Wastrel’s Reviews > The Secret Life of Aphra Behn > Status Update

Although another epilogue, to a Killigrew play, makes clear that the same dynamics had been at play before the invention of actresses:

When boys play'd women's parts, you'd think the stage
Was innocent in that untempting age.
No: for your amorous fathers then, like you,
Amongst those boys had play-house misses too:
They set those bearded beauties on their laps,
Men gave 'em Kisses, and the ladies Claps.


Anyway, this is all from The Covent Garden Drolery, an anthology of poems and, predominantly, theatrical extracts, with a heavy emphasis on the risque. Many were written in a style described by the Earl of Mulgrave as writing with "expression easy, and the fancy high" - that is, formally stylised, but informal in content. The Drolery was a great success, inspiring many imitations, and although it was only published under Behn's initials, everyone seems to have known it was hers. Around the same time, her plays were satirised with those of other prominent authors in 'The Rehearsal', a popular satire by the Duke of Buckingham (i.e. the Prime Minister, in effect). Both seem to show a surprising level of fame for Behn, given that she'd only had two plays performed at this point. Seems to suggest that the idea of a female playwright was received with a great deal of excitement - if admittedly of a rather gawking nature. Also suggests to me that Behn had some decent connexions already in the literary world - either she made friends very quickly (she around this time wrote a supportive pindaric in prase of Edward Howard, who had been mauled by the critics, which Howard answered), or she had some connexions (eg Killigrew) from her work as a spy. Notably, the Drolery is mostly taken, apparently, from productions of Killigrew's King's company, even though Behn's own plays had been performed by the rival Duke's.


Regarding the point about women in breeches being described as attractive to female viewers (not so much even whether this is true, as the fact that the female sexual POV is even considered), it's interesting that around this time there seems to have been a small genre of male sexual inadequacy poems. The Drolery includes a piece by Dryden, in which a woman manages to prevent her man from prematurely ejaculating the first time, but is then frustrated by his being slow to meet her needs the second time. Behn herself famously wrote 'The Disappointment' - a buccolic idyll poem that turns into satire when the shepherd is unable to perform for his shepherdess. Rochester wrote a famous poem about premature ejaculation. All this is interesting not just because it shows how dramatically the morals of public discourse had loosened (this is only a couple of decades after Cromwell and the Serjeants General banned Christmas for its inappropriate merriment), but specifically because in these works male sexual inadequacy is not simply used, as usual, as a way for men to mock other men for their unmanliness, but specifically in terms of how these men are sexually disappointing to women - and therefore how they are ridiculous from the woman's point of view. It's not just that a man's penis doesn't work, it's that he's failing in his duty to please his woman - a perspective that's often lacking in other eras. Apparently this was also reflected in more scholarly attitudes: there was a great emphasis on the importance of the female orgasm in conception.


Finally, this isn't from the book, but I happened to come across a stanza by Rochester, which ties into the themes both of female sexual agency and homosexuality/gender fluidity, when a man imagines his impotent old age, and the nostalgia he'll feel for the fun he's having with his girlfriend today:

Nor shall our love-fits, Chloris, be forgot,

When each the well-looked linkboy strove t' enjoy,

And the best kiss was the deciding lot

Whether the boy fucked you, or I the boy.

Of course, Rochester is not only a libertine, but an intentionally flagrant libertine - poems like this are maintaining his image, and wouldn't have been universally accepted in his age. But it should also be said: poems like this don't describe a life that the reader can't imagine. Rochester's warts-and-all poems about his daily life were both popular and scandalous precisely because they described a culture that the reader would recognise - if not a culture they partook in, at least one that they had heard about. Perhaps many readers would have been disgusted or outraged, both by Rochester's own unapologetically bisexual activities, and by his girlfriend's sexual agency and promiscuity, and indeed the easy and open understanding they apparently shared... but the fact that Rochester tried to scandalise them in this way shows that he did not expect even his puritanical enemies to be confused by the libertine culture he describes. And of course, the Earl of Rochester was not an outsider: he was at the centre of theatrical and literary society, and he was also a long-time (if stormy) friend of the King. Rochester may have been at the edge of what was acceptible and normal conduct in his age... but he was not beyond the pale, and that says something about the rest of society in his era. A writer like Behn may not have been as explicit as Rochester, but we have to read her as a woman who lived happily in the same cultural sphere as (and possibly as a friend of) Rochester and the life he describes in his poems.

Reading 'Our Cabal', her poem about her and her friends (in code) having a picnic, it's striking how Behn emphasises bisexuality as an attractive feature in men:

- "Mr G.V." is codenamed "Alexis", a character from a gay romance in Virgil
- of her 'Dear Brother'/"JC"/"Damon", she says openly: the swains as well as nymphs submit / to his charms of beauty and of wit
- "Ed.Bed" is codenamed, unsubtly, "Philander" (lover of men), and is in a relationship with the man Behn actually wants to sleep with (and will end up sleeping with). The description is surprisingly direct (and positive):
But all the love he ever knew,
On Lycidas he does bestow:
Who pays his tenderness again,
Too amorous for a swain to a swain.
A softer youth was never seen,
His beauty, maid; but man, his mien:
And much more gay than all the rest;
And, but Alexis, finest dressed.
His eyes towards Lycidas still turn,
As sympathising flowers to the sun,
Whilst Lycidas, whose eyes dispense
No less a grateful influence
Improves his beauty, which still fresher grows:
Who would not under two such suns as those?

Unfortunately, Lycidas is a bastard. Behn recognises not only recognises that has he slept with more people than anyone else in her group (and he seems to have some competition!), but unlike Damon (the faux-innocent who claims not to realise that his partners are falling in love with him, but who nobody can stay mad at because he's charming and funny), but describes Lycidas as an utter wanker.

More unfortunately, Behn seems to have been attracted to misogyny. Not to get all incel about it, but let's be honest here, we can all recognise the type:
Next Lycidas, that haughty swain
With many beauties in a train,
All sighing for the swain, whilst he
Barely returns civility.
[...]
His eyes are black, and do transcend
All fancy e’er can comprehend;
And yet no softness in ’em move,
They kill with fierceness, not with love:
[...]
Nor will but love enough impart,
To gain and to secure a heart:
Of which no sooner he is sure,
And that its wounds are past all cure,
But for new victories he prepares,
And leaves the old to its despairs

Well HE sounds nice. She also mentions "That heart that can no love admit". Oh yeah, and although Behn doesn't mention it here, he's also a convicted murderer. Who is gay. And famously hates women. So naturally he's the one she's drooling over, and who she actually ends up dating some time later. She even mentions his "falseness" being one of his most attractive features.

Urghh.

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There's also an interesting here about openness and female relationships.

When she talks about both Amyntas (the man she's in love with) and Lycidas (her future boyfriend who she's openly drooling over), she phrases her praise specifically in terms of their mutual friend, Cloris. Behn warns Cloris (who's never been in love) not to let herself be seduced by Amyntas, lest she fall in love with him, as Behn already has - and specifies all the ways that he's sexy. It's not clear if Behn's love for Amyntas is unrequited because he's pursuing Cloris, or if Amyntas just wants a second girlfriend. (Todd thinks they're lovers, but his ow diaries, while showing he's friends with 'Astraea', aren't explicit about the nature of their relationship).
That dynamic is then repeated with Lycidus. Behn reminds Cloris of all the times that Cloris, Behn and Amyntas have lazed around talking about how sexy Lycidus is; Behn reminds Cloris of how sexy Lycidus is; and Behn encourages Cloris to try to seduce Lycidus.

Now, maybe Cloris and Behn are just good friends who share a taste in men. But it's striking that the two men Behn wants to sleep with are the two where she brings Cloris into the discussion. It's not just because she doesn't want to admit how sexy she personally find these men, because she goes on at length about that (and about the other men, too). Perhaps she's drawing a line: she's willing to talk about how attractive the men are, but once the discussion turns to whether to sleep with them or not she wants to put it in the thir person. In that regard, it's possible that Cloris doesn't even exist: every sketch in the poem is prefaced with the initials of the person she's describing, EXCEPT for the two women introduced initially, Sylvia and Cloris. Why are they different? One possibility is that they're literary conceits.

Alternatively, it kind of seems as though sharing and competing may just be part of how Behn thinks of her own sexuality. She's often admiring of men, but she only seems to get really excited about them when she imagines a woman being involved. In this regard, the Amyntas-Cloris-Astrea and Amyntas-Cloris-Lycidus threesomes here call back to that other poem about an Amyntas-Cloris-Astrea threesome - the one in which she advises Cloris NOT to fall for Amyntas, because she should pick someone better (like Astrea, *hint hint*), and spends a lot of the time distracted by how hot Cloris is.

[It's possible that these are the same Cloris and Amyntas. The vibe, though, seems rather different: the Cloris in that poem (Harsenet) is seen at a distance, looked up to, an object of adulation and threat; the anonymous Cloris in Our Cabal, on the other hand, feels like a younger sister, attractive but not awe-inspiring, and welcomed rather than negotiated with. Both "Cloris" and "Amyntas" were conventional codenames in the era; the man Behn calls 'Lycidus' in this poem, for example, she'll call 'Amyntas' later on. ]

(on the homoeroticism front: 'Our Cabal' singles Elizabeth Barry out from all Behn's friends. Everyone else, even the man she's in love with, is address simply as "Mr Je.B" and so forth, apart from one guy who gets "My Dear Brother, Mr...".

But Barry gets "My Dear Amoret, Mistress B." And a positively fawning poem about how everyone who sees her falls in love (apart from, of course, the man Barry is actually in love with, who has dumped her, and now she's sworn off men forever). ('Amoret' being a diminutive derived from the word for 'love'). It's distinctly different in character from the flattering-but-conventional portraits of the other women. It's not explicitly erotic - indeed, its real distinction is that it's the only subpoem to sympathise with its subject, rather than to drool over them - and it may be an indicator of paticularly close friendship rather than attraction. But it certainly seems to indicate some form of unique bond between the two.

[Todd notes that Barry's past is almost as mysterious as Behn's. A later biographer claimed a respectable past for her (a lawyer father who went bankrupt in the War due to the strength of his support for the King), but the rumour at the time was that she'd started as a serving girl in a house in Norfolk. It's easy to see why Behn - possibly the daughter of a barber - might have seen a kindred spirit in another woman seeking betterment through the theatre...]

Finally (for now): I've mention Behn drooling over men in 'Our Cabal', but the most extreme example is neither her current nor her future beau, but 'Philocless' (the guy Barry is lovelorn for). On the subject of Philocless, Behn is effusive:


His beauty heightened by his dress,
If anything can add a grace
To such a shape, and such a face,
Whose natural ornaments impart
Enough without the help of art.
His shoulders covered with a hair,
The sun-beams are not half so fair;
Of which the virgins bracelets make,
And wear for Philocless’s sake:
His beauty such, that one would swear
His face did never take the air.
On ’s cheeks the blushing roses show,
The rest like whitest daisies grow:
His lips, no berries of the field,
Nor cherries, such a red do yield.
His eyes all love, soft’ning smile;
And when he speaks, he sighs the while:
His bashful grace, with blushes too,
Gains more than confidence can do.

...so apparently he's kind of hot?

---

But even that paean to beauty is restrained by the standards of her poem 'To Amyntas, on Reading the Lives of Some of the Romans', the conceit of which is that if Amyntas (here probably John Hoyle, the wanker described as the haughty 'Lycidus' in 'Our Cabal') had been around in classical times, everyone famous would have wanted to have sex with him.

On the one hand, it's striking in how openly bisexual it is (presumably to match Hoyle's own preferences). On the other hand, it's... problematic... by modern standads. Most breathtakingly, she argues that the Roman Republic wouldn't have been necessary if Hoyle had been around. Mythically, the last king of Rome, Tarquin, was overthrown in a rebellion sparked by his son raping a noblewoman, Lucretia. But Hoyle was so hot that if Tarquin had looked like Hoyle, Lucretia would have enjoyed being raped...

...yeah. Oh, but Tarquin wouldn't have needed to rape Lucretia if Hoyle had been around, because even though Lucretia was the most beautiful woman in the world, any man would far prefer to rape Hoyle instead, he's so hot.

Likewise, historically Cleopatra killed herself rather than be led through the streets of Rome in chains by Octavian, once her boyfriend Anthony was dead. But if Octavian had looked like Hoyle, she'd have happily been enslaved, because Hoyle is so damn hot she'd have forgotten about Anthony.

Again, take Sophonisba, the child bride originally betrothed to Masanissa (king of the Massylii) but instead married to Syphax (king of Numidia). When she persuaded her husband to ally with her Carthaginian father against Rome, Scipio and Masanissa destroyed Numidia and took her captive. She married Masanissa, but Scipio demanded her as his own slave, so Masanissa persuaded her to kill herself instead, to avoid the humiliation and sexual slavery. But, says Aphra, if Scipio looked like Hoyle, Sophonisba's carnal passion would easily have outweighed her humiliation and she'd have acquiesced...

...as would Masanissa. Because "neither sex can here thy fetters shun". Likewise, if Pompey the Great had looked like Hoyle, he wouldn't have been executed by the child king, Ptolemy XI, because Ptolemy would have fallen in love with him.


Hoyle was hot, seems to be the theme Aphra's trying to get across here...