APHRA BEHN STAGE THE SOCIAL SCENE

Transcription

1 PREFACE This study considers the plays of Aphra Behn as theatrical artefacts, and examines the presentation of her plays, as well as others, in the light of the latest knowledge of seventeenth-century theatrical conditions of staging on the scenic stage. The various analyses of stage action, in all the plays discussed, are undertaken from the viewpoint of someone faced with preparing a practical production of the play in the theatrical circumstances presumed to have prevailed at the time. That is, they attempt to recreate the physical stage work and movement patterns dictated by a having a fore stage with entrance doors, sets of painted sliding shutters, and a fully lit auditorium, for which whoever first presented the play had to plan. In each case, the directions of the first edition have been assumed, as far as possible, to be a record of the writer s intentions. Surprisingly few directions and the inherent action in any play have been found unstageable or totally illogical in context It complements The Theatre of Aphra Behn by Derek Hughes. Hughes considers some aspects of three-dimensional theatre, but his discussion is

2 xii APHRA BEHN STAGE THE SOCIAL SCENE mainly a philosophically and linguistically based theoretical and literary analysis of the texts. His essay in The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn takes a similar path. It also complements to a certain extent Treading the Bawds: Actresses and Playwrights on the Late-Stuart Stage, by Gillian Bush-Bailey, in which Bush-Bailey discusses the contemporary attitudes to Behn and the actresses. Some passages in the book have been taken with permission, which is acknowledged with grateful thanks, from my essay More for Seeing than Hearing: Behn and the Use of Theatre, previously published in Aphra Behn Studies, which was edited by Janet Todd. Others have appeared in an article in the online journal Participations ( participations.org). Certain chapters draw on my unpublished doctoral thesis Aphra Behn on the Restoration Stage (1987), revised, updated, and extended where necessary. Arguments draw on analysis of the stage directions of all plays first presented, and showing the use of the scenic stage, from 1661 to 1694, in Dawn Lewcock s Computer Analysis of Restoration Staging 1; ; Dawn Lewcock s Computer Analysis of Restoration Staging 2; ; and Dawn Lewcock s Computer Analysis of Restoration Staging 3; References to Behn s plays and other works are given from the The Works of Aphra Behn, in seven volumes, edited by Janet Todd, for ease of reference. Texts and stage directions have been checked with the first editions, and the works of other dramatists are usually from the first editions, unless otherwise noted. Behn s spelling and grammar are erratic but have been retained unless the meaning is unclear, and quotations are as near the original spelling and punctuation as possible, although italicisation has been ignored and the long s, i/j, and u/v modernised.

3 INTRODUCTION

4 2 APHRA BEHN STAGE THE SOCIAL SCENE Good, Sweet, Honey, Sugar-candied READER, (Which I think is more than anyone has call d you yet,) I must have a word or two with you before you do advance into the Treatise; but tis not to beg your pardon for diverting you from your affairs, by such an idle Pamphlet as this is, for I presume you have not much to do, and therefore are to be obliged to me for keeping you from worse imployment, and if you have a better, you may get you gone about your business: but if you will mispend your Time, pray lay the fault upon yourself; for I have dealt pretty fairly in the matter, and told you in the Title Page what you are to expect within. Aphra Behn, The Dutch Lover So Aphra Behn ( ) begins her epistle to the reader, published with her play The Dutch Lover in It gives a flavour of the teasing irony which threads through most of her writing, and suggests something of the fascinating personality who is the subject of this study and seems an appropriate opening to my own introduction. Usually recognised as the first professional woman writer, Aphra Behn ( ) has become a popular subject for academic study. Most scholars have concentrated on her poetry, her short stories, and her one full-length novel, finding fuel for arguments that suggest she was an early feminist or a proponent of antiracism. Although there have been examinations of individual plays, the prefaces, and epistles, and studies which examine her plays against aspects of the cultural context of the time and the political background, these have usually been used as examples supporting a particular argument, in relation to certain events of the time. No one has considered her simply as a dramatist, and one of the most prolific and popular amongst her contemporaries, working in the theatre at a particular time in theatrical history, nor has anyone discussed how her plays reflect and use the changing staging methods to convey their themes. Moreover, because of her comparatively enormous output and her exceptionally detailed stage directions, Behn can be considered an exemplar of the changes that occurred in the ways of staging on the Restoration stage.

5 Introduction 3 The study considers the ways in which Behn has constructed her plays and used their staging to ensure the perceptions and apprehensions she wants from that audience. It considers the ways in which her use of the scenic stage developed from contemporary staging, acting styles, and changing stage conventions, and how she used these to contribute to the reception and understanding of her plays by the audience. That is, the study considers the theatrical impact on the audience in the use of painted settings, discoveries and disclosure, disguises, and dark scenes. The audience s reactions to events on stage are as much part of the theatrical experience as the dialogue and actions of the players, and are based on their implicit understanding of the relationship of their own life experiences to those shown on stage. And in almost all her plays, Aphra Behn was showing the Restoration audience their own lives and behaviour writ large. This study therefore first considers her direct addresses to her readers in the prefaces and epistles to the published editions of her plays, especially the epistle to the reader quoted previously to gather not only a sense of her own preoccupations and ways of thought but also those of her contemporaries, which is often confirmed by their own writing. The first chapter argues that she may have been less educated in the classics than were the men, but was, nevertheless, someone who read and understood a great deal of contemporary commentary and philosophical writing, allusions to which appear in her epistle to the reader and in other writings by her, as well as in her plays. The diaries by Samuel Pepys and Jeffrey Boys are examined to consider how the thinking and responses, tastes and attitudes towards the theatre, of the society which made up the audience for her plays, had been formed by the intellectual, social, and cultural environment. It finds that the influence of the king was of paramount importance in setting the ways in which people behaved and hence how the theatre was used. It attempts to let her speak for herself without the interpretation of a twentieth- or twenty-first-century gloss on her words. A theatrical study cannot consider Behn in isolation, and the second chapter discusses the theatrical background using comparisons and

6 4 APHRA BEHN STAGE THE SOCIAL SCENE examples from other dramatists as and when appropriate. It argues that the debates and experiments amongst the dramatists at the time illustrate the beginnings of the development of a theoretical structure, which included painted scenery in the acceptable conventions of the illusion of reality for the audience. Behn was writing her first plays just as the debates were at their height, when the dramatists were becoming playwrights through their growing consciousness of theatricality, and was writing at the time when the theatres began to use painted scenery to give an illusion of real or actual locations, and sliding shutters, which gave opportunities for discoveries and disclosures, for the first time on the public stage. The second consideration, therefore, has been the ways in which the theatre had changed and adjusted from the platform staging to encompass the scenic stage, and hence how the implicit conventions, codes, and signals from the stage became structured into the play texts. This was probably one of the most important changes in the history of the theatre, and would affect the visual perception of any play in various, often subtle, ways. This also contributed to the way the style of play preferred by the audience moved away from tragedy and towards comedy. The third chapter examines what seems to have been the basis for humour in the Restoration audience what types and styles of comedy were popular and argues that public taste was veering towards the mock heroic and the comic, that there was a satirical ambience which predisposed audience tastes towards comedy and away from tragedy, and thus set the style in which Behn wrote. The fourth chapter discusses what the actors brought to a performance in the way of technique and style of acting, costume, and disguise, especially the impact of the actresses own personality and reputation. It argues that Behn intentionally incorporates these attributes to affect and alter the relationship between the audience and the actors, in their attitudes towards her characters motivations and behaviour. The fifth chapter suggests that the dramatists at the time exploited varying styles of dialogue with other signifiers of meaning, particularly social connotations, and thus deliberately changed the aural and spatial

7 Introduction 5 dynamics of the total theatrical experience, making the audience as much a part of the performance as the action on stage. It argues that Behn was especially adept and manipulates the audience in these ways, by making them in turn confidant, spectator, or voyeur, in order to obtain the particular response she wants in a given scene. The sixth chapter concludes that Behn, although not an outstanding literary writer, is more important theatrically to the period than has yet been allowed. She wrote more plays than anyone other than Dryden: her texts have more explicit, implicit, and specific stage directions than most and appear to allow for what was technically and mechanically possible for both the actors and the staging. She exemplifies the change from dramatist to playwright through the growing consciousness of theatricality. However, she also clearly shows the social as well as the spatial relationships between the stage, the actors, and the audience in plays which were written in, about, and for a particular social context. She illuminates many of the cultural attitudes and behaviours of the time in which she lived as no other writer does. The study concludes that Behn s plays demonstrate a writer with an instinctive feeling for the ways in which an audience will respond to what they see on the stage, and who deliberately manipulates both certain social and cultural beliefs and attitudes in her texts with the practical staging of those texts to ensure the response she expects she is a dramatist who is more important to the history of Restoration theatrical practice than has been acknowledged.