WORKS OF APHRA BEHN: VOLUME IV, SENECA UNMASQUED

by Aphra Behn

Moliere's comedies, which were so largely conveyed in _Sir Patient
Fancy_, have been a gold mine for many of our dramatists. From _Le
Malade Imaginaire_ Miller took his _Mother-in-Law; or, The Doctor the
Disease_, produced at the Haymarket, 12 February, 1734, and Isaac
Bickerstaffe, _Dr. Last in his Chariot_, produced at the same theatre 25
August, 1769. In this farce Bickerstaffe further introduces the famous
consultation scene from _L'Amour Medecin_, a play which had been made
use of by Lacy, _The Dumb Lady; or, The Farrier made a Physician_
(1672); by Owen Swiney, _The Quacks; or, Love's the Physician_, produced
at Drury Lane, 18 March, 1705; by Miller, _Art and Nature_, produced at
the same theatre 16 February, 1738; and in an anonymous one act piece,
which is little more than a bare translation under the title _Love is
the Doctor_, performed once only at Lincoln's Inn Fields, 4 April, 1734.

434 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Aphra Behn, or Ayfara Behn, of the first professional women authors in English on Britain wrote plays, poetry, and her best known work, the prose fiction Oroonoko (1688).

Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the Restoration and was one of the female. Her contributed to the amatory genre of literature. People sometimes refer to Delarivier Manley, Eliza Haywood, and her as part of "the fair triumvirate of wit."

In reckoning of Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf, more important total career of Behn produced any particular work. Woolf wrote, "All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn … for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." Victoria Mary Sackville-West called Behn "an inhabitant of Grub Street with the best of them, … a phenomenon never seen and … furiously resented." Felix Shelling called her "a very gifted woman, compelled to write for bread in an age in which literature … catered habitually to the lowest and most depraved of human inclinations. Her success depended upon her ability to write like a man." Edmund Gosse remarked that "the George Sand of the Restoration" lived the bohemian life in London in the 17th century as Paris two centuries later.

Reviews

[Richard Seltzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read as research for my novel Parallel Lives.