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AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Keywords

Aphra Behn The Rover, Thomas Southerne Oroonoko, breeches roles in Restoration drama

Abstract

Oroonoko and The Rover, or, the Banished Cavaliers are set in very different locations with a variety of colorful characters. Oroonoko features a split plot set in Suriname exploring the relationships between commerce, slavery, and marriage; whereas The Rover features the collision of three women and a group of cavaliers at Carnival in Naples. But these seemingly disparate plays do have something in common; both are popular adaptations by arguably progressive playwrights. Thomas Southerne adapted a novel by Aphra Behn into Oroonoko, and Aphra Behn adapted Thomas Killigrew’s Thomaso, or The Wanderer into The Rover. Both Southerne and Behn have been read as feminist, or at least as progressive writers— Behn as a female playwright to begin with, and Southerne in his plays Sir Anthony Love and The Wives’ Excuse. These plays also share a trope common to the Restoration period of English drama: the breeches role.

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