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

One thing I will comment on: it seems fitting, given her secrecy, that "Aphra"'s original tombstone did not include her date of birth OR her date of death, and used a version of her name that doesn't match what she is best known as, OR her probable original name.

It's also fitting, given how subsequent generations have retold her story, that her tombstone has been recarved at least three times (most recently in the 60s), adding and removing lines, and changing her name.

That said, her famous epitaph was there all along:
Here lies proof that wit can never be
Defence enough against mortality.
(there have at times been as many as two additional lines, but it's not clear whether they were later additions - the famous two were regarded as disgusting and demeaning in later generations so more may have been added on her behalf to soften them - or later removals (they're less powerful and spoil the impact)). It's unclear who wrote the epitaph; it's possible it was Aphra, or perhaps it was just in her style.


[She came into history as Agent 117, and probably came into life as Eaffrey Johnson; she left it as 'Aphara Behn'. Spelling was of course fluid at the time - her surname was also recorded as 'Bean', 'Beene' or 'Bhen' - but it is a little surprising that we can't agree on the number of syllables. Early in her life she signed herself "Affara", suggesting both three syllables and a short initial vowel; her tombstone, a portrait painted of her during her life, and the man who claimed to be her foster-brother all spelled it "Aphara". Did she sometimes go by Aph'ra in the city, a fashionable contraction perhaps in the town of "don't" and "ain't"? Or was it to sound more cultured - her namesake, Saint Afra, only had two syllables, and maybe some London lawyer like Hoyle mocked her for mispronouncing her own name. Or perhaps the three-syllable versions were the affectations, trying to sound more exotic than plain kentish Afra. [it's interesting that neither possible pronounciation of 'Aphra' etc have the same vowel sound as 'Eaffrey', which does suggest some affectation]. I can't actually remember if there's any definite evidence of Aphra calling herself 'Aphra' at all? Is that just a later convention? [like pronouncing her surname as 'Benn' - the spellings 'Beene', 'Beane', 'Behn' etc strongly suggest she used a long vowel!]]

Anyway, I just like the fact that even her tombstone seems to reflect her elusiveness...

At a critical and delicate moment for the monarchy, a new king arrives:

He is in every way a perfect Stuart, and hath the advantage of his brother only that he hath ambition and thoughts of something he hath not, which gives him industry and address even beyond his natural parts... His religion suits well with his temper: heady, violent and bloody, who easiily believes the rashest and worst counsels to be the most sincere and hearty.
(a report written for Shaftesbury)

Well that bodes well...

Aphra, on the other hand, was enthusiastic about the coronation, speaking of 'raptured joy', 'perfect ecstasy', and a 'third heaven', and eagerly awaiting increased authoritarianism:

Great prince of wonders, and welcome to the throne
Both to your virtues and your sufferings due,
By heaven and birthright all your own;
You shared the danger, share the glory too
Whom providence (by numerous miracles wrought)
Through all the mazes of misfortunes brought!
You mount the unruly world with easy force,
Reward with joy, but punish with remorse;
The wanton beast restive with ease has lain
And 'gainst the rdier lifts the saucy heel;
But now a skilfull hand assumes the rein

Of course, who know if she really thought that. That was one of three pindarics she wrote at the time - one praising the dead Charles, one his widow, and this the coronation - and they would all have been written either on commission or in search of one. As such she obseqiously praises not only the royals, but anyone nearby who might have some spare cash. For instance:

NORFOLK! The greatest Subject and the best
Whose Loyalty indured the utmost rest,
A PRINCE! whose Glorious Name has stood
Beloved at home, adored abroad:
Steadfast in all the Virtues of the Brave,
And to no Vices of the Great a slave,
True to his King, his Honour and his Word,
Maecena of my Muse, my Patron Lord

or:
There's not to be forgotten A L B E M A R L E,
Whose name shall last when Nature is no more,
That Name, that did lost Britain's joy restore
Its worshipped Champion and General
The second Guardian of the CROWN was made
And in his hand to day the Peaceful SCEPTRE swayed;
The true-born English Bravery of whose mind,
His native Loyalty, and intrinsick worth
Shows him of that Diviner kind
When Demigods with Mortals joyned
And brought the fiirst-born Race of Heros forth."

etc etc. [capitals her own; the whole thing is filled with italics, bold, space changes, font changes, etc to show just how elated she is (and to make it easy for the people concerned to scan through quickly to find their names...)]. There's about 2,500 lines of this - three quarters of a whole Beowulf!

Todd does think Aphra must be a little ironic in describing Norfolk's wife, though. Among other things:
...as the coy maid the amorous God pusued,
As chaste as she, as unsubdued,
Unsoiled even by the wanton whispering air.
No guily thought had ever spread
Their lovely virgin cheeks with red
No lovers sighs had blown the blushes there
For all their roses in the bud appear.

...the joke being that the duchess was notorious for her promiscuity - she and the duke were living apart at this point.


Of course, for Aphra the real spectacle of the coronation is the new queen: she goes on for page after page about how hot she is, and she uses a fairly racy comparison (by the standards of royal coronations):
so Venus looked when from the Seas
The rising beauty viewed the world
When amorous waves about the virgin curled
And all the wondering Gods with awful pleasure gazed

Anyway, all the cupids use the Queen's body to make ammunition to inflame lust in all who see her - her snowy neck, her ebon hair, the 'vast heaven of wit and beauty' in her eyes, "every touch gives the young gods a joy", and above all her "soft, rising Breasts". The only person is ISN'T turned on by the queen's amazing breasts is the King, which Aphra sees as further proof of his divinity - who but a god could resist the delights of a goddess? "So the Great Thunderer Semele destroyed / Whilst only Juno could embrace the God!"

[and there, of course, the inevitable gender inversion: for Aphra, it is Mary with her Breasts who takes the role of destructive Jupiter - the paradigm of masculinity - while James, generally (and elsewhere in this poem) eulogised as a warrior, plays the role of her female lovers... whenever Aphra praises a man, it's almost always by feminising him]

A legal-social tangent here, because I found it surprising...

The Duchess of Norfolk was widely satirised for her infidelity, but in this case at least the rumours had some truth; in 1685, she and the Duke (who had only succeeded to his title the year before) separated, but remained married, following the discovery of her affair with a Dutch card-player (and possible brother of William III), who promptly fled the country.

The couple continued un-amicably until 1692, when the Duke had finally had enough, and launched an overwhelming attack: he not only sued for divorce, but for £100,000 in damages (tens or hundreds of millions in today's money) for her crime of "criminal conversation" (i.e. sex with other men).

As was common, the celebrity divorce case became front-page news; the Duke had waited to amass considerable evidence, and the courts (and thus the public) heard length, lurid and detailed accounts of the Duchess' sexual misdeeds.

The Duke had both popular morality and the law on his side: the law was clear and the evidence, the jury decied, was undeniable; the Duchess was convicted of adulterous sex...

...but the jury reduced the proposed damages from £100,000 to only £66, on the grounds of, and I'm paraphrasing here, her husband clearly being a total arsehole who quite frankly deserved to be cheated on.

In particular, the court also heard evidence that the Duke himself had had affairs with other women, rendering his accusations against his wife flagrantly hypocritical. His wife's lawyer summed up the situation using what was then a relatively new expression: the case was, he said, one of "the pot calling the kettle black".


[three other nice things to know: the Duke, a major political figure, had initially attempted to divorce his wife through an Act of Parliament, but the House of Lords sided with the woman. And she was supported throughout these political and legal affairs by her father, the Earl of Peterborough. When he died in 1697, the earldom passed to his nephew, but his barony was permitted to pass through the female line, as did his mansion and estates.]


After eight years of disputes, the Duke finally obtained his divorce in 1700 - but was not permitted to take his wife's title or possessions in the process. She probably wasn't too displeased with the outcome - she married her card-sharp the following year.

-----


Anyway, just an interesting reminder not to leap to too many assumptions about popular opinion in history. The laws of the era were undoubtedly biased against women - though far less so than they would be in later times - and female sexuality in particular was the subject of both condemnation and salacious gossip in the media. Going through a sex-trial like this would have been a deeply unpleasant experience for any woman. But at the same time, it's easy to assume that the public - and juries - would automatically side with men against unfaithful women, and that's not actually entirely true...

So, at last, the Monmouth Rebellion breaks out. For those who have vaguely heard of it - who are few - it probably sounds like one of those random uprisings that happen continuously throughout history, with no wider significance. But the book manages to build up to it effectively, conveying just how important it was at the time, how long people had bee expecting it, and how it may have seemed that Monmouth had a very real chance to succeed. In the end, of course, it was such a catastrophic anticlimax that modern democracy was born.

Monmouth's fleet took 18 days to cross the channel - channel weather being the perennial arbiter of English history - so James and the local militias knew he was coming. As soon as he landed, messengers flew to London on horseback - covering 200 miles in just two days. Monmouth had fewer than a thousand men, and his cause was immediately harmed when two of his most prominent supporters got into a fatal gunfight in an argument over who would get to ride the prettiest horse.

But many rebellions start out small. Monmouth announced his rebellion, accusing James not only of tyranny, but of murdering Charles and setting the Great Fire of London. An army of 6,000 supporters rapidly assembled.

The campaign, however, was a farce. The fog of war crippled both sides: Monmouth declined to capture lightly-guarded Bristol (the second-largest city in England), believing it already occupied, while James' commanders were ordered to make a precipitous stand against overwhelming numbers in order to preemptively crush a rebellion that their intelligence informed them was growing far more rapidly than in fact it was.

The battle - the last major battle to be fought in England - was fought at night on boggy moorland. Monmouth outnumbered James' army - mostly local militia - by 2 or 3 to 1, but his troops were mostly local artisans with farming implements, and his commanders were inept. Lord Grey led his cavalry - officers had already taken Monmouth aside and asked for him to be replaced by someone who knew what they were doing - and struggled to cross the moor, accidentally alerting an enemy patrol and then accidentally starting the battle early when trying to chase that patrol down. Grey's force were quickly bested, and immediately ran away, leaving Monmouth's infantry to be cut to pieces by the enemy's cavalry undefended. Monmouth lost between 700 and 2700 men; James' army lost fewer than 30.

Monmouth and Grey tried to run away dressed as peasants, but were discovered hiding in a ditch - Monmouth, cunningly equipped with a book of spells for avoiding death in battle, and for opening prison doors. The man who had a few days earlier had himself crowned king now portrayed himself as a victim:

My misfortune was such as to mee with some Horrid People that made me believe things of your majesty.

The excuse fell on deaf ears, and though his conduct evoked some pity from the crowd - who almost lynched his executioner, the legendary Jack Ketch (so infamous throughout the centuries that he would later become a Punch and Judy character), for his ineptitude and/or cruelty - it did nothing to convince anybody that he ought to he been made monarch.

Indeed, he himself seemed to pay little attention to that issue, or to little understand it. Facing his last moments, rather than discuss the monarchy, democracy, or the Protestant cause, he focused his speech on his girlfriend (whose jewellery had financed his expedition), earnestly explaining that she had visionary powers, and excusing their adultery on the grounds of his having married too young, so that in God's eyes the earlier marriage was invalid. In particular, he was desparately concerned that somebody should arrange to convey back to her a certain magical toothpick case he had borrowed.

After five hacks of the axes - which rumour claimed James had ordered blunted for the purpose - Ketch finally had to resort to grinding through the last of the neck with a long knife. His girlfriend starved herself to death in response - at least, according the story accepted by the public. Other observers blamed mercury poisoning from her excessive use of make-up.


In the aftermath, Judge Jeffreys gained his own fame as the 'Hanging Judge' of British legend, launching the infamous "Bloody Assizes" - starting with an elderly woman accused of allowing a nonconformist minister to sleep overnight in her house. He refused to allow her to speak in her own defence, on the grounds that her husband had supported the execution of Charles I, and when the jury expressed reluctance to convict her, he shouted at them that "there is as full proof as proof can be!"

In total, around 1,400 men and women were sentenced to death. The women were to be burned at the stake (though James graciously allowed that old lady - who had fallen asleep throughout her trial, and allegedly during her own execution - to be beheaded instead). The men were sent to Ketch, where they were hanged almost to death, castrated, eviscerated, dismembered and beheaded, with their limbs and organs pickled and jarred and sent around the country as a touring display. This was such a laborious process that only two or three could be killed each day - the death-factory worked throughout the winter, keeping the horrors in the public eye, but eventually gave up. Fewer than 300 men were actually executed. Instead, most were transported to the Caribbean for penal servitude - helping to give birth, when they escaped, to the golden age of piracy.

Aphra, however, was a strong supporter of Jeffreys, and possibly a friend. He actress friend, Elizabeth Taylor, was married to a judicial friend of Jeffreys, and around this time Aphra's play began to feature Susannah and William Mountfort, notorious for appearing at Jeffreys' partiies, where Mountfort would mock Jeffreys' rival judges, and according to the public lampoons have sex with Jeffreys' wife.


In the long run, Monmouth death helped to establish two things that would shape British history. Firstly, the brutality of James, Jeffreys and Ketch, that would live in popular infamy for hundreds of years, helped to convince both the public and the political class that James, and Stuart absolutism, had to go - and that they could not simply wait for a convenient rebellion to accomplish this.

But secondly, it removed the most obvious and the most un-radical alternative to James. James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth was an Englishman, a Stuart. The dispute between James Stuart and James Scott (or James Stuart as his supporters called him, claiming hiis birth to have been legitimate by means of a secret marriage) was simply a dispute over which James, son of which Charles Stuart, would best continue the Stuart legacy. Monmouth as king would, at best, have been a return to the Charles of the 1660s and 1670s, a futher stage in the evolving dialogue between divine king and democratic parliament.

With Monmouth dead, however, the only other alternative to James was Monmouth's half-brother-in-law, William of Orange: a Dutchman. William would represent a profound break from the Stuart family (despite his legitimising connexion through his wife), the entire Stuart/Parliamentarian political ideology, and the Protestant-Catholic balance of power.

So the ultimate result of Monmouth's failure was that Parliament would intervene to ensure that William did not fail - but would also feel both the authority (dealing with a king with a sketchy claim to legitimate authority) and the need (dealing with a king from outside the established political traditions) to negotiate William's takeover in more explicit terms than ever before, leadign to the Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights.

The first act of Parliament under the new king? Reversing the conviction of that poor old lady in Somerset, of course. And then sending Jeffreys to the Tower.

Around this time, we arrive at something that could either be nothing, or could completely up-end every notion we have of Aphra's identity: Astrea's Booke for Songs & Satyr's.

This is an anonymous, hand-written anthology of poems, lampoons, lampooning poems, and for some reason some recipes. It was written, or more likely just copied out, by multiple hands. But there are a few things that make it interesting to the Aphra scholar:

- the title. "Astrea" was a generic name for an arcadian shepherdess character and a common pseudonym. But it was specifically the pseudonym Aphara was famous for. And the content - sharp-tongued poetry - seems much more in character for Aphara's public persona than for a generic innocent shepherdess character.

- one of the copyists has handwriting very similar to Aphra's. Denying the literalness of the possessive apostrophe in the title, "Aphra" doesn't start copying into the book until page 101, so it doesn't seem it would literally be hers.

- "Aphra" has signed the name "A. Behn" at the end of one poem, before crossing it out.

- "Aphra" has also doodled "Bhens and Bacon" on the front cover. "Beans and bacon" was a common phrase at the time, but of course Aphra pronounced her name "Bean", and sometimes spelled it "Bhen". Spelling was of course weird at the time, but "Bhens" makes sense if you're punning with 'Behn' and know there's an H in it, the location of which isn't that important... but would be a really, really way to spell "beans" otherwise, given the random 'h' and the apparently short vowel (the result of an anglicised pronunciation of a continental name).

Given the first and fourth points, it seems likely that someone working on the book at least intended it to be associated with Aphra in some way. And adding the second and third seems to make it quite plausible that Aphra herself was one of the copyists.

---------

Why does any of this matter? Because Astrea's Booke espouses the exact opposite philosophy and affiliation from Aphra's publically-acknowledged works.

To give a concrete example: the haughty but adulterous Duchess of Norfolk, praised as so virginal she was unsullied even by the wind in Aphra's coronation pindaric, is here less flattering described as "less sparing of her arse than eyes". Her husband, Aphra's noble patron - and an icon of Catholicism and Toryism - is ridiculed not only as a cuckold and an incestuous adulterer, but also specifically as a masochist.

The Norfolks are singled out because they are Tories and Catholics - Astrea's Booke is primarily concerned with undermining James' reign and justifying his replacement by William, and does so by attacking the Tories Aphra publically fawned over.

It is tempting to think that this gives the lie to Aphra's public Tory identity - that it shows that in private she had no great political devotion and was simply working for whomever had the cash to pay her. To some extent this was probably true - her praise could certainly sometimes be (as was the fashion of the time) excessive to the point of being ridiculous, and hard to credit as her genuine opinion. And she frequently commented on (and may briefly have been imprisoned on account of) her lack of funds. Todd theorises, with some justification, that Aphra would at times have worked for money both as a (semi-prostitute) 'kept woman' and as a manuscript copyist. Perhaps she simply didn't have the wherewithal to say 'no' to a well-paying lampoon-publisher, whatever their allegiance. This possibility is further argued for by marginalia: twice in Astrea's Booke, the copyist whose handwriting resembles Behn's has scrawled "A damnd Ly" next to accusations against the Tory propagandist L'Estrange - accusations copied faithfully out in the same handwriting! Perhaps she reasoned that she was being paid to copy the libel, but that nobody had said anything about not adding her own opinion in the margin...


But then again, the truth may be even more complicated. For a start, maybe Aphra DID harbour doubts and frustrations over some of the people she publically praised. This can perhaps even be seen in her praise - we shouldn't let the effulsiveness blind us to possible irony. When she specifically praised the Duchess in hyperbolic terms for her unparalleled chastity - at a time when everyone knew she was sleeping in a different house from her husband and with a different man - was that not intended to be seen as an ironic criticism? Similarly, she praises the anti-Jacobite Earl of Dorset, blythely claiming that he looked so good at James' coronation that it totally excused everything he'd said or written - was this magnanimity, or criticism dressed up as magnanimity? In both cases, the answer may well be 'a bit of both' - Aphra may intentionally have been putting her lines on the edge, where they could be interpreted in either way, with the reader left uncertain whether their interpretation was correct.

And if praise could also be criticism, it may be wrong to see even a straightforward lampoon as an overt attack. Astrea's Booke attempts to humiliate the Duke of Norfolk... but someone has also written his name and the address of his second home on the front cover. Was he the intended recipient? It wouldn't have been unusual. Victims of vicious lampoons often enjoyed them, or pretended to - it's one of the things they were often lampooned for. In some cases, victims were even accused of having specifically paid the lampoonist - it might have been unpleasant to have been attacked publically as a whore or a cuckold, but it was better than nobody thinking you were worth attacking! To be the subject of gossip and slander was to be someone of importance.

Moreover, although public literary culture was delicate to the point of parody, private humour of the time was evidently robust - remember Aphra and her friend Ravenscroft exchanging poems, he mocking her as a cheap whore flashing her genitals in the street, and she mock-comiserating with his latest painful bout of syphilis. They were essentially providing each other with their own private lampoons.

And of course, even when a lampoon was unwanted, the victim could pretend it was not: to hear horrible things said about oneself and respond with polite applause and condescending praise is a way of regaining power. Particularly given the class dimension at play: lampoonists and their copyists would generally have been in the lowest strata of literate society, frustrated clerks and struggling young lawyers, whereas their targets were typically drawn from high society - the applause of those targets makes the whole endeavour something like the mediaeval practice of the fool's feast (the day, one day a year, in which masters pretended to act like servants, and servants pretended to act like masters - an act of humility and solidarity that nonetheless occured within and helped to reinforce strict rules and hierarchies).

We must also remember that the lines between high society and low gossip were in any case less strict than we would usually assume. As I've mentioned before, in this era the demimonde of actors, poets, prostitutes, and yes, lampoonists, was unusually close to, and at times overalpping, the royal world of kings and courtiers. Several of the court figures frequently and viciously lampooned - like the Earl of Rochester, and his enemy the Earl of Mulgrave - were themselves known to contribute poems for the lampoonists.

And last of all: we shouldn't discount that the book itself may be an attack on Aphra Behn. After all, all public expessions in the Restoration were theatrical decisions that often carried hidden meanings - why would the name of a book be different? 'Astrea' was famous as a Tory propagandist, and this book attacked Tory propagandists. Was the book, by pretending to be by Astrea, saying that Astrea was not only a sexual whore, but also a literary one (that is, was it intended to provoke the exact concern that it has indeed provoked for some later historians)? Or was it expected that the pseudepigraphism would be seen through, and the joke simply using the pen-name of a notoriously over-the-top Tory encomiast to head an anthology of anti-Tory lampoons, mocking Astrea by opposition? Or perhaps it was both. Perhaps even that marginalium, in which the copyist acts as though she is overcome by anger and forced to label her own lampoon as a lie, is itself part of the joke against her?

And then again, of course, none of that would preclude Aphra having actually been involved.


In the Restoration, supporting someone does not mean that you are not attacking them, and attacking them does not mean that you do not support them...

Behn was evidently doing well - by the standards of the time - in the theatre after the ascension of James. Not only was The Rover performed both in the theatre and at court, but she was even able to put on a new play, The Lucky Chance. This was unusual since, as mentioned before, the combination of copyright law and corporate consolidation had given a single company monopoly of all previously written plays, and they almost always preferred to perform their existing IP rather than pay for something new. This was a bad time for playwrights - Aphra herself was evidently in debt around the time of the coronation. Further indicating her success, however, she (or the company) was able to comission incidental music from John Blow, the director of the royal choir (who the same year was named one of a few personal musicians of the king).

Another example of the surprising flexibility of marriage in this era: Aphra's younger contemporary, Elizabeth Taylor (also a poet), having married ambitiously, to a judge, not only quickly moved back in with her boyfriend, but also sued her husband for child support.

Anyway, in most respects The Lucky Chance is more genteel than her earlier plays, befitting the times - the women overtly claim to be moral (rather than simply ending up accidentally acting morally despite their claims of sinfulness), the men are not total arseholes to the same degree (although they do sell their wives to other men, and attempt to sleep with women while disguised as their husbands), and the women are more obedient to them, and more concerned with male delicate feelings.

On the other hand, it's less ambiguous about its subplot of male prostitution - previous Behn heroes had relied on the money they were given by their lovers, but Gayman here is quite open about being 'hired' by the night by an unattractive woman.

It was also controversial because at one point one character opens his nightgown to flash the audience - Aphra claimed this was the actor's invention, although it's written in the surviving stage directions. (maybe it was such a success that she or the publisher decided to run with the actor's improvisation). In any case it does maintain Aphra's theme of semi-undressed men; a scene with a man in his underwear led The Rover to be effectively banned for a century or more. Then again, this was an era in which female roles were often written with opportunities for the actress to role on the floor in order to show the audience that she wasn't wearing any underwear.

At this point in her career, however - successful, famous, of advanced years - Aphra was unwilling to allow hypocrisy to go unchallenged. She added a preface to the play counter-attacking her critics:

I make a challenge to any person of common sense and reason [...] to read any of my comedies and compare them with others of this age, and if they find one word than can offend the chastest ear, I will submit to all their peevish cavills

And she was clear and combative about why she thought she in particular was being criticised:

Had I a day or two's time [...] I would sum up all your beloved plays and all the things in them that are passed with such silence by, because written by men: such masculine strokes in me must not be allowed [...] All I ask is the privilege for the masculine part, the poet, in me (if any such you will allow me) to tread in those successful paths my predecessors have so long thrived in, to take those measures that both the ancient and modern writers have set me, and by which they have pleased the world so well. If I must not, because of my sex, have this freedom, but that you will usurp all to yourselves, I lay down my quill, and you shall hear no more of me - no, not so much as to mak comparisons, because I will be kinder to my brothers of the pen than they have been to a defenceless woman; for I am not content to write for a third day only*. I value fame as much as if I have been born a hero; and if you rob me of that, I can retire from the ungrateful world, and scorn its fickle Favours.

[my modernised punctuation. *the 'third day' refers to money - playwrights were paid with the takings from the third performance of a play]


Todd, however, points out that while it's probably true that Behn was more criticised than most, and probably because she was a woman, the difference was only of degree: critical sentiment was changing after the death of Charles, and there was a general reaction against bawdiness in the theatre directed at all of Aphra's old contemporaries (or all that were still alive, at any rate), not just at her.

Aphra had also of course always profited from her own scandal - it's entirely possible that the preface decrying the attacks from stodgy critics was as much about publicising the criticism (and hence provoking curiosity) as about rebutting it.

William Davenant: plays are "secret instructions to the People, in things that 'tis impossible to insinuate into them in any other way".

Behn's increasing illness: apparently involved fatigue and joint pain. Perhaps arthritis; perhaps gout, which she was accused of having. She was also accused by both contemporaries (including some friends) and the subsequent generation of having (and passing on) syphilis, but it's hard to know whether that's fact or slander (or boasting).

One lampoon was positively gloating:
Doth that lewd harlot, that poetic quean*,
Famed through Whitefriars, you know who I mean,
Mend for reproof, others set up in spite
To flux, take glisters, vomits, purge & write,
Long with a sciatica she's beside lame
Her limbs distortured, nerves shrunk up with pain
And therefore I'll all sharp reflections shun:
Poverty, Poetry, Pox are plagues enough for one

Of course, as mentioned before, lampoons could be written by either enemies or friends, or even by the victims themselves.

(*I left the spelling like that because I'm not sure whether they mean queen, quean, or are punning between the two meanings)

Behn on French tastes: they are "content with almost any Incoherences".

Speaking as I was of the budget Behn was evidently able to command: The Emperor of the Moon concludes with a finale involving the entire cast of characters, ten more actors in blackface, twelve more actors to embody the signs of the zodiac, who float down to the stage, two flying chariots, and a moon-machine that changes its phases and then opens up to disgorge the lunar emperor onto the stage - all set to orchestral music. Even the prologue requires a mechanical head with a booming voice rising from below the stage singing songs in Scots.

It was the only new play that month (perhaps there was no budget for anything else!) and became a huge success, despite the prologue insulting the audience. It summed up the history of theatre and the limited attention spans of its spectators, who had grown bored of heroism, and who had rejected comedy out of embarrassment at seeing themselves depicted too truthfully on stage, while pretending their opprobrium was purely to defend women from seeing inappropriate things. Eventually, Behn accuses her audience, nothing will be popular but puppetry - appropriately, as the wooden puppets have a lot in common with the woodenness of the uncultured public who fail to appreciate real art. Likewise, in her published dedication she she insists her plays are not "meant for the Numbers [ie poor people], who comprehend nothing but show and buffoonery" - an interesting dedication for a play that is effectively a pantomime!

Nell Gwynn, a perpetual source of chaos: she once slipped a powerful laxative into Moll Davies' food, just before Davies went to have sex with the King.

[Gwynn's campaign of friendly terror against her professional and sexual rival soon resulted in Davies being exiled from the royal bedchamber. Davies didn't end up too badly, though: even as an ex-mistress, she was still on a pension for life equivalent to £42 million a year in today's economy. (somewhere in this book there's a mention of Mazarine's salary as a mistress, and it makes modern CEOs and sportstars look like paupers. No wonder she was able to maintain a rival court in her retirement!)]

Dryden after Behn's death noted that her behaviour had given 'some scandal to the modesty of her sex'... but noted that the times were different then, and acknowledged that "I am the last man who ought in justice to arraign her, who have been myself too much a libertine".

Alexander Oldys, in his elegy for Dryden, imagined Behn as one of the poets greeting him in heaven.

"There are very few Virtues very pure in the World, and [...] in the greatest part of our Actions there is a mixture of Error and Truth, of Perfection and Imperfections, of Vice and of Virtue."

- La Rochefoucauld, via Behn.

Behn alters the original by updating the cultural references to be very of-the-year, and also by rearranging some of the Maxims to create a section on Love, into which she introduces the characters of Aminta and Lysander, and sometimes speaks in the first person. As the translation is signed by Astrea, this creates Behn's recurring voyeuristic love triangle: Astrea watches, enjoys and advises on the love between Aminta and Lysander, while openly loving Lysander herself (but not openly loving - yet not being jealous of - Aminta).

The personal touch is heightened by the addition of an intimate and unusually personal and unmasked address in Astrea's dedication to Lysander...

...except of course that this was another layer of deceit, as the personal touch is actually to a large extent an unacknowledged, plagiaristic translation of a French foreword to the same work of two decades prior. Borrowing the earlier and more aristocratic commenter's words, she also boasts of he artistic reputation and of her status as a 'Man of Quality and Wit'. To what extent this was laziness, an over-literal translation of a source text (although note the lack of literalism elsewhere), a playing with class and gender identity, or simply a joke (and to what extent the expected reader was in on it) is, of course, unclear.

A nice cultural note: in Aphra's translation of Bonnecorse's 'La Montre' (and presumably in the original), the hero begins his day by lying in bed for an hour, before getting dressed. Getting dressed takes another hour...

...which is so remarkable it has to be explained by having the hero remark to his servant that he will be negligent in dress today and not bother with the perfume and so forth because his girlfriend isn't around.

Taking only an hour to get dressed (with only one person helping him) was the lazy-bachelor version of dressing in the Paris of the 17th century!

Matthew Prior produced an interesting poem on Aphra:

The Poetess Sung: at length swore She'd prove
That She and Jack Hoyle taught the whole Age to Love
And on with't She ran, nor had ended 'till now
But Phoebus reprov'd her, and gave her to know
That her Tongue went too fast, and her Love watch too slow.

Two thing jump out here as familiar refrains it's good to hear from confirmed by a third party: Aphra's affair with Hoyle was at least well-established in the public consciousness (though Todd thinks Aphra has moved on by this point; the images of Lysander are now more moderate, whereas the real Hoyle grew increasingly extremist (as an anarchist) and eventually was murdered in a drunken argument in a pub); and Aphra had a reputation for excessive talking (though 'excessive' talking in a woman was a low threshold to cross). [whereas Aphra's ideal man usually says as little as possible]

The last comment appears to be a criticism that her translation of La Montre was too long and long-winded.

Finally we arrive at the (in)famous To the fair Clarinda who made love to me, imagined more than woman, surely a landmark in the history of sexuality and gender in English, traditionally interpreted as an openly lesbian love poem. And as a love poem, moreover, that does not simply repeat the established formulae of the genre as so many contemporary love poems did (including Eaffrey's own heterosexual poems), but that has a specificity that seems to say something meaningful both about Eaffrey herself and about the culture of her era:

Fair lovely maid - or if that title be
Too weak, too feminine for nobler thee,
Permit a name that more approaches truth
And let me call thee: Lovely Charming Youth.
This last will justify my soft complainte,
While that may serve to lessen my constraint -
And without blushes I the youth pursue
When so much beauteous woman is in view;
Against thy charms we struggle but in vain;
With thy deluding form thou givst us pain;
While the bright nymph betrays us to the swain.

In pity to our sex sure thou wert sent
That we might love, and yet be innocent.
For sure no crime with thee we can commit -
Or, if we should, thy form excuses it,
For who that gathers fairest flowers believes
A snake lies hid beneath the fragrant leaves.

Thou beateous wonder of a different kind -
Soft Cloris with dear Alexis joined -
Whene'er the manly part of the would plead
Thou tempts us with the image of the maid;
While we the noblest passions do extend:
The love to Hermes, Aphrodite the friend.

Todd, of course, perennially disinterested in the suggestion that Aphra might be anything less than a sighing, swooning heterosexual heroine, quotes most of the poem (excluding only the autobiograpical admission by Eaffrey that she herself persued Clarinda) but passes over it as quickly as possible, with only a paragraph of discussion.

Most of which prefers to see the poem not as lesbian per se, but as addressed to a genuine physical hermaphrodite, an intersex person. This seems a bafflingly blinkered interpretation to me, but a quick look online seems to confirm that this is fashionable now (with lesbian interpretations to be denounced as bigoted wrongthink). Clearly, Eaffrey is intentionally evoking hermaphroditic imagery, and very close to the word itself. But I think the poem (not to mention plain statistics!) suggests that this is not to be taken at face value, and that the 'snake' within Clarinda's fragrant flowers is only a metaphorical penis, not a literal, physical one. For a start, there's the title - imagined more than woman, not actually more than woman - and the opening lines, in which Aphara asks permission to suggest a truer description, rather than presenting this as simply a biological reality. But more importantly, Aphara is clear that Clarinda's "form", her physical body, is that of a beautiful woman, suggesting that the swain/youth/man is in her spirit, her personality, rather than her genitalia.

This is of course not remotely surprising in Behn's era, or in Behn herself. Affara has repeatedly described herself as being, or as containing, a man or 'male part', which she identifies with her profession as a poet and playwright, traditionally male roles. Female characters who first disguise as and then inhabit the roles of men, and to a lesser extent male characters who do the opposite, are a mainstay of Behn's theatrical works (and of the era as a whole - I can't remember the exact stats, but AIR at one point in this era something like 1/3 of all plays performed involved women disguising as, dressing as, or reinventing themselves as men. [this may reflect serious philosophical dimensions of the culture, but may equally reflect that both male and female audiences of the era are reported to have been in strong agreement that girls look super-hot in tight trousers]. The king's own mistress famously wore male clothes, fought with swords, and took female lovers. In particular, lesbians often seem to have been referred to as hermaphrodite - Todd notes that Anne Frecheville, a royal Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess Anne, was described as 'hermaphrodite Frecheville' (on account of her dildo) in one satire, and as having 'another sex to spare' in another.

I see no reason to think that Eaffrey is ascribing her lover male physical sex-characteristics - it seems much more likely that she is simply playing with images of gender to convey the defiance of gender norms, as she repeatedly did. Indeed, lacking a more modern, robustly sex-based gender concept, or any explicit concept of homosexuality as an identity at all, it may even be that Eaffrey viewed ALL sexual attraction to women as inherently male. After all, even something as simple as writing a poem made a woman at least partly into a man by definition for her and her contemporaries. Almost anything did - Aphra herself was described (Todd doesn't say by whom, of course!) as a hermaphrodite, not for her sexuality or authorship, but simply because she had "neither wit enough for a man, nor modesty enough for a woman". In a pervasively genderqueer age, evoking male imagery for a woman or vice versa need was not necessarily a grand revolutionary gesture, nor a definite declaration about an individual's nature or fixed identity (Behn is much more interested in the lack of fixed identities).

In any case, it's worth pointing out that even taking the poem at its hermaphroditical word, Behn isn't exactly painting herself as purely heterosexual: while love and sex itself (and hence 'crime' and accusations) are clearly the province of the male aspect of Clarinda, it's the female side that she associates with sexual desire - when Clarinda desires sex with Aphra (a male function), it's the 'image of the maid' (her female form) that 'tempts'. It's the flowers of female beauty that entice her, not the male snake of actual sex.

[interesting as well to note the 'we' and 'us' throughout the poem. Perhaps rhetorical, of course; or perhaps indicating that Clarinda has more than one conquest in their circle of friends. Again, this wouldn't have been too remarkable in the era - note for instance how one of Behn's male characters makes a point of acknowledging that women could be romantic rivals for him, and mentions having heard of two women who had married one another]

Anyway, I'm sure entire books have been written about this poem, so I won't go on about it.

But while I'm at it, I'll note the dedication of to the 'Queen of Lust' herself, Mazarine, which even Todd admits has a more 'homoerotic' aspect than is usual even for Aphra. All dedications of the era were fawning, but the dedication to Mazarine is so personal and intense it reads more like the confession of a lifelong crush than as a begging letter - although Todd is right to note that, with Charles (and Nell) dead, Mazarine's counter-court of aristocrats, wits and artists may now be Aphra's best hope of gaining the insider status she so craves. [whether sexual or social, there's very much an air of the nerd at the edge of the party gazing longingly at the prom queen]. Aphra writes:


Madam, when I surveyed the whole tour of ladies at court, which was adorned by you, who appeared there with a grace and majesty peculiar to your great self only, mixed with an irresistable air of sweetness, generosity and wit, I was impatient for an opportunity to tell your Grace how infinitely one of your own sex adored you, and that, amongst all the numerous conquests your Grace has made over the hearts of men your Grace had not subdued a more entire slave; I assure you, Madam, there is neither compliment nor poetry in this humble declaration, but a truth that has cost me a great deal of inquietude, for that fortune has not set me in such a station as might justify my pretence to the honour and satisfaction of being ever near your Grace, to view eternally that lovely person, and hear that surprising wit; what can be more grateful to a heart than so great and so agreeable an entertainment? And how few objects are there that can render it so entire a pleasure as at once to hear you speak, and to look upon your beauty?

[she goes on to compliment Mazarine on her 'negligence in dress' that 'disdained the little arts of your sex' (not 'our', note!) - etc etc, exalted birth, etc, awe and reverence, etc, homage, infinitely honoured, celebrate your Great Name Forever, longing for perpetual servitude, etc. For Mazarine to feel pity for Behn's character would be all the glory Behn could hope for in life, etc]

When reading Aphra's talk of her slavery, her adoration, her desire to gaze upon Mazarine's beauty, the 'hearts of men' conquered by Mazarine, remember again that Aphra and Mazarine both know that Mazarine was famously prone to conquering the hearts of women as well as of men, and that Mazarine is used to women gazing on her beauty in a more personal setting than the platonic flattery usually implied by such compliments between women.

Then again, Aphra's depictions of women often seem to fall into that notorious "doesn't know whether she wants her, or want to be her" category (her depictions of men likewise!), and with Mazarine that's probably doubly true. Mazarine was essentially Aphra Behn but better: infinitely richer (arguably a prostitute, but a prostitute whose salary made her probably the highest-paid person in europe), infinitely higher-born (raised as sister to a princess), funnier, more beautiful, sexier to both men and women (and to far more eligible conquests than Behn), more notorious, more admired, more famous - disguised and undisguised accounts of her life were the best-selling novels of their day. Imagine, if you will, some combination of Kim Kardashian, Princess Diana, Miley Cyrus, Hilary Clinton, Malala Yousefzai, Kristen Stewart, Sheryl Sandberg, and Samantha Bee. She was basically everything Aphra wanted to be, except a poet. So some amount of adoration is probably to be expected...

Small note relevant to aphra's reputation: she was one of seven writers invited to contribute (or willing to contribute?) to a volume of elegies for Edmund Waller, by (or at least involving, since her cover letter was addressed to her) Waller's niece Abigail.

It wasn't a great literary selection of poets - Behn being the best of them - so this doesn't exactly indicate any great acclaim for Behn. However, it seems significant that Abigail Waller would think to invite Aphra to contribute to a public memorial for an aristocratic, elegant, Cavalier, famously pious, respected poet like Edmund Waller. It seems to indicate that although Aphra's reputation might have been risqué, she was also at least by this time respectable enough for such a commission. It's a glimpse into how she was seen outside of the professionally insalubrious demimonde she usually inhabited.

Robert Spencer (son of Sunderland) was initially considered something of a useless delinquent, unable to carry on his father's political machinations. But when he drunkenly assaulted a clergyman in a church, and in retaliation was beaten almost to death by a furious mob of congregants, he converted to Catholicism on what turned out not to be his deathbed. As a result, James accepted him into government service and immediately sent him to Europe to carry official condolences on the death of James' mother-in-law...

...unfortunately, by the time he reached Paris, he was so drunk that, presented in court to Louis XIV, he was physically unable to form intelligible words.

[the standards expected of international diplomacy were somewhat lower then]

Tying together the Clarinda poem and the Mazarine dedication, incidentally: Clorinda was a mythological Amazon, while Mazarine was popularly referred to as an Amazon - another 'hermaphrodite' image for the bisexual transvestite, but perhaps also more specifically a reference to her martial affectations.

Given the similar time-period (I think the dedication is maybe a year after the poem?) and the shared theme of homoerotic adoration, coupled with the specific Amazonian references, it's tempting to wonder whether Clarinda itself is a love-poem to Mazarine. And then whether it might reflect a real love-affair (Aphra's swooning lament at not being 'ever in the company' of Mazarine doesn't necessarily mean that she was NEVER 'in her company', so to speak - and Mazarine doesn't strike me as a woman who was above a one-night stand), or whether the poem is simply an imagined consumation of the same infatuation shown in the dedication...

With theatrical work drying up, playwrights:

left stage-practice, changed their old vocations
Atoning for bad plays with worse translations.
[Prior, A Satyr on the Modern Translators]

I'd offer a more substantial quotation, but, ridiculously, although there seem to be many digital sources for the poem, they're all behind copyright walls, despite being 350 years old.

Then again, it took me some work even to attribute it - Todd names the poem, but doesn't bother mentioning that Prior wrote it, instead leaving the reader to imagine it another anonymous lampoon.

Anyway, it's mostly an attack on Dryden apparently, but it applies to Aphra just as well, at the same time, and presumably for similar reasons.

[tangent: I can find several Scholarly People writing about the great puzzle of why Dryden would have turned to translation, invoking the play of conflicting voices, political subterfuge, psychological deficits... nobody seems to have considered that, you know, he may just have needed the cash, just like all the other writers making the same choice in the same years...]

Aphra's preface to her translation of Fontenelles' A discovery of new worlds may be the most historically extraordinary thing she wrote, and really stands out not only from her own writings but from women's writing in English up to that point.

Why? Because women, when they wrote, typically showed intellectual humility. When writing on serious matters, they generally huddled under the aegis of some wise man's authority, stressing (preemptively) their own lack of education; if they spoke more authoritatively it was usually on a feminine subject, such as the Bible (in mystical rather than scholastic terms) or housekeeping. Early female fiction often limited itself to overtly 'trivial' matters - farces, fantasies, romances, science fiction. Aphra was usually the same - she was famous for love and comedy, and although she pushed boundaries she did so from expected directions, taking the established trope of the pert, saucy, headstrong woman and simply going a step or two further. When she attempted translations of the classics she stressed her ignorance, and when she wrote about more scholarly works by others she did so from the perspective of the ignorant reader eager for education.

But in this preface - a rambling, ostentatious essay - Aphra goes out of her way to show off her learning and intellect. She does so in a suitably polite way, appealing to other authorities and to common knowledge on individual points, but the overall effect is clearly - and probably intentionally - to present herself as someone far wiser and more knowledgeable than the witty agony aunt she was generally depicted as.

What does she pontificate about? Oh...
- the theory of translation
- the early middle ages
- the character and history of European languages
- the theory of loanwords
- the theory of linguistic change, and relative rates of change
- euphony and the rules of liaison in French
- differences between French and English prose styles
- the relativity of beauty in both language and bodies
- views on approaches to popular science writing
- scholarly responses to Copernicus, and their ulterior motives
- the nature and limitations of Biblical inerrancy
- various apparent contradictions in the Bible demonstrating the inadequacy of literal and superficial readings
- the apparent error of the Bible in its value for pi (she doesn't use the word 'pi', but the concept)
- Biblical quotations that might be considered evidence for Copernicanism when rightfully considered
- which English bible is best (it's printed as a small folio by Buck, in Cambridge, fwiw)
- appeals to the original Hebrew
- the action of the moon upon the earth and the generation of tides
- the comparative architecture of Greenwich and St Denis vis a vis their respective adjacent capitals
- the translations of some individual French words (her unease over using 'whirlwind' has been shared by later translators, though instead of her 'tourbillon' we now instead have borrowed 'vortex')

She quotes St Jerome, and the Epitome of Anthony Godean (a work of ecclesiastical history by the Bishop of Venice); she cites the Earl of Roscommon, Father Tacquit, Copernicus, Ptolemy, Gilbert Burnet (a political, religious, and possibly personal enemy, here maliciously cited in her own defence), Descartes, and Jacques Rohault. Crucially, she refers casually to the assertions of Rohault, forty years before he was actually translated into English, and ten years before the first credible translation into Latin - at the time he was known in England only through a crude Latin summary; even if Aphra hadn't actually read Rohault in the French as she seems to imply, and has only heard from a learned friend that he agrees with Descartes on the height of the Earth's atmosphere, this is still kind of an impressive allusion for her to be making, as a middle-class woman of her day! And alongside the name-dropping, she uses words like 'diurnal' and 'phenomena', and casually references Guinea, and the sons of Theodosius, and the works of Froisart, and (repeatedly) Arabic.

Most audaciously, she even casually mentions that she's been so bold as to correct Fontenelles on the height of the atmosphere (citing Descartes and Rohault), as she's sure his error must simply be a typographical mistake. She also happily discusses which parts of Fontenelles she thinks are stronger or weaker, and openly rolls her eyes at the "silly things" he imagines his female character saying, and his inability to maintain a consistent voice for her (he uses an ignorant woman as his interlocutor for a dialogue structure, but like many of these interlocutor figures she vacillates between "a great many very silly things" and " Observations so learned, that the greatest Philosophers in Eu∣rope could make no better"). She criticises his failure to clearly distinguish between scientific theories about the heavens and his own speculations about aliens. Even when she applauds him on other matters, she seems to be setting herself above him, as a judge whose literary and scientific authority should be trusted.

There's nothing here that's radical or remarkable per se. Certainly, certain over-excited recent feminist revisionists who want to see this preface as proof that Behn was a key figure in the history of science - no, a 'scientist'! - are clutching at straws.

But what it IS is an extremely assured argument for her own intellectual authority, not as a mere copyist but as an educator, translating in light of her own learning, exercising her own judgment in how best to present an interesting text for those less educated than herself, and not afraid to argue on seemingly equal footing with scientists and theologians.

That's not a radical position per se - as a woman who frequently lamented her lack of Latin education and reliance on translations from the classics, she was probably familiar with similar paternal prefaces by male writers - but it seems genuinely radical coming from both a woman and a member of the lower classes, and particularly coming from someone previously famous for her risque comedies and mild erotica...

Aphra's preface to her translation of Fontenelles' A discovery of new worlds may be the most historically extraordinary thing she wrote, and really stands out not only from her own writings but from women's writing in English up to that point.

Why? Because women, when they wrote, typically showed intellectual humility. When writing on serious matters, they generally huddled under the aegis of some wise man's authority, stressing (preemptively) their own lack of education; if they spoke more authoritatively it was usually on a feminine subject, such as the Bible (in mystical rather than scholastic terms) or housekeeping. Early female fiction often limited itself to overtly 'trivial' matters - farces, fantasies, romances, science fiction. Aphra was usually the same - she was famous for love and comedy, and although she pushed boundaries she did so from expected directions, taking the established trope of the pert, saucy, headstrong woman and simply going a step or two further. When she attempted translations of the classics she stressed her ignorance, and when she wrote about more scholarly works by others she did so from the perspective of the ignorant reader eager for education.

But in this preface - a rambling, ostentatious essay - Aphra goes out of her way to show off her learning and intellect. She does so in a suitably polite way, appealing to other authorities and to common knowledge on individual points, but the overall effect is clearly - and probably intentionally - to present herself as someone far wiser and more knowledgeable than the witty agony aunt she was generally depicted as.

What does she pontificate about? Oh...
- the theory of translation
- the early middle ages
- the character and history of European languages
- the theory of loanwords
- the theory of linguistic change, and relative rates of change
- euphony and the rules of liaison in French
- differences between French and English prose styles
- the relativity of beauty in both language and bodies
- views on approaches to popular science writing
- scholarly responses to Copernicus, and their ulterior motives
- the nature and limitations of Biblical inerrancy
- various apparent contradictions in the Bible demonstrating the inadequacy of literal and superficial readings
- the apparent error of the Bible in its value for pi (she doesn't use the word 'pi', but the concept)
- Biblical quotations that might be considered evidence for Copernicanism when rightfully considered
- which English bible is best (it's printed as a small folio by Buck, in Cambridge, fwiw)
- appeals to the original Hebrew
- the action of the moon upon the earth and the generation of tides
- the comparative architecture of Greenwich and St Denis vis a vis their respective adjacent capitals
- the translations of some individual French words (her unease over using 'whirlwind' has been shared by later translators, though instead of her 'tourbillon' we now instead have borrowed 'vortex')

She quotes St Jerome, and the Epitome of Anthony Godean (a work of ecclesiastical history by the Bishop of Venice); she cites the Earl of Roscommon, Father Tacquit, Copernicus, Ptolemy, Gilbert Burnet (a political, religious, and possibly personal enemy, here maliciously cited in her own defence), Descartes, and Jacques Rohault. Crucially, she refers casually to the assertions of Rohault, forty years before he was actually translated into English, and ten years before the first credible translation into Latin - at the time he was known in England only through a crude Latin summary; even if Aphra hadn't actually read Rohault in the French as she seems to imply, and has only heard from a learned friend that he agrees with Descartes on the height of the Earth's atmosphere, this is still kind of an impressive allusion for her to be making, as a middle-class woman of her day! And alongside the name-dropping, she uses words like 'diurnal' and 'phenomena', and casually references Guinea, and the sons of Theodosius, and the works of Froisart, and (repeatedly) Arabic.

Most audaciously, she even casually mentions that she's been so bold as to correct Fontenelles on the height of the atmosphere (citing Descartes and Rohault), as she's sure his error must simply be a typographical mistake. She also happily discusses which parts of Fontenelles she thinks are stronger or weaker, and openly rolls her eyes at the "silly things" he imagines his female character saying, and his inability to maintain a consistent voice for her (he uses an ignorant woman as his interlocutor for a dialogue structure, but like many of these interlocutor figures she vacillates between "a great many very silly things" and " Observations so learned, that the greatest Philosophers in Eu∣rope could make no better"). She criticises his failure to clearly distinguish between scientific theories about the heavens and his own speculations about aliens. Even when she applauds him on other matters, she seems to be setting herself above him, as a judge whose literary and scientific authority should be trusted.

There's nothing here that's radical or remarkable per se. Certainly, certain over-excited recent feminist revisionists who want to see this preface as proof that Behn was a key figure in the history of science - no, a 'scientist'! - are clutching at straws.

But what it IS is an extremely assured argument for her own intellectual authority, not as a mere copyist but as an educator, translating in light of her own learning, exercising her own judgment in how best to present an interesting text for those less educated than herself, and not afraid to argue on seemingly equal footing with scientists and theologians.

That's not a radical position per se - as a woman who frequently lamented her lack of Latin education and reliance on translations from the classics, she was probably familiar with similar paternal prefaces by male writers - but it seems genuinely radical coming from both a woman and a member of the lower classes, and particularly coming from someone previously famous for her risque comedies and mild erotica...

Some highlight lines from that:

- On her own capabilities: if any Body think it worth their Pains to quarrel with my Boldness, I am able to defend my self.

- On loanwords and the influence of the French: French Authors take a liberty to borrow whatever Word they want from the Latin, without farther Ceremony, especially when they treat of Sciences. This the English do not do, but at second hand from the French. It is Modish to Ape the French in every thing: Therefore, we not only naturalize their words, but words they steal from other Languages. I wish in this and seve∣ral other things, we had a little more of the Italian and Spanish Humour, and did not chop and change our Language, as we do our Cloths, at the Pleasure of every French Tailor.

- On language change: the Italian Language is the same now it was some hundred of Years ago, so is the Spanish, not only as to the Phrase, but even as to the Words and Orthography; whereas the French Lan∣guage has suffered more Changes this hun∣dred Years past, since Francis the first, than the Fashions of their Cloths and Ribbons, in Phrase, Words and Orthography. So that I am confident a French Man a hundred Years hence will no more understand an old Edition of Froisard's Histo∣ry, than he will understand Arabick.

- On French prolixity: But as the French do not value a plain Suit without a Garniture, they are not satisfied with the Advantages they have, but confound their own Language with needless Repeti∣tions and Tautologies; and by a certain Rhetorical Figure, peculiar to themselves, imply twenty Lines, to express what an English Man would say, with more Ease and Sense in five; and this is the great Misfortune of translating French into English: If one endeavours to make it English Standard, it is no Translation. If one follows their Flourishes and Embroideries, it is worse than French Tinsel

- On scientific progress and the ignorant retreat to religion: when this Opinion of Copernicus (as to the Motion of the Earth, and the Sun's being fixed in the Centre of the Vniverse, without any other Motion, but upon his own Axis) was first heard of in the World, those who neither understood the old System of Ptolemy, nor the new one of Copernicus, said, That this new Opinion was expresly contrary to the holy Scriptures, and therefore not to be embraced; nay, it was condemned as Heretical upon the same Account: After it had been examined by the best Mathematicians in Europe, and that they found it answered all the Phaeno∣mena's and Motions of the Spheres and Stars better than the System of Ptolemy; that it was plainer, and not so perplexing and confused as the old Opinion; several of these learned Men therefore embraced this; but those that held out, when they saw all Arguments against Copernicus would not do, they had recourse to what I said before, that this System was expresly against the holy Scriptures.

- On Biblical authority: Therefore, with all due Reverence and Respect to the Word of God, I hope I may be allowed to say, that the design of the Bible was not to instruct Mankind in Astronomy, Geometry, or Chronology, but in the Law of God, to lead us to Eternal Life; and the Spirit of God has been so condescending to our Weakness, that through the whole Bible, when any thing of that kind is mentioned, the Expressions are always turned to fit our Capacities, and to fit the common Acceptance, or Appearances of things to the Vulgar.

Todd, unfortunately, totally misses the point of one thing Aphra says. She says that it is sad that her translation of Frontanelles may appear as satire in places - which Todd takes as her 'hinting that much of what she was writing was parody'. But Aphra seems completely serious, and uses that observation to launch into her criticism of Frontanelles: that his serious scientific sections are undermined by the silliness of his speculations, and the silliness of the words he puts into his female character's mouth. Her translation might seem like satire because Frontanelles himself comes dangerously close to self-satire, and she is at pains to stress that despite the silly bits there is much of value (even pointing out which sections are best). The suspicion of satire is probably particularly in her mind because of the recent success of her play, The Emperor of the Moon, which did indeed satirise the sort of speculation she criticises in Frontanelles, and she doesn't want her readers to take this translation as more of the same. For herself, given her previous interest in Lucretius, and at least second-hand interest in Hobbes, and evident exposure to the ideas of Descartes, there seems no reason to doubt her genuine interest in what Frontanelles has to say.

Todd also refuses to take Behn seriously on the Bible, believing that she raises "decidedly comic" arguments in a "parody of the scholastic method". I can see no reason to read her this way. Yes, she raises some absurdities with literalist interpretation, and has a generally sardonic tone - but she does so to make a serious point through reductio. She is able to do this because she is not criticising, as Todd says, "the church", but rather, as she herself says, certain religious scholars whose view, she believes, is wrong. She is not arguing that the Bible is absurd, or that it lacks authority - but rather than it is frequently allegorical, and that its authority is confined to matters of faith and salvation. She insists Behn must be 'tongue-in-cheek' and 'mocking archaic and stupid pedantry', in part because she blithely assumes that she "was not really concerned with science".

Why, if Aphra was sincere in her scientific interest, asks Todd, did she not condemned Descartes for having been disproven by far superior ideas of Newton? Well, perhaps because the Principia had only been published less than a year earlier, and then only in Latin, which she could not read? She may have heard of Newton through acquaintances, but she would be unlikely to have been fully convinced by him so quickly and indirectly. Even if she had been, how would it benefit her to undermine the Cartesian text she was translating, and offering for sale?

[it's true that if she were truly dedicated to Cartesian science, she might have encountered the Latin word 'vortex' used in English translations of him, and not been forced to resort to 'tourbillon'. But of course there need be no dichotomy: just because she maybe wasn't in the library reading up on her scholarly translations of philosophy every night doesn't mean that she wasn't sincere in her interest in pop-science texts like the one she was translating. And of course, given that she read French but not Latin, it's not clear why 'vortex' would have seemed any more natural to her than 'tourbillon' - she was not to know that the former would become a relatively accepted English word while the latter would not!


I don't mean to argue with Todd too much, but the more I occasionally stray from the text and read Aphra's own words, the more irritated I get with Todd's seemingly motivated presentation of her, which frequently seems determined to fit her into Todd's image rather than take her at her own word...

Aphra not only assumes that Mary of Modena's child will be born (after eight miscarriages) and will be a boy, but also assumes that he will be Jesus, more or less:

If Gods we may with Humane Things compare,
(For Gods and Kings ally'd most nearly are)
This is the Second Birth the World e'er knew,
So long Expected, so much Wanted too.
Like the first sacred Infant, this will come
With Promise laden from the Blessed Womb,
To call the wand'ring, scatter'd Nations home.
Adoring PRINCES shall arrive from far,
Inform'd by ANGELS, guided by his Star,
The New-born Wonder to behold, and greet;
And Kings shall offer Incense at his Feet.
Hail, Royal BOY! whose Coming is design'd
To calm the Murmurs of all Humane Kind.
On thy great Birth, Depending-Monarchs wait:
From thee the Vniverse expects its Fate.

Of course, she's not without a little self-interest:
Beneath his Feet Eternal Spring shall spread,
And blossom from the Lustre round his Head.
He the faint Muses shall a-new inspire.
And from his Beams kindle their useful Fire:
His Right Hand Crowns, his Left shall Lawrels give;
And POETS shall by Patron PRINCES live


It's a poem so adorific as to be hysterical - and it's also surprisingly good (if you can overlook the fascistic fawning), perhaps suggesting more sincerity than in some of her more by-the-numbers paeans. Whether or not it reflects Behn's own feelings accurately, it certainly reminds us of the era: not only the lingering idea of Stuarts as "little gods on earth", but also the abject dread that people on all sides were feeling in James' reign. The through-line of the poem is not the ornamental divinity, but the yearning for peace: a son for James might, at least temporarily, quieten the domestic poltical uncertainty.


Of course, exactly the opposite happened. It was a boy - the sheer number of poets who predicted this probably, Todd suggests, actually encouraged the ubiquitous anti-Catholic conspiracy theories that suggested a boy had been smuggled into the queen's bed chamber to defraud the nation - but rather than calming the situation this enflamed it, and sparked the successful Dutch invasion.

"At this point, James had one of the most unlucky and vicious nosebleeds in history. In fact it was more of a haemorrhage, accompanied by insomnia, vertigo and headaches. The loss of blood led to hallucinations of his murdered father which eroded his courage..."

In a final fitting twist of cross-dressing, meanwhile, the Earl of Sunderland fled the country disguised as a woman.

A final testiment to her acceptance: Burnet, as William's propagandist (the arch-Protestant, who had personally warned people away from her on account of her unspeakable moral crimes) solicited her help in writing poetry to praise the new monarch. She declined - but politely.

A few months later, she offered a congratulatory poem to the new queen instead.

Aphra was referred to as "machiavellian Behn" by one satirist, though of course Todd declines to say who, or even when...

"Tho wrackt with various paines yet life does please
Much more than death, which all our pressures ease."

- I assume that's by Aphra, but Todd, of course, does even explicitly name the poet, let alone the poem, and google does't help.

Todd sums up the great paradox of the era and how we judge it:

"The small groups of witty and vicious, paradoxically potent and impotent men and women whom Behn admired and served contributed little to the political and social future beyond provoking reactionary moralities. Together, they and Behn became a hiccup in the erratic but irresistable development of English cultue towards democracy, individualism, capitalism, consumerism, pursuit of happiness, human rights, the sanctity of life, spiritual caving, and family values. Yet, before the demonisation of this brutal and glittering age, Aphra Behn experienced to the full its libertarian and libertine possibilities; in it she had been allowed to experiment with styles of living and writing in the way few women could do or would wish to do for centuries to come [...]
It would also be long time before a woman would [again] be free to ignore or criticise mariage and motherhood. Or indeed to find death grotesque and funny. Or to display state power and domination as openly erotic. Or to hate commerce and the feckless poor. Or to delight in and mock sex. Or to openly pursue pleasure and ease."