s well; we’ll all go.

Blunt. Not a Soul: No, Gentlemen, you are Wits; I am a dull Country Rogue, I.

Fred. Well, Sir, for all your Person of Quality, I shall be very glad to understand your Purse be secure; ’tis our whole Estate at present, which we are loth to hazard in one Bottom: come, Sir, unload.

Blunt. Take the necessary Trifle, useless now to me, that am belov’d by such a Gentlewoman—’sheartlikins Money! Here take mine too.

Fred. No, keep that to be cozen’d, that we may laugh.

Will. Cozen’d!—Death! wou’d I cou’d meet with one, that wou’d cozen me of all the Love I cou’d spare to night.

Fred. Pox ’tis some common Whore upon my Life.

Blunt. A Whore! yes with such Clothes! such Jewels! such a House! such Furniture, and so attended! a Whore!

Belv. Why yes, Sir, they are Whores, tho they’ll neither entertain you with Drinking, Swearing, or Baudy; are Whores in all those gay Clothes, and right Jewels; are Whores with great Houses richly furnisht with Velvet Beds, Store of Plate, handsome Attendance, and fine Coaches, are Whores and errant ones.

Will. Pox on’t, where do these fine Whores live?

Belv. Where no Rogue in Office yclep’d Constables dare give ’em laws, nor the Wine-inspired Bullies of the Town break their Windows; yet they are Whores, tho this Essex Calf believe them Persons of Quality.

Blunt. ’Sheartlikins, y’are all Fools, there are things about this Essex Calf, that shall take with the Ladies, beyond all your Wits and Parts—This Shape and Size, Gentlemen, are not to be despis’d; my Waste tolerably long, with other inviting Signs, that shall be nameless.

Will. Egad I believe he may have met with some Person of Quality that may be kind to him.

Belv. Dost thou perceive any such tempting things about him, should make a fine Woman, and of Quality, pick him out from all Mankind, to throw away her Youth and Beauty upon, nay, and her dear Heart too?—no, no, Angelica has rais’d the Price too high.

Will. May she languish for Mankind till she die, and be damn’d for that one Sin alone.

Enter two Bravoes, and hang up a great Picture of Angelica’s, [against the Balcony, and two little ones at each side of the Door].

Belv. See there the fair Sign to the Inn, where a Man may lodge that’s Fool enough to give her Price. [Will. gazes on the Picture.

Blunt. ’Sheartlikins, Gentlemen, what’s this?

Belv. A famous Curtezan that’s to be sold.

Blunt.[A] How! to be sold! nay then I have nothing to say to her—sold! what Impudence is practis’d in this Country?—With Order and Decency Whoring’s established here by virtue of the Inquisition—Come let’s be gone, I’m sure we’re no Chapmen for this Commodity.

Fred. Thou art none, I’m sure, unless thou could’st have her in thy Bed at the Price of a Coach in the Street.

Will. How wondrous fair she is—a Thousand Crowns a Month—by Heaven as many Kingdoms were too little. A plague of this Poverty—of which I ne’er complain, but when it hinders my Approach to Beauty, which Virtue ne’er could purchase. [Turns from the Picture.

Blunt. What’s this?— [Reads] A Thousand Crowns a Month!
—’Sheartlikins, here’s a Sum! sure ’tis a mistake.
—Hark you, Friend, does she take or give so much by the Month!

Fred. A Thousand Crowns! Why, ’tis a Portion for the Infanta.

Blunt. Hark ye, Friends, won’t she trust?

Brav. This is a Trade, Sir, that cannot live by Credit.

Enter Don Pedro in Masquerade, follow’d by Stephano.

Belv. See, here’s more Company, let’s walk off a while.

[Pedro Reads. [Exeunt English.

Enter Angelica and Moretta in the Balcony, and draw a Silk Curtain.

Ped. Fetch me a Thousand Crowns, I never wish to buy this Beauty at an easier Rate. [Passes off.

Ang. Prithee what said those Fellows to thee?

Brav. Madam, the first were Admirers of Beauty only, but no purchasers; they were merry with your Price and Picture, laught at the Sum, and so past off.

Ang.[B] No matter, I’m not displeas’d with their rallying; their Wonder feeds my Vanity, and he that wishes to buy, gives me more Pride, than he that gives my Price can make me Pleasure.

Brav. Madam, the last I knew thro all his disguises to be Don Pedro, Nephew to the General, and who was with him in Pampelona.

Ang. Don Pedro! my old Gallant’s Nephew! When his Uncle dy’d, he left him a vast Sum of Money; it is he who was so in love with me at Padua, and who us’d to make the General so jealous.

Moret. Is this he that us’d to prance before our Window and take such care to shew himself an amorous Ass? if I am not mistaken, he is the likeliest Man to give your Price.

Ang. The Man is brave and generous, but of an Humour so uneasy and inconstant, that the victory over his Heart is as soon lost as won; a Slave that can add little to the Triumph of the Conqueror: but inconstancy’s the Sin of all Mankind, therefore I’m resolv’d that nothing but Gold shall charm my Heart.

Moret. I’m glad on’t; ’tis only interest that Women of our Profession ought to consider: tho I wonder what has kept you from that general Disease of our Sex so long, I mean that of being in love.

Ang. A kind, but sullen Star, under which I had the Happiness to be born; yet I have had no time for Love; the bravest and noblest of Mankind have purchas’d my Favours at so dear a Rate, as if no Coin but Gold were current with our Trade—But here’s Don Pedro again, fetch me my Lute—for ’tis for him or Don Antonio the Vice-Roy’s Son, that I have spread my Nets.

Enter at one Door Don Pedro, and Stephano; Don Antonio and Diego [his page], at the other Door, with People following him in Masquerade, antickly attir’d, some with Musick: they both go up to the Picture.

Ant. A thousand Crowns! had not the Painter flatter’d her, I should not think it dear.

Pedro. Flatter’d her! by Heaven he cannot. I have seen the Original, nor is there one Charm here more than adorns her Face and Eyes; all this soft and sweet, with a certain languishing Air, that no Artist can represent.

Ant. What I heard of her Beauty before had fir’d my Soul, but this confirmation of it has blown it into a flame.

[Pedro. Ha!]

Pag. Sir, I have known you throw away a Thousand Crowns on a worse Face, and tho y’ are near your Marriage, you may venture a little Love here; Florinda—will not miss it.

Pedro. Ha! Florinda! Sure ’tis Antonio. [[aside.]

Ant. Florinda! name not those distant Joys, there’s not one thought of her will check my Passion here.

Pedro. Florinda scorn’d! and all my Hopes defeated of the Possession of Angelica! [A noise of a Lute above. Ant. gazes up.] Her Injuries by Heaven he shall not boast of. [Song to a Lute above.

SONG.

When Damon first began to love,

He languisht in a soft Desire,

And knew not how the Gods to move,

To lessen or increase his Fire,

For Cælia in her charming Eyes

Wore all Love’s Sweet, and all his Cruelties.

II.

But as beneath a Shade he lay,

Weaving of Flow’rs for Cælia’s Hair,

She chanc’d to lead her Flock that way,

And saw the am’rous Shepherd there.

She gaz’d around upon the Place,

And saw the Grove (resembling Night)

To all the Joys of Love invite,

Whilst guilty Smiles and Blushes drest her Face.

At this the bashful Youth all Transport grew,

And with kind Force he taught the Virgin how

To yield what all his Sighs cou’d never do.

Ant. By Heav’n she’s charming fair!

[Angelica throws open the Curtains, and bows to Antonio, who pulls off his Vizard, and bows and blows up Kisses. Pedro unseen looks in his Face.

Pedro. ’Tis he, the false Antonio!

Ant. Friend, where must I pay my offering of Love? [To the Bravo.] My Thousand Crowns I mean.

Pedro. That Offering I have design’d to make,

And yours will come too late.

Ant. Prithee be gone, I shall grow angry else,

And then thou art not safe.

Pedro. My Anger may be fatal, Sir, as yours;

And he that enters here may prove this Truth.

Ant. I know not who thou art, but I am sure thou’rt worth my killing, and aiming at Angelica. [They draw and fight.

Enter Willmore and Blunt, who draw and part ’em.

Blunt. ’Sheartlikins, here’s fine doings.

Will. Tilting for the Wench I’m sure—nay gad, if that wou’d win her, I have as good a Sword as the best of ye—Put up—put up, and take another time and place, for this is design’d for Lovers only. [They all put up.

Pedro. We are prevented; dare you meet me to morrow on the Molo?

For I’ve a Title to a better quarrel,

That of Florinda, in whose credulous Heart

Thou’st made an Int’rest, and destroy’d my Hopes.

Ant. Dare?
I’ll meet thee there as early as the Day.

Pedro. We will come thus disguis’d, that whosoever chance to get the better, he may escape unknown.

Ant. It shall be so. [Ex. Pedro and Stephano.] Who shou’d this Rival be? unless the English Colonel, of whom I’ve often heard Don Pedro speak; it must be he, and time he were removed, who lays a Claim to all my Happiness.

[Willmore having gaz’d all this while on the Picture, pulls down a little one.

Will. This posture’s loose and negligent,

The sight on’t wou’d beget a warm desire

In Souls, whom Impotence and Age had chill’d.

—This must along with me.

Brav. What means this rudeness, Sir?—restore the Picture.

Ant. Ha! Rudeness committed to the fair Angelica!—Restore the Picture, Sir.

Will. Indeed I will not, Sir.

Ant. By Heav’n but you shall.

Will. Nay, do not shew your Sword; if you do, by this dear Beauty—I will shew mine too.

Ant. What right can you pretend to’t?

Will. That of Possession which I will maintain—you perhaps have 1000 Crowns to give for the Original.

Ant. No matter, Sir, you shall restore the Picture.

Ang. Oh, Moretta! what’s the matter? [Ang. and Moret. above.

Ant. Or leave your Life behind.

Will. Death! you lye—I will do neither.

Ang. Hold, I command you, if for me you fight.

[They fight, the Spaniards join with Antonio, Blunt laying on like mad. They leave off and bow.

Will. How heavenly fair she is!—ah Plague of her Price.

Ang. You Sir in Buff, you that appear a Soldier, that first began this Insolence.

Will. ’Tis true, I did so, if you call it Insolence for a Man to preserve himself; I saw your charming Picture, and was wounded: quite thro my Soul each pointed Beauty ran; and wanting a Thousand Crowns to procure my Remedy, I laid this little Picture to my Bosom—which if you cannot allow me, I’ll resign.

Ang. No, you may keep the Trifle.

Ant. You shall first ask my leave, and this. [Fight again as before.

Enter Belv. and Fred. who join with the English.

Ang. Hold; will you ruin me?—Biskey, Sebastian, part them. [The Spaniards are beaten off.

Moret. Oh Madam, we’re undone, a pox upon that rude Fellow, he’s set on to ruin us: we shall never see good days, till all these fighting poor Rogues are sent to the Gallies.

Enter Belvile, Blunt and Willmore, with [his shirt bloody].

Blunt. ’Sheartlikins, beat me at this Sport, and I’ll ne’er wear Sword more.

Belv. The Devil’s in thee for a mad Fellow, thou art always one at an unlucky Adventure.—Come, let’s be gone whilst we’re safe, and remember these are Spaniards, a sort of People that know how to revenge an Affront.

Fred. You bleed; I hope you are not wounded. [To Will.

Will. Not much:—a plague upon your Dons, if they fight no better they’ll ne’er recover Flanders.—What the Devil was’t to them that I took down the Picture?

Blunt. Took it! ’Sheartlikins, we’ll have the great one too; ’tis ours by Conquest.—Prithee, help me up, and I’ll pull it down.—

Ang. Stay, Sir, and e’er you affront me further, let me know how you durst commit this Outrage—To you I speak, Sir, for you appear like a Gentleman.

Will. To me, Madam?—Gentlemen, your Servant. [Belv. stays him.

Belv. Is the Devil in thee? Do’st know the danger of entring the house of an incens’d Curtezan?

Will. I thank you for your care—but there are other matters in hand, there are, tho we have no great Temptation.—Death! let me go.

Fred. Yes, to your Lodging, if you will, but not in here.—Damn these gay Harlots—by this Hand I’ll have as sound and handsome a Whore for a [Patacoone].—Death, Man, she’ll murder thee.

Will. Oh! fear me not, shall I not venture where a Beauty calls? a lovely charming Beauty? for fear of danger! when by Heaven there’s none so great as to long for her, whilst I want Money to purchase her.

Fred. Therefore ’tis loss of time, unless you had the thousand Crowns to pay.

Will. It may be she may give a Favour, at least I shall have the pleasure of saluting her when I enter, and when I depart.

Belv. Pox, she’ll as soon lie with thee, as kiss thee, and sooner stab than do either—you shall not go.

Ang. Fear not, Sir, all I have to wound with, is my Eyes.

Blunt. Let him go, ’Sheartlikins, I believe the Gentle-woman means well.

Belv. Well, take thy Fortune, we’ll expect you in the next Street.—Farewell Fool,—farewell—

Will. B’ye Colonel— [Goes in.

Fred. The Rogue’s stark mad for a Wench. [Exeunt.

[ Scene II. A Fine Chamber.]

Enter Willmore, Angelica, and Moretta.

Ang. Insolent Sir, how durst you pull down my Picture?

Will. Rather, how durst you set it up, to tempt poor amorous Mortals with so much Excellence? which I find you have but too well consulted by the unmerciful price you set upon’t.—Is all this Heaven of Beauty shewn to move Despair in those that cannot buy? and can you think the effects of that Despair shou’d be less extravagant than I have shewn?

Ang. I sent for you to ask my Pardon, Sir, not to aggravate your Crime.—I thought I shou’d have seen you at my Feet imploring it.

Will. You are deceived, I came to rail at you, and talk such Truths, too, as shall let you see the Vanity of that Pride, which taught you how to set such a Price on Sin. For such it is, whilst that which is Love’s due is meanly barter’d for.

Ang. Ha, ha, ha, alas, good Captain, what pity ’tis your edifying Doctrine will do no good upon me—Moretta, fetch the Gentleman a Glass, and let him survey himself, to see what Charms he has,—and guess my Business. [Aside in a soft tone.

Moret. He knows himself of old, I believe those Breeches and he have been acquainted ever since he was beaten at Worcester.

Ang. Nay, do not abuse the poor Creature.—

Moret. Good Weather-beaten Corporal, will you march off? we have no need of your Doctrine, tho you have of our Charity; but at present we have no Scraps, we can afford no kindness for God’s sake; in fine, Sirrah, the Price is too [high i’th’ Mouth] for you, therefore troop, I say.

Will. Here, good Fore-Woman of the Shop, serve me, and I’ll be gone.

Moret. Keep it to pay your Landress, your Linen stinks of the Gun-Room; for here’s no selling by Retail.

Will. Thou hast sold plenty of thy stale Ware at a cheap Rate.

Moret. Ay, the more silly kind Heart I, but this is an Age wherein Beauty is at higher Rates.—In fine, you know the price of this.

Will. I grant you ’tis here set down a thousand Crowns a Month—Baud, take your black Lead and sum it up, that I may have of these vain gay things, and I’ll trouble you no more.

Moret. Pox on him, he’ll fret me to Death:—abominable Fellow, I tell thee, we only sell by the whole Piece.

Will. ’Tis very hard, the whole Cargo or nothing—Faith, Madam, my Stock will not reach it, I cannot be your Chapman.—Yet I have Countrymen, in Town, Merchants of Love, like me; I’ll see if they’l put for a share, we cannot lose much by it, and what we have no use for, we’ll sell upon the Friday’s Mart, at—Who gives more? I am studying, Madam, how to purchase you, tho at present I am unprovided of Money.

Ang. Sure, this from any other Man would anger me—nor shall he know the Conquest he has made—Poor angry Man, how I despise this railing.

Will. Yes, I am poor—but I’m a Gentleman,

And one that scorns this Baseness which you practise.

Poor as I am, I would not sell my self,

No, not to gain your charming high-priz’d Person.

Tho I admire you strangely for your Beauty,

Yet I contemn your Mind.

—And yet I wou’d at any rate enjoy you;

At your own rate—but cannot—See here

The only Sum I can command on Earth;

I know not where to eat when this is gone:

Yet such a Slave I am to Love and Beauty,

[This last reserve] I’ll sacrifice to enjoy you.

—Nay, do not frown, I know you are to be bought,

And wou’d be bought [by me, by me],

For a mean trifling Sum, if I could pay it down.

Which happy knowledge I will still repeat,

And lay it to my Heart, it has a Virtue in’t,

And soon will [cure] those Wounds your Eyes have made.

—And yet—there’s something so divinely powerful there—

Nay, I will gaze—to let you see my Strength. [Holds her, looks on her, and pauses and sighs.

By Heaven, bright Creature—I would not for the World

Thy Fame were half so fair as is thy Face. [Turns her away from him.

Ang. His words go thro me to the very Soul. [Aside.] —If you have nothing else to say to me.

Will. Yes, you shall hear how infamous you are—

For which I do not hate thee:

But that secures my Heart, and all the Flames it feels

Are but so many Lusts,

I know it by their sudden bold intrusion.

The Fire’s impatient and betrays, ’tis false—

For had it been the purer Flame of Love,

I should have pin’d and languished at your Feet,

E’er found the Impudence to have discover’d it.

I now dare stand your Scorn, and your Denial.

Moret. Sure she’s bewitcht, that she can stand thus tamely, and hear his saucy railing.—Sirrah, will you be gone?

Ang. How dare you take this liberty?—Withdraw. [To Moret.] —Pray, tell me, Sir, are not you guilty of the same mercenary Crime? When a Lady is proposed to you for a Wife, you never ask, how fair, discreet, or virtuous she is; but what’s her Fortune—which if but small, you cry—She will not do my business—and basely leave her, tho she languish for you.—Say, is not this as poor?

Will. It is a barbarous Custom, which I will scorn to defend in our Sex, and do despise in yours.

Ang. [Thou art a brave Fellow!] put up thy Gold, and know,

That were thy Fortune large, as is thy Soul,

Thou shouldst not buy my Love,

Couldst thou forget those mean Effects of Vanity,

Which set me out to sale; and as a Lover, prize

My yielding Joys.

Canst thou believe they’l be entirely thine,

Without considering they were mercenary?

Will. I cannot tell, I must bethink me first—ha, Death, I’m going to believe her. [Aside.

Ang. Prithee, confirm that Faith—or if thou canst not—flatter me a little, ’twill please me from thy Mouth.

Will. Curse on thy charming Tongue! dost thou return

My feign’d Contempt with so much subtilty? [Aside.

Thou’st found the easiest way into my Heart,

Tho I yet know that all thou say’st is false. [Turning from her in a Rage.

Ang. By all that’s good ’tis real,

I never lov’d before, tho oft a Mistress.

—Shall my first Vows be slighted?

Will. What can she mean? [Aside.

Ang. I find you cannot credit me. [In an angry tone.

Will. I know you take me for an errant Ass,

An Ass that may be sooth’d into Belief,

And then be us’d at pleasure.

—But, Madam I have been so often cheated

By perjur’d, soft, deluding Hypocrites,

That I’ve no Faith left for the cozening Sex,

Especially for Women of your Trade.

Ang. The low esteem you have of me, perhaps

May bring my Heart again:

For I have Pride that yet surmounts my Love. [She turns with Pride, he holds her.

Will. Throw off this Pride, this Enemy to Bliss,

And shew the Power of Love: ’tis with those Arms

I can be only vanquisht, made a Slave.

Ang. Is all my mighty Expectation vanisht?

—No, I will not hear thee talk,—thou hast a Charm

In every word, that draws my Heart away.

And all the thousand Trophies I design’d,

Thou hast undone—Why art thou soft?

Thy Looks are bravely rough, and meant for War.

Could thou not storm on still?

I then perhaps had been as free as thou.

Will. Death! how she throws her Fire about my Soul! [Aside.

—Take heed, fair Creature, how you raise my Hopes,

Which once assum’d pretend to all Dominion.

There’s not a Joy thou hast in store

I shall not then command:

For which I’ll pay thee back my Soul, my Life.

Come, let’s begin th’ account this happy minute.

Ang. And will you pay me then the Price I ask?

Will. Oh, why dost thou draw me from an awful Worship,

By shewing thou art no Divinity?

Conceal the Fiend, and shew me all the Angel;

Keep me but ignorant, and I’ll be devout,

And pay my Vows for ever at this Shrine. [Kneels, and kisses her Hand.

Ang. The Pay I mean is but thy Love for mine.
—Can you give that?

Will. Intirely—come, let’s withdraw: where I’ll renew my Vows,—and breathe ’em with such Ardour, thou shall not doubt my Zeal.

Ang. Thou hast a Power too strong to be resisted. [Ex. Will. and Angelica.

Moret. Now my Curse go with you—Is all our Project fallen to this? to love the only Enemy to our Trade? Nay, to love such a [Shameroon], a very Beggar; nay, a Pirate-Beggar, whose Business is to rifle and be gone, a No-Purchase, No-Pay Tatterdemalion, an English Piccaroon; a Rogue that fights for daily Drink, and takes a Pride in being loyally lousy—Oh, I could curse now, if I durst—This is the Fate of most Whores.

Trophies, which from believing Fops we win,

Are Spoils to those who cozen us again.

[ ACT III.]

[ Scene I. A Street.]

Enter Florinda, Valeria, Hellena, in Antick different Dresses from what they were in before, Callis attending.

Flor. I wonder what should make my Brother in so ill a Humour: I hope he has not found out our Ramble this Morning.

Hell. No, if he had, we should have heard on’t at both Ears, and have been mew’d up this Afternoon; which I would not for the World should have happen’d—Hey ho! I’m sad as a Lover’s Lute.

Val. Well, methinks we have learnt this Trade of Gipsies as readily as if we had been bred upon the Road to Loretto: and yet I did so fumble, when I told the Stranger his Fortune, that I was afraid I should have told my own and yours by mistake—But methinks Hellena has been very serious ever since.

Flor. I would give my Garters she were in love, to be reveng’d upon her, for abusing me—How is’t, Hellena?

Hell. Ah!—would I had never seen my mad Monsieur —and yet for all your laughing I am not in love— and yet this small Acquaintance, o my Conscience, will never out of my Head.

Val. Ha, ha, ha—I laugh to think how thou art fitted with a Lover, a Fellow that, I warrant, loves every new Face he sees.

Hell. Hum—he has not kept his Word with me here—and may be taken up—that thought is not very pleasant to me—what the Duce should this be now that I feel?

Val. What is’t like?

Hell. Nay, the Lord knows—but if I should be hanged, I cannot chuse but be angry and afraid, when I think that mad Fellow should be in love with any Body but me—What to think of my self I know not—Would I could meet with some true damn’d Gipsy, that I might know my Fortune.

Val. Know it! why there’s nothing so easy; thou wilt love this wandring Inconstant till thou find’st thy self hanged about his Neck, and then be as mad to get free again.

Flor. Yes, Valeria; we shall see her bestride his Baggage-horse, and follow him to the Campaign.

Hell. So, so; now you are provided for, there’s no care taken of poor me—But since you have set my Heart a wishing, I am resolv’d to know for what. I will not die of the Pip, so I will not.

Flor. Art thou mad to talk so? Who will like thee well enough to have thee, that hears what a mad Wench thou art?

Hell. Like me! I don’t intend, every he that likes me shall have me, but he that I like: I shou’d have staid in the Nunnery still, if I had lik’d my Lady Abbess as well as she lik’d me. No, I came thence, not (as my wise Brother imagines) to take an eternal Farewel of the World, but to love and to be belov’d; and I will be belov’d or I’ll get one of your Men, so I will.

Val. Am I put into the Number of Lovers?

Hell. You! my Couz, I know thou art too good natur’d to leave us in any Design: [Thou wou’t] venture a Cast, tho thou comest off a Loser, especially with such a Gamester—I observ’d your Man, and your willing Ears incline that way; and if you are not a Lover, ’tis an Art soon learnt—that I find. [Sighs.

Flor. I wonder how you learnt to love so easily, I had a thousand Charms to meet my Eyes and Ears, e’er I cou’d yield; and ’twas the knowledge of Belvile’s Merit, not the surprising Person, took my Soul—Thou art too rash to give a Heart at first sight.

Hell. Hang your considering Lover; I ne’er thought beyond the Fancy, that ’twas a very pretty, idle, silly kind of Pleasure to pass ones time with, to write little, soft, nonsensical Billets, and with great difficulty and danger receive Answers; in which I shall have my Beauty prais’d, my Wit admir’d (tho little or none) and have the Vanity and Power to know I am desirable; then I have the more Inclination that way, because I am to be a Nun, and so shall not be suspected to have any such earthly Thoughts about me—But when I walk thus—and sigh thus—they’ll think my Mind’s upon my Monastery, and cry, how happy ’tis she’s so resolv’d!—But not a Word of Man.

Flor. What a mad Creature’s this!

Hell. I’ll warrant, if my Brother hears either of you sigh, he cries (gravely)—I fear you have the Indiscretion to be in love, but take heed of the Honour of our House, and your own unspotted Fame; and so he conjures on till he has laid the soft-wing’d God in your Hearts, or broke the Birds-nest—But see here comes your Lover: but where’s my inconstant? let’s step aside, and we may learn something. [Go aside.

Enter Belvile, Fred. and Blunt.

Belv. What means this? the Picture’s taken in.

Blunt. It may be the Wench is good natur’d, and will be kind gratis. Your Friend’s a proper handsom Fellow.

Belv. I rather think she has cut his Throat and is fled: I am mad he should throw himself into Dangers—Pox on’t, I shall want him to night—let’s knock and ask for him.

Hell. My heart goes a-pit a-pat, for fear ’tis my Man they talk of. [Knock, Moretta above.

More. What would you have?

Belv. Tell the Stranger that enter’d here about two Hours [ago], that his Friends stay here for him.

Moret. A Curse upon him for Moretta, would he were at the Devil—but he’s coming to you. [Enter Wilmore.

Hell. I, I, ’tis he. Oh how this vexes me.

Belv. And how, and how, dear Lad, has Fortune smil’d? Are we to break her Windows, or raise up Altars to her! hah!

Will. Does not my Fortune sit triumphant on my Brow? dost not see the little wanton God there all gay and smiling? have I not an Air about my Face and Eyes, that distinguish me from the Croud of common Lovers? By Heav’n, Cupid’s Quiver has not half so many Darts as her Eyes—Oh such a Bona Rota, to sleep in her Arms is lying in Fresco, all perfum’d Air about me.

Hell. Here’s fine encouragement for me to fool on. [Aside.

Will. Hark ye, where didst thou purchase that rich Canary we drank to-day? Tell me, that I may adore the Spigot, and sacrifice to the Butt: the Juice was divine, into which I must dip my Rosary, and then bless all things that I would have bold or fortunate.

Belv. Well, Sir, let’s go take a Bottle, and hear the Story of your Success.

Fred. Would not French Wine do better?

Will. Damn the hungry Balderdash; cheerful Sack has a generous Virtue in’t, inspiring a successful Confidence, gives Eloquence to the Tongue, and Vigour to the Soul; and has in a few Hours compleated all my Hopes and Wishes. There’s nothing left to raise a new Desire in me—Come let’s be gay and wanton—and, Gentlemen, study, study what you want, for here are Friends,—that will supply, Gentlemen,—hark! what a charming sound they make—’tis he and she Gold whilst here, shall beget new Pleasures every moment.

Blunt. But hark ye, Sir, you are not married, are you?

Will. All the Honey of Matrimony, but none of the Sting, Friend.

Blunt. ’Sheartlikins, thou’rt a fortunate Rogue.

Will. I am so, Sir, let these inform you.—Ha, how sweetly they chime! Pox of Poverty, it makes a Man a Slave, makes Wit and Honour sneak, my Soul grew lean and rusty for want of Credit.

Blunt. ’Sheartlikins, this I like well, it looks like my lucky Bargain! Oh how I long for the Approach of my Squire, that is to conduct me to her House again. Why! here’s two provided for.

Fred. By this light y’re happy Men.

Blunt. Fortune is pleased to smile on us, Gentlemen,—to smile on us.

Enter Sancho, and pulls Blunt by the Sleeve. They go aside.

Sancho. Sir, my Lady expects you—she has remov’d all that might oppose your Will and Pleasure—and is impatient till you come.

Blunt. Sir, I’ll attend you—Oh the happiest Rogue! I’ll take no leave, lest they either dog me, or stay me. [Ex. with Sancho.

Belv. But then the little Gipsy is forgot?

Will. A Mischief on thee for putting her into my thoughts; I had quite forgot her else, and this Night’s Debauch had drunk her quite down.

Hell. Had it so, good Captain? [Claps him on the Back.

Will. Ha! I hope she did not hear.

Hell. What, afraid of such a Champion!

Will. Oh! you’re a fine Lady of your word, are you not? to make a Man languish a whole day—

Hell. In tedious search of me.

Will. Egad, Child, thou’rt in the right, hadst thou seen what a melancholy Dog I have been ever since I was a Lover, how I have walkt the Streets like a Capuchin, with my Hands in my Sleeves—Faith, Sweetheart, thou wouldst pity me.

Hell. Now, if I should be hang’d, I can’t be angry with him, he dissembles so heartily—Alas, good Captain, what pains you have taken—Now were I ungrateful not to reward so true a Servant.

Will. Poor Soul! that’s kindly said, I see thou bearest a Conscience—come then for a beginning shew me thy dear Face.

Hell. I’m afraid, my small Acquaintance, you have been staying that swinging stomach you boasted of this morning; I remember then my little Collation would have gone down with you, without the Sauce of a handsom Face—Is your Stomach so quesy now?

Will. Faith long fasting, Child, spoils a Man’s Appetite—yet if you durst treat, I could so lay about me still.

Hell. And would you fall to, before a Priest says Grace?

Will. Oh fie, fie, what an old out-of-fashion’d thing hast thou nam’d? Thou could’st not dash me more out of Countenance, shouldst thou shew me an ugly Face.

Whilst he is seemingly courting Hellena, enter Angelica, Moretta, Biskey, and Sebastian, all in Masquerade: Ang. sees Will. and [starts].

Ang. Heavens, is’t he? and passionately fond to see another Woman?

Moret. What cou’d you expect less from such a Swaggerer?

Ang. [Expect! as much as I paid him], a Heart intire,

Which I had pride enough to think when e’er I gave

It would have rais’d the Man above the Vulgar,

Made him all Soul, and that all soft and constant.

Hell. You see, Captain, how willing I am to be Friends with you, till Time and Ill-luck make us Lovers; and ask you the Question first, rather than put your Modesty to the blush, by asking me: for alas, I know you Captains are such strict Men, severe Observers of your Vows to Chastity, that ’twill be hard to prevail with your tender Conscience to marry a young willing Maid.

Will. Do not abuse me, for fear I should take thee at thy word, and marry thee indeed, which I’m sure will be Revenge sufficient.

Hell. O’ my Conscience, that will be our Destiny, because we are both of one humour; I am as inconstant as you, for I have considered, Captain, that a handsom Woman has a great deal to do whilst her Face is good, for then is our Harvest-time to gather Friends; and should I in these days of my Youth, catch a fit of foolish Constancy, I were undone; ’tis loitering by day-light in our great Journey: therefore declare, I’ll allow but one year for Love, one year for Indifference, and one year for Hate—and then—go hang your self—for I profess myself the gay, the kind, and the inconstant—the Devil’s in’t if this won’t please you.

Will. Oh most damnably!—I have a Heart with a hole quite thro it too, no Prison like mine to keep a Mistress in.

Ang. Perjur’d Man! how I believe thee now! [Aside.

Hell. Well, I see our Business as well as Humours are alike, yours to cozen as many Maids as will trust you, and I as many Men as have Faith—See if I have not as desperate a lying look, as you can have for the heart of you. [Pulls off her Vizard; he starts.

—How do you like it, Captain?

Will. Like it! by Heav’n, I never saw so much Beauty. Oh the Charms of those sprightly black Eyes, that strangely fair Face, full of Smiles and Dimples! those soft round melting cherry Lips! and small even white Teeth! not to be exprest, but silently adored!—Oh one Look more, and strike me dumb, or I shall repeat nothing else till I am mad. [He seems to court her to pull off her Vizard: she refuses.

Ang. I can endure no more—nor is it fit to interrupt him; for if I do, my Jealousy has so destroy’d my Reason,—I shall undo him—Therefore I’ll retire. And you Sebastian [To one of her Bravoes] follow that Woman, and learn who ’tis; while you tell the Fugitive, I would speak to him instantly. [To the other Bravo. [Exit.

[This while Flor. is talking to Belvile, who stands sullenly. Fred. courting Valeria.

Val. Prithee, dear Stranger, be not so sullen; for tho you have lost your Love, you see my Friend frankly offers you hers, to play with in the mean time.

Belv. Faith, Madam, I am sorry I can’t play at her Game.

Fred. Pray leave your Intercession, and mind your own Affair, they’ll better agree apart; he’s a model Sigher in Company, but alone no Woman escapes him.

Flor. Sure he does but [rally]—yet if it should be true—I’ll tempt him farther—Believe me, noble Stranger, I’m no common Mistress—and for a little proof on’t—wear this Jewel—nay, take it, Sir, ’tis right, and Bills of Exchange may sometimes miscarry.

Belv. Madam, why am I chose out of all Mankind to be the Object of your Bounty?

Val. There’s another civil Question askt.

Fred. Pox of’s Modesty, it spoils his own Markets, and hinders mine.

Flor. Sir, from my Window I have often seen you; and Women of Quality have so few opportunities for Love, that we ought to lose none.

Fred. Ay, this is something! here’s a Woman!—When shall I be blest with so much kindness from your fair Mouth?—Take the Jewel, Fool. [Aside to Belv.

Belv. You tempt me strangely, Madam, every way.

Flor. So, if I find him false, my whole Repose is gone. [Aside.

Belv. And but for a Vow I’ve made to a very fine Lady, this Goodness had subdu’d me.

Fred. Pox on’t be kind, in pity to me be kind, for I am to thrive here but as you treat her Friend.

Hell. Tell me what did you in yonder House, and I’ll unmasque.

Will. Yonder House—oh—I went to—a—to—why, there’s a Friend of mine lives there.

Hell. What a she, or a he Friend?

Will. A Man upon my Honour! a Man—A She Friend! no, no, Madam, you have done my Business, I thank you.

Hell. And was’t your Man Friend, that had more Darts in’s Eyes than Cupid carries in a whole Budget of Arrows?

Will. So—

Hell. Ah such a Bona Roba: to be in her Arms is lying in Fresco, all perfumed Air about me—Was this your Man Friend too?

Will. So—

Hell. That gave you the He, and the She—Gold, that begets young Pleasures.

Will. Well, well, Madam, then you see there are Ladies in the World, that will not be cruel—there are, Madam, there are—

Hell. And there be Men too as fine, wild, inconstant Fellows as your self, there be, Captain, there be, if you go to that now—therefore I’m resolv’d—

Will. Oh!

Hell. To see your Face no more—

Will. Oh!

Hell. Till to morrow.

Will. Egad you frighted me.

Hell. Nor then neither, unless you’l swear never to see that Lady more.

Will. See her!—why! never to think of Womankind again?

Hell. Kneel, and swear. [Kneels, she gives him her hand.

Hell. I do, never to think—to see—to love—nor lie with any but thy self.

Hell. Kiss the Book.

Will. Oh, most religiously. [Kisses her Hand.

Hell. Now what a wicked Creature am I, to damn a proper Fellow.

Call. Madam, I’ll stay no longer, ’tis e’en dark. [To Flor.

Flor. However, Sir, I’ll leave this with you—that when I’m gone, you may repent the opportunity you have lost by your modesty. [Gives him the Jewel, which is her Picture, and Ex. He gazes after her.

Will. ’Twill be an Age till to morrow,—and till then I will most impatiently expect you—Adieu, my dear pretty Angel. [Ex. all the Women.

Belv. Ha! Florinda’s Picture! ’twas she her self—what a dull Dog was I? I would have given the World for one minute’s discourse with her.—

Fred. This comes of your Modesty,—ah pox on your Vow,’twas ten to one but we had lost the Jewel by’t.

Belv. Willmore! the blessed’st Opportunity lost!—Florinda, Friends, Florinda!

Will. Ah Rogue! such black Eyes, such a Face, such a Mouth, such Teeth,—and so much Wit!

Belv. All, all, and a thousand Charms besides.

Will. Why, dost thou know her?

Belv. Know her! ay, ay, and a Pox take me with all my Heart for being modest.

Will. But hark ye, Friend of mine, are you my Rival? and have I been only beating the Bush all this while?

Belv. I understand thee not—I’m mad—see here— [Shews the Picture.

Will. Ha! whose Picture is this?—’tis a fine Wench.

Fred. The Colonel’s Mistress, Sir.

Will. Oh, oh, here—I thought it had been another Prize—come, come, a Bottle will set thee right again. [Gives the Picture back.

Belv. I am content to try, and by that time ’twill be late enough for our Design.

Will. Agreed.

Love does all day the Soul’s great Empire keep,

But Wine at night lulls the soft God asleep. [Exeunt.]

[ Scene II. Lucetta’s House.]

Enter Blunt and Lucetta with a Light.

Luc. Now we are safe and free, no fears of the coming home of my old jealous Husband, which made me a little thoughtful when you came in first—but now Love is all the business of my Soul.

Blunt. I am transported—Pox on’t, that I had but some fine things to say to her, such as Lovers use—I was a Fool not to learn of Fred, a little by Heart before I came—something I must say.— [Aside. ’Sheartlikins, sweet Soul, I am not us’d to complement, but I’m an honest Gentleman, and thy humble Servant.

Luc. I have nothing to pay for so great a Favour, but such a Love as cannot but be great, since at first sight of that sweet Face and Shape it made me your absolute Captive.

Blunt. Kind heart, how prettily she talks! Egad I’ll show her Husband a Spanish Trick; send him out of the World, and marry her: she’s damnably in love with me, and will ne’er mind Settlements, and so there’s that say’d. [Aside.

Luc. Well, Sir, I’ll go and undress me, and be with you instantly.

Blunt. Make haste then, for ’dsheartlikins, dear Soul, thou canst not guess at the pain of a longing Lover, when his Joys are drawn within the compass of a few minutes.

Luc. You speak my Sense, and I’ll make haste to provide it. [Exit.]

Blunt. ’Tis a rare Girl, and this one night’s enjoyment with her will be worth all the days I ever past in Essex.—Would she’d go with me into England, tho to say truth, there’s plenty of Whores there already.—But a pox on ’em they are such mercenary prodigal Whores, that they want such a one as this, that’s free and generous, to give ’em good Examples:—Why, what a House she has! how rich and fine!

[Enter Sancho.]

Sancho. Sir, my Lady has sent me to conduct you to her Chamber.

Blunt. Sir, I shall be proud to follow—Here’s one of her Servants too: ’dsheartlikins, by his Garb and Gravity he might be a Justice of Peace in Essex, and is but a Pimp here. [Exeunt.

[ The Scene changes] to a Chamber with an Alcove-Bed in it, a Table, &c. Lucetta in Bed. Enter Sancho and Blunt, who takes the Candle of Sancho at the Door.

Sanch. Sir, my Commission reaches no farther.

Blunt. Sir, I’ll excuse your Complement:—what, in Bed, my sweet Mistress?

Luc. You see, I still out-do you in kindness.

Blunt. And thou shall see what haste I’ll make to quit scores—oh the luckiest Rogue! [Undresses himself.

Luc. Shou’d you be false or cruel now!

Blunt. False, ’Sheartlikins, what dost thou take me for a Jew? an insensible Heathen,—A Pox of thy old jealous Husband: and he were dead, egad, sweet Soul, it shou’d be none of my fault, if I did not marry thee.

Luc. It never shou’d be mine.

Blunt. Good Soul, I’m the fortunatest Dog!

Luc. Are you not undrest yet?

Blunt. As much as my Impatience will permit. [Goes towards the Bed in his Shirt and Drawers.

Luc. Hold, Sir, put out the Light, it may betray us else.

Blunt. Any thing, I need no other Light but that of thine Eyes!—’sheartlikins, there I think I had it. [Aside. [Puts out the Candle, the Bed descends, he gropes about to find it.

—Why—why—where am I got? what, not yet?—where are you sweetest?—ah, the Rogue’s silent now—a pretty Love-trick this—how she’ll laugh at me anon!—you need not, my dear Rogue! you need not! I’m all on a fire already—come, come, now call me in for pity—Sure I’m enchanted! I have been round the Chamber, and can find neither Woman, nor Bed—I lockt the Door, I’m sure she cannot go that way; or if she cou’d, the Bed cou’d not—Enough, enough, my pretty Wanton, do not carry the Jest too far—Ha, betray’d! Dogs! Rogues! [Pimps!] help! help! [Lights on a Trap, and is let down.

Enter Lucetta, Philippo, and Sancho with a Light.

Phil. Ha, ha, ha, he’s dispatcht finely.

Luc. Now, Sir, had I been coy, we had mist of this Booty.

Phil. Nay when I saw ’twas a substantial Fool, I was mollified; but when you doat upon a Serenading Coxcomb, upon a Face, fine Clothes, and a Lute, it makes me rage.

Luc. You know I never was guilty of that Folly, my dear Philippo, but with your self—But come let’s see what we have got by this.

Phil. A rich Coat!—Sword and Hat!—these Breeches too—are well lin’d!—see here a Gold Watch!—a Purse—ha! Gold!—at least two hundred Pistoles! a bunch of Diamond Rings; and one with the Family Arms!—a Gold Box!—with a Medal of his King! and his Lady Mother’s Picture!—these were sacred Reliques, believe me!—see, the Wasteband of his Breeches have a Mine of Gold!—Old Queen Bess’s. We have a Quarrel to her ever since Eighty Eight, and may therefore justify the Theft, the Inquisition might have committed it.

Luc. See, a Bracelet of [bow’d Gold], these his Sister ty’d about his Arm at parting—but well—for all this, I fear his being a Stranger may make a noise, and hinder our Trade with them hereafter.

Phil. That’s our security; he is not only a Stranger to us, but to the Country too—the Common-Shore into which he is descended, thou know’st, conducts him into another Street, which this Light will hinder him from ever finding again—he knows neither your Name, nor the Street where your House is, nay, nor the way to his own Lodgings.

Luc. And art not thou an unmerciful Rogue, not to afford him one Night for all this?—I should not have been such a Jew.

Phil. Blame me not, Lucetta, to keep as much of thee as I can to my self—come, that thought makes me wanton,—let’s to Bed,—Sancho, lock up these.

This is the Fleece which Fools do bear,

Design’d for witty Men to [sheer]. [Exeunt.

[ The Scene changes], and discovers Blunt, creeping out of a Common Shore, his Face, &c., all dirty.

Blunt. Oh Lord! [Climbing up.

I am got out at last, and (which is a Miracle) without a Clue—and now to Damning and Cursing,—but if that would ease me, where shall I begin? with my Fortune, my self, or the Quean that cozen’d me—What a dog was I to believe in Women! Oh Coxcomb—ignorant conceited Coxcomb! to fancy she cou’d be enamour’d with my Person, at the first sight enamour’d—Oh, I’m a cursed Puppy,’tis plain, Fool was writ upon my Forehead, she perceiv’d it,—saw the Essex Calf there—for what Allurements could there be in this Countenance? which I can indure, because I’m acquainted with it—Oh, dull silly Dog! to be thus sooth’d into a Cozening! Had I been drunk, I might fondly have credited the young Quean! but as I was in my right Wits, to be thus cheated, confirms I am a dull believing English Country Fop.—But my Comrades! Death and the Devil, there’s the worst of all—then a Ballad will be sung to Morrow on the Prado, to a lousy Tune of the enchanted Squire, and the annihilated Damsel—But Fred, that Rogue, and the Colonel, will abuse me beyond all Christian patience—had she left me my Clothes, I have a Bill of Exchange at home wou’d have sav’d my Credit—but now all hope is taken from me—Well, I’ll home (if I can find the way) with this Consolation, that I am not the first kind believing Coxcomb; but there are, Gallants, many such good Natures amongst ye.

And tho you’ve better Arts to hide your Follies,

Adsheartlikins y’are all as errant Cullies.

[ Scene III. The Garden, in the Night.]

Enter Florinda undres’d, with a Key, and a little Box.

Flor. Well, thus far I’m in my way to Happiness; I have got my self free from Callis; my Brother too, I find by yonder light, is gone into his Cabinet, and thinks not of me: I have by good Fortune got the Key of the Garden Back-door,—I’ll open it, to prevent Belvile’s knocking,—a little noise will now alarm my Brother. Now am I as fearful as a young Thief. [Unlocks the Door.] —Hark,—what noise is that?—Oh,’twas the Wind that plaid amongst the Boughs.—Belvile stays long, methinks—it’s time—stay—for fear of a surprize, I’ll hide these Jewels in yonder Jessamin. [She goes to lay down the Box.

Enter Willmore drunk.

Will. What the Devil is become of these Fellows, Belvile and Frederick? They promis’d to stay at the next corner for me, but who the Devil knows the corner of a full Moon?—Now—whereabouts am I?—hah—what have we here? a Garden!—a very convenient place to sleep in—hah—what has God sent us here?—a Female—by this light, a Woman; I’m a Dog if it be not a very Wench.—

Flor. He’s come!—hah—who’s there?

Will. Sweet Soul, let me salute thy Shoe-string.

Flor. ’Tis not my Belvile—good Heavens, I know him not.—Who are you, and from whence come you?

Will. Prithee—prithee, Child—not so many hard Questions—let it suffice I am here, Child—Come, come kiss me.

Flor. Good Gods! what luck is mine?

Will. Only good luck, Child, parlous good luck—Come hither,—’tis a delicate shining Wench,—by this Hand she’s perfum’d, and smells like any Nosegay.—Prithee, dear Soul, let’s not play the Fool, and lose time,—precious time—for as Gad shall save me, I’m as honest a Fellow as breathes, tho I am a little [disguis’d] at present.—Come, I say,—why, thou may’st be free with me, I’ll be very secret. I’ll not boast who ’twas oblig’d me, not I—for hang me if I know thy Name.

Flor. Heavens! what a filthy beast is this!

Will. I am so, and thou oughtst the sooner to lie with me for that reason,—for look you, Child, there will be no Sin in’t, because ’twas neither design’d nor premeditated; ’tis pure Accident on both sides—that’s a certain thing now—Indeed should I make love to you, and you vow Fidelity—and swear and lye till you believ’d and yielded—Thou art therefore (as thou art a good Christian) oblig’d in Conscience to deny me nothing. Now—come, be kind, without any more idle prating.

Flor. Oh, I am ruin’d—wicked Man, unhand me.

Will. Wicked! Egad, Child, a Judge, were he young and vigorous, and saw those Eyes of thine, would know ’twas they gave the first blow—the first provocation.—Come, prithee let’s lose no time, I say—this is a fine convenient place.

Flor. Sir, let me go, I conjure you, or I’ll call out.

Will. Ay, ay, you were best to call Witness to see how finely you treat me—do.—

Flor. I’ll cry Murder, Rape, or any thing, if you do not instantly let me go.

Will. A Rape! Come, come, you lye, you Baggage, you lye: What, I’ll warrant you would fain have the World believe now that you are not so forward as I. No, not you,—why at this time of Night was your Cobweb-door set open, dear Spider—but to catch Flies?—Hah come—or I shall be damnably angry.—Why what a Coil is here.—

Flor. Sir, can you think—

Will. That you’d do it for nothing? oh, oh, I find what you’d be at—look here, here’s a Pistole for you—here’s a work indeed—here—take it, I say.—

Flor. For Heaven’s sake, Sir, as you’re a Gentleman—

Will. So—now—she would be wheedling me for more—what, you will not take it then—you’re resolv’d you will not.—Come, come, take it, or I’ll put it up again; for, look ye, I never give more.—Why, how now, Mistress, are you so high i’th’ Mouth, a Pistole won’t down with you?—hah—why, what a work’s here—in good time—come, no struggling, be gone—But an y’are good at a dumb Wrestle, I’m for ye,—look ye,—I’m for ye.— [She struggles with him.

Enter Belvile and Frederick.

Bel. The Door is open, a Pox of this mad Fellow, I’m angry that we’ve lost him, I durst have sworn he had follow’d us.

Fred. But you were so hasty, Colonel, to be gone.

Flor. Help, help,—Murder!—help—oh, I’m ruin’d.

Belv. Ha, sure that’s Florinda’s Voice. [Comes up to them.

—A Man! Villain, let go that Lady.[A noise.

[Will. turns and draws, Fred. interposes.

Flor. Belvile! Heavens! my Brother too is coming, and ’twill be impossible to escape.—Belvile, I conjure you to walk under my Chamber-window, from whence I’ll give you some instructions what to do—This rude Man has undone us. [Exit.

Will. Belvile!

Enter Pedro, Stephano, and other Servants with Lights.

Ped. I’m betray’d; run, Stephano, and see if Florinda be safe. [Exit Steph.

So whoe’er they be, all is not well, I’ll to Florinda’s Chamber. [They fight, and Pedro’s Party beats ’em out; going out, meets Stephano.

Steph. You need not, Sir, the poor Lady’s fast asleep, and thinks no harm: I wou’d not wake her, Sir, for fear of frightning her with your danger.

Ped. I’m glad she’s there—Rascals, how came the Garden-Door open?

Steph. That Question comes too late, Sir: some of my Fellow-Servants Masquerading I’ll warrant.

Ped. Masquerading! a leud Custom to debauch our Youth—there’s something more in this than I imagine. [Exeunt.

[ Scene IV. Changes to the Street.]

Enter Belvile in Rage, Fred. holding him, and Willmore melancholy.

Will. Why, how the Devil shou’d I know Florinda?

Belv. Ah plague of your ignorance! if it had not been Florinda, must you be a Beast?—a Brute, a senseless Swine?

Will. Well, Sir, you see I am endu’d with Patience—I can bear—tho egad y’re very free with me methinks,—I was in good hopes the Quarrel wou’d have been on my side, for so uncivilly interrupting me.

Belv. Peace, Brute, whilst thou’rt safe—oh, I’m distracted.

Will. Nay, nay, I’m an unlucky Dog, that’s certain.

Belv. Ah curse upon the Star that rul’d my Birth! or whatsoever other Influence that makes me still so wretched.

Will. Thou break’st my Heart with these Complaints; there is no Star in fault, no Influence but Sack, the cursed Sack I drank.

Fred. Why, how the Devil came you so drunk?

Will. Why, how the Devil came you so sober?

Belv. A curse upon his thin Skull, he was always before-hand that way.

Fred. Prithee, dear Colonel, forgive him, he’s sorry for his fault.

Belv. He’s always so after he has done a mischief—a plague on all such Brutes.

Will. By this Light I took her for an errant Harlot.

Belv. Damn your debaucht Opinion: tell me, Sot, hadst thou so much sense and light about thee to distinguish her to be a Woman, and could’st not see something about her Face and Person, to strike an awful Reverence into thy Soul?

Will. Faith no, I consider’d her as mere a Woman as I could wish.

Belv. ’Sdeath I have no patience—draw, or I’ll kill you.

Will. Let that alone till to morrow, and if I set not all right again, use your Pleasure.

Belv. To morrow, damn it.

The spiteful Light will lead me to no happiness.

To morrow is Antonio’s, and perhaps

Guides him to my undoing;—oh that I could meet

This Rival, this powerful Fortunate.

Will. What then?

Belv. Let thy own Reason, or my Rage instruct thee.

Will. I shall be finely inform’d then, no doubt; hear me, Colonel—hear me—shew me the Man and I’ll do his Business.

Belv. I know him no more than thou, or if I did, I should not need thy aid.

Will. This you say is Angelica’s House, I promis’d the kind Baggage to lie with her to Night. [Offers to go in.

Enter Antonio and his Page. Ant. knocks on the Hilt of his Sword.

Ant. You paid the thousand Crowns I directed?

Page. To the Lady’s old Woman, Sir, I did.

Will. Who the Devil have we here?

Belv. I’ll now plant my self under Florinda’s Window, and if I find no comfort there, I’ll die. [Ex. Belv. and Fred.