Restoration Prostitutes

I thought it would be interesting to write my last blog entry on 17^th and 18^th century prostitution because many of the plays of the time include prostitute characters, and English society certainly did.  During this time period, prostitution was especially common near ports where sailors and traders would arrive after long periods of time at sea and with wages and goods to trade and spend.  As more trade routes opened, particularly during the 18^th century, the availability of prostitutes increased and the women became more varied in origin and more exotic to the English sailors.  The men who could not afford the higher class prostitutes were simply taken to an isolated place or the woman’s own lodgings to complete their transaction; the majority of prostitutes did not work in a brothel. 

Generally prostitutes worked alone or in small numbers with very few under the supervision of pimps or madams.  These independent workers were able to keep all of their wages and gain economic independence despite their gendered disadvantages and marginalized social group.  It was often poverty that forced women (and often men) into the prostitute lifestyle to begin with and it has been estimated that 1/6^th of the population during the late 17^th and 18^th centuries had participated in prostitution at one time.   The large scale participation in prostitution was largely to blame for the pandemic-like spread of various STDs, most notably syphilis (the sores of which were often hidden with black patches on the face of the carrier in little shapes and designs… ridiculous).

Despite the openness with which prostitution was carried out during the 17^th and 18^th centuries and its illegal status, the police were not too harsh on prostitutes because society demanded them and there were usually no crimes of violence involved (or at least reported).  Even during the reign of Cromwell prostitution was not eradicated but simply flourished underground, only to rise with a vengeance after the restoration of Charles II.  It was only during the mid to later years of the 18^th century that prostitutes were ostracized from society and a more Victorian sense of morality began to enter the social consciousness.  The economic factors leading women into prostitution were preached by social reformers but the logic of their arguments did not eradicate the increasingly believed fallacy that prostitutes and women in general needed to have their immoral selves controlled in order to save men from temptation—welcome to the 19^th century!

Orange Seller, Actress, Mistress to the King: Nell Gwyn

          Nell Gwyn is one of the most well known actresses of the Restoration period because of her ability to captivate her audience, her relationship with the King and her amazing transformation from a poor server in her mother's brothel to famous actress and finally wealthy courtesan.

          Eleanor ‘Nell’ Gwyn was born February 2, 1650 and traditionally believed to have been born in Hereford in Pipe Well Lane, though some believe she was born in London or Oxford.  Nell was raised by her mother, who is said to have been an alcoholic and the hostess of a brothel, and brought up with her sister Rose serving spirits to her mother’s customers.  There is speculation that Nell was worked as a child prostitute and it is known that around the age of 12 she took a lover for a short number of years.  In her youth Nell and her sister Rose were hired by a friend of their mother’s, Mary Meggs, to sell oranges and other concessions in Theatre Royal, where Charles II was known to frequent.

Nell Gwyn became an actress at the Theatre Royal around 1664 after gaining knowledge of the theatre through her orange-selling job.  She was taught the acting arts by Charles Hart and John Lacy, both of whom are thought to be her lovers.  Nell generally performed well and made herself a star in the theatre, even to the king who hired her, among others, for private plays while the public playhouses were closed due to the black plague, from 1665-66. 

Within two years after the end of the black plague Nell was a mistress to the king and gave birth to her first son with him in 1670, at the age of 20.  The same year her son was born, Nell returned to the stage for a last few performances before officially retiring.  Though the king had multiple mistresses, Nell remained his favorite until his death because of her honest wit, granting her living son a title and giving her the lease and later the ownership of a her own property which is to this day outside of the reach of the crown.  When Nell died in 1687 her estate was valued at over 100,000 English Pounds, in Restoration dollars.  Not too bad for an orange-selling actress eh?

 

Newfangled Contraptions, 3D design and Lighting the Stage

           During Cromwell’s near 20 year rule of England, Charles II spent his exile in France and the Spanish Netherlands where theatre was far more advanced than the theatre in England.  Charles II was a great supporter of the arts and immediately reestablished theatre in England once he returned to his throne.  Before theatre had been condemned by Cromwell, the scenery for each play remained the same throughout the entire production and the sun’s light was used to light the stage, but after the restoration of the monarchy, innovation in the area of theatrical productions was needed.  Over the course of the puritan rule, theatre did not entirely stop but slowed and moved indoors in order to escape the notice of the government.  Because indoor theatre could not depend on natural light and scenery, it was forced to find new ways to light and set the stage for action.

            Though changeable scenery had been in use in France and Ireland for a long time, the first changeable scenery production in England took place at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields on the 28^th of June 1661—an opera/play called The Siege of Rhodes.  Charles II himself made an appearance for the first time at a public playhouse in order to see the spectacle.  After one playhouse introduced changeable scenery, the others had no choice but to follow their lead in order to sell tickets.  The settings themselves were not the only innovation; the methods used to change the sets were of great importance.  Because the set changes were done in front of the audience, efficiency was paramount and to cope with the demands of set changes everything from pulley systems to roller-rails in the floor and even sub-stage organization accessed through trapdoors were used (and even used as elements within the plays—Aphra Behn’s The Rover trapdoor scene).

            Lighting was originally provided by the sun in the afternoon showings of outdoor plays but when theatre moved inside it was necessary to find new ways of lighting the stage, made more difficult by the fact that gas lighting and electricity were unavailable in the Restoration period.  In the early years after Charles II was restored to the throne, windows, candle chandeliers and candle footlights were used to illuminate the stage.  In order to ‘color’ the light, bottles of colored liquids were placed in front of the candles and provided atmosphere for different scenes.  It was not until the mid 1700’s that candle mounts called ladders were introduced to light the sides of the stages, and kerosene lamps were invented which greatly lessened the effort involved in lighting a play.

            I find it fascinating how much our modern theatres depend on techniques developed during the Restoration to entertain their audiences.  Too cool!

           

What Restoration Playhouses Looked Like

The two components of theatre are the written and the performed but many times only the written aspect of theatre is studied.  Since plays are written for the stage, without a clear idea of what a Restoration stage looked like it is difficult to imagine the playwright’s intentions for the play.  

After Cromwell’s ban of the theatre in 1642, the theatre buildings sat and practically decayed for two decades before Charles II took the throne and allowed them to reopen.  The old theatre buildings were generally in bad condition and could not be used.  In conjunction with the disrepair, the Jacobean style of the buildings was not favorable for the new sets and lighting styles and new buildings were needed. 

            The seating in Restoration theatres could be arranged in a rectangular pattern within a narrow playhouse or in a semicircle configuration with rows radiating up the length of the auditorium from the stage to the back of the room.  The pit was reserved for the low class and the view of the entire stage was poor and at times slightly obstructed by elements of the play.  Because of the poor view, pit seats were the cheapest in the theatre.  Behind the pit was the gallery, where the middle class sat, which extended from the pit to the back of the theatre.  The Gallery seats had a good view of the stage and because of the better view they cost more, though certainly not as much as the box seats.  The box seats were built in a semicircle around the pit and galley and were level with or higher than the stage, giving the occupier an excellent view of the action.   Generally only the very wealthy could afford box seats because of the price, but for the view and the ability to avoid persons of lower stations, they paid the premium.

            The stage of some 17^th century theatres were framed in a proscenium arch that served to focus the attention of the audience on the actors (and actresses), while other theatres presented a stage that jutted forward into the audience through the proscenium arch or without one.  On stages that protruded into the auditorium, audience members would at times climb onto the stage and interact with the actors because there was no real barrier between the stage and the people, though this practice is most closely associated with earlier periods.

 

           

 

 

King Charles II, The Merry Monarch

           After 18 years of Cromwell and Puritan governance, many English citizens were overjoyed to have King Charles II restored to his rightful throne and normality returned to the people.  During the English Civil War King Charles I was executed and his son, Charles II was exiled and fled to France to meet his remaining family and later to the Spanish Netherlands once the former allied with Cromwell and the English Commonwealth.  Charles II’s coronation took place in 1661at the age of 30, after the reign of Cromwell, though official documents were rewritten to state that Charles II had immediately succeeded to the throne after his father’s death.  The rule of Cromwell was, in essence, struck from the official record by the new king, Charles II, nicknamed the “Merry Monarch” because of his devotion to pursuits of pleasure.

During the reign of Cromwell the theatre was banned and all actors were deemed rogues—indeed the theatre offended Cromwell’s Puritan ideals so much that many playhouses were torn down during his usurpation of power.  Under King Charles II the theatre sprang into being and after the suppression of the previous puritan government, it excelled in bawdy comedies of manners and in the celebration of sexuality and libertinism.  Charles II specifically granted Royal patents, which gave rights to stage plays, to the King’s Company and the Duke’s Company who built new playhouses in place of those that had been demolished in Cromwell’s great purge.  Charles II not only supported the reemergence of the theatre but decreed for the first time in English history that women were to be permitted on stage so they could play female roles.  The emergence of women on the stage increased the already ravenous appetites of the theatre spectators because now the bawdy female characters were played by real women who exuded a tremendous sex appeal after 18 years of sexual repression—King Charles was quite a fan of women on the stage, even going so far as to take Nell Gwyn for a mistress.

Indeed, Charles was simply a fan of women, stage or no, and is reported to have acknowledged 14 illegitimate children by multiple women through whom his bloodline continues to this day.  Despite his many mistresses and illegitimate children his wife, Catherine was unable to conceive and the throne passed to Charles’s brother James.  On his deathbed popular actress and long-time mistress Nell Gwyn was in the king’s thoughts; Charles II is reported to have said, “Let not poor Nelly starve”.

A link or two…

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-closure-of-the-theatres/

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/r/restoration-drama/

 

What Kind of Restoration?

Restoration theatre is a very specific area of study which focuses on England during the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries and on the written and performance components of theatre.  Though all times, places and areas of literature have their own contexts, the socio-political context of Restoration theatre is so important that the arts from that time are not called Charlesoneian or Post-Cromwellian, though they certainly could be, but are simply recognized by a very complex political shift—the restoration of the monarchy to the seat of power. 

            In 1642 the English Civil War began in which there were major conflicts between those in support of the monarchy and those in support of a parliamentary system of government.   King Charles I had fallen from the favor of many of his subjects and in 1649 he was tried for various crimes against the people and was executed; his son, Charles II and others were exiled.  After the execution of the king, England became a commonwealth and Oliver Cromwell was appointed the Lord Protector, though he only protected members of certain groups within the commonwealth.  Cromwell believed that God acted through him and in the name of God and the Puritan ideology he reshaped England into a fierce Protestant nation, condemning Catholicism, work on the Sabbath, immoral behavior and such things as vibrant clothing and frivolous uses of time.

            Theatre, deemed synonymously immoral and frivolous by Cromwell was eradicated from England during the 18 years of his/ his son’s rule.  Charles I, whom Cromwell succeeded in executing, had been a supporter of the theatre and after the interregnum his son Charles II reestablished the theatre in the joy, appeasement and restoration of all.

"The Libertine" and the Theatrical Truth of The Earl of Rochester

I have just watched “The Libertine”, featuring Johnny Depp as the Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot, and was, as the Earle would say, moved.  Depp played the role of a man who desperately wanted to feel and have meaningful connections in life but whose experiences were largely limited to the superficial.  The audience watches as the Earl of Rochester drinks away his talent and his life in the desire to experience something other than his melancholic emptiness that exists in spite of his title, position, possessions and beautiful, loving wife.  Depp perfectly captures the essence of a man who sees pettiness and worthlessness in the highest endeavors of society, and artistic beauty in the decadence and overindulgence of the classic tortured soul.  

The Earl says, “I wish to be moved. I cannot feel in life. I must have others do it for me here in the theatre” and continues to say, “ the theatre is my drug, and my illness is so far advanced that my physic must be of the highest quality”.  Theatre indeed offers one of the best mirrors to reality in the satires of comedies and the necessary catharsis of the tragedy.  Aristotle saw the importance of the theatre and its ability to disassociate the audience from their lives and societies and reveal the idiocy and/ or horrors that they willingly participate in.  The issue with the Earl of Rochester is that he did not realize that, in his illness, he had become his drug, had become theatre and allowed art to permeate his every action and word.  In life the Earl sought an experience that could give him a cathartic release; drink only temporarily numbs the sting of the emptiness, sexual release is fleeting and finally he falls into the abyss of self loathing and hates himself even more when he realizes that two things will happen; the people who care for him will either continue to love him despite his repulsiveness or they will feel apathy towards him, not because of what he has allowed himself to become, but because it was he who chose the path to digression.

Over the course of the film, the Earl referred to himself as a natural being; he says to an actor in a tone of condescension, “I am Nature, you are art. Let us see how we compare”. While the actor plays a character and speaks the lines given to him, the Earl is free to create himself in his own image, not directed or cued into one action or another; however, the Earl is so concerned with his personal rebellion and need to feel anything that he cannot realize that his life is theatre.  The Earl cannot be art and simultaneously be an objective viewer of himself.  Though the Earl recognizes the anti-societal message of his life’s play, he cannot appreciate his life, a commentary on the banality of humanity and quest for catharsis, as a reflection of the world around him. 

When the Earl approaches Lizzie, he says to her, “I think I can make you an actress of truth, not a creature of artifice”, but no matter how truthful an actress is in her acting, her role is not to create, but only to modify another’s creation—she can allow herself to feel what she assumes a character would feel, but she is separated from that character because she is real and it is a reflection of the playwright’s interpretation of reality.  An actress can imitate a role and, for all intended purposes can become a character, but there is a separation between a person and the art of another, ergo an actress is not a character (except the character that is herself).  The Earl, a piece of art in and of himself, can only see truth in art and interpretation and perceives that what is reality is true artifice.

Casting Call for "The Rover"

Antonio

I was once told that the best way to learn about the characters in a play or book is to cast it.  Here goes.

Don Antonio—Greg Vaughan

·        Friend to Pedro who is a possible match for Florinda and tries to sleep with Angellica as well.  He seems like the 'rich boy' type, especially when he tries to 'get away with' sleeping with Angellica and still marrying Florinda. Good looking, sense of entitlement and scrappy.

Pedro

Don Pedro—Steven Strait


·         Brother to Hellena and Florinda who attempts to fulfill the demands of his father.  He duels with Antonio over Angellica.  He seems like a kid in way over his head.  He tries to control his sisters and is a bit rebellious but he has no substantial authority. Strait looks like the fun-loving kid who has had authority dumped on his shoulders.

Belvile

Belvile—Josh Duhamel

·         In love with Florinda but they have been forbidden to marry and she has been promised to another.  He is a colonel and from references in the play is trying to work his way up the social ladder. Duhamel looks like a guy who takes authority and is not afraid of confrontation.  

Willmore

Willmore—Christopher Egan


·         The Rake of the play who secures the services of Angellica without payment and becomes engaged with Hellena.  He attempts to rape Florinda.  The actor needs to be good looking, obviously conceited and cocky because the character is a die hard flirt, pushes the boundaries and has no respect for personal space.  Libertine.

Blunt

Blunt—Chris Pine


·         Becomes infatuated with Lucetta, a ‘jilting wench’ who fools him and robs him.  Chris Pine is the perfect Blunt because he would be able to play a completely serious Blunt but make the entire situation ridiculous and add true comic relief to the play. He played Pike in the recent Star Wars film and the scene where he is inoculated for space diseases and his tongue and hands go numb is one of the most hilarious scenes I have watched.  This guy has no problem being a fool.

Florinda

Florinda—Emily Blunt


 · Promised to an old man and almost raped by her brothers friends.  She is not as outspoken as Hellena and is more venerable to the whims of men.  Florinda is in an impossible situation but seems less enthusiastic than Hellena to drastically act out in order to change her circumstances.

Hellena

Hellena—Zooey Deschanel

·A young spitfire who falls in love with the Rake Willmore though she is destined for a nunnery.  Deschanel seems like she has the right mix of innocence, naivety and spunk to play Hellena.  Hellena walks a bit on the wild side, speaks out and openly challenges male authority. 

Angellica Bianca

Angellica Bianca—Abbie Cornish


·        A costly courtesan who, despite her own resistance, falls in love with Willmore and is then rejected by him.  Cornish has shown in her role in 'Elizabeth' that she can act the subtle emotions of a love triangle and a woman scorned would be right up her alley.

Lucetta

Lucetta—Bryce Dallas Howard

·         The ‘jilting wench’ who trick the fool, Blunt and makes off with his money. Nothing says fiery like red hair and an attitude.  Howard played a nasty vampire in one of the latest twilight movies and a thieving pro/ seductress would be a piece of cake.

Virgins and Whores; Men and Their Lack of Observation

            I have nearly finished writing my essay on Behn’s “The Rover” but the more I think about the characters, interactions and situations, the more I want to include—which makes for a rather incoherent essay. 

I keep revisiting something that I learned during a recent Shakespeare course which has thrown an interesting twist on how I interpret plays from the 16 and 1700s.  The expectation for women during this time period was that a good woman had to be three things; obedient, silent and chaste.  If a woman was not obedient to her husband, father or brothers or if she was not a silent, private woman then it was assumed that she was not chaste either.  The failure or decision of a woman to refuse to be obedient, silent and chaste was a common theme in many of Shakespeare’s plays but there are many instances in “The Rover” when the women do not fulfill or actively flout their social guidelines. 

            In the first scene of “The Rover” Florinda and Hellena, two sisters who have been condemned to an undesirable marriage and a nunnery, respectively, contemplate their situations and conceive a plan where they would journey to the local Carnival in an attempt to be rid of their obligations.  When Pedro, brother to the girls, enters the scene, Florinda and especially Hellena argue with him about the injustice of their future marital (Hellena will be married to the church) imprisonment.  Florinda says to her brother, “ I would not have a man so dear to me as my brother follow the ill customs of our country and make a slave of his sister” and later defends herself against her marriage of convenience saying, “Let him [the old Don Vincentio] consider my youth, beauty and fortune, which ought not to be thrown away on his age and jointure” (I, ii, 76-78, 93-95).

            When Hellena begins to speak with Pedro, I always read the scene as though it has quickly become heated while Florinda’s previous lines seem like witty and sarcastic jabs at society’s gender double standards.  Hellena, a young virgin, does not shy from the nitty-gritty details of married life and describes the disappointment of young women who are forced into marriages for money and position.  Hellena seems to gain momentum as she describes the “moth-eaten bed chamber, with furniture in fashion in the reign of King Sancho the First; the bed, that which his forefathers lived and died in” (I, ii, 124-126) and the actions of the old husband, “the giant [who] stretches itself, yawns and sighs a belch or two, loud as a musket, throws himself into bed, and expects you in his foul sheets” (I, ii, 137-140). Then entire time Hellena is berating arranged marriages her brother, the male ‘authority’ attempts to silence her with frequent interjections of “Very well” and “Have you done yet?”, after which he eventually dismisses her and tells Callis, the governess to keep an eye on her. 

            Scene 1 is an excellent example of women failing to meet the standards of silence and obedience, and because of their early conversation about Belvile and meeting young men at Carnival, their chastity or at least the innocence of their thoughts are questioned by the audience. 

Though neither Hellena or Florinda make themselves appear as though they are prostitutes, Florinda is nearly raped, or seduced as the men call it, and Hellena appears multiple times in the sensual guise of a man over the course of the play which makes it seem as though men are unable to see the difference between chaste women and loose women if they do not conform exactly to society’s expectations of what a woman should look and behave like. 

Hmmm… much to ponder. 

Rise of the Libertinas

Before seriously considering 17^th and 18^th century theatre and libertinism, I had become familiar, through classes in Victorian studies, with the concept of decadence which emphasizes “drugged perception, sexual experimentation, and the deliberate inversion of conventional moral, social, and artistic norms” (Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 76).  My Victorian professor asked whether women could be decadent and if so, was their decadence recognized by the same characteristics that defined male decadence.  I connected the idea of the libertine with that of the decadent because both assume a male subject and center on counter-societal behavior, manifest in alternative sexuality, a disregard for social mores and taboos and a fascination with the bizarre and grotesque.  I asked the same question of libertinism that my professor asked of decadence: can women be libertines and if so, do female libertines look and behave like their male counterparts? 

A libertine is defined by the Gage Canadian Dictionary as “a person who lives without regard to convention or accepted moral standards, especially a man who leads a dissolute, immoral life; rake”.  The definition does not specify that only a man can be a libertine, but emphasizes that men are particularly adept at the role. 

During the Restoration and 18^th century men and women were held to two standards of behavior and despite the fact that both men and women can lead dissolute, immoral and rakish lives, these qualities will appear differently between the genders because each are held to a different standard of morality.  Socially, men were less likely to be chastised for promiscuous behavior and logically, the truth of his sexual exploitations may never be revealed because men do not get ‘knocked up’ and women would not be quick to admit to sexual liaisons.  Conversely women were expected to live according to high moral standards and even one indiscretion, a rape or any hint of sexuality whether willing or forced could leave her socially rejected and morally tainted in the eyes of her peers.  What was a reputation destroying act for a woman was all in good fun for men. 

Laura Leigh’s dissertation, The Female Libertine from Dryden to Defoe, states that there were many “legal and ethical problems women encountered in a culture that continued to see women’s free exercise of the mind and body as amoral, dangerous, and anti-social” and continues saying that women writers in the 17^th century “frequently came under attack from detractors who called their bodies, identities, and mental states into question” (18).  Society had issues in dealing with women who did not adopt the characteristics of the ideal woman and did not tolerate variation from that ideal.  Since women were expected to embody the impossible role of the angel or pure woman, (emphasis on impossible!) does it follow that all normal women were in essence a variation from the ideal? libertines--libertinas?  No women can live up to the expectations set on her gender by society, and she thereby becomes “a person who lives without regard to convention or accepted moral standards”, which is the definition of a libertine. 

BitsaLit signing off, ready to flout society's expectations and eat cheesecake.  Ta. 

Passion, Inspiration, Interpretation, Conform

Today I watched a film called Stage Beauty in order to get a feel for the late 17^th century time period and theatre in general.  Theatre is about performance, but before the performance, there must be a play made up of written words to perform.  One quote from the film said, “words live long after their passions have died” but what makes great theatre (or any works of literature) from any time period relevant is that the passions that have inspired the words of great playwrights and authors have not yet died.  The reason that Chaucer and Shakespeare, among many others, continue to be taught and given president in educational institutions is because their core themes and the character types used in the works (like the rake, or the always humorous bed-switch plot) speak to human nature and human error rather than to one particular, outdated and very deceased group of people.  The play that is continuously referenced in Stage Beauty, the tragedy Othello, centers on issues of race, gender and class. 

n  Race is central because Othello is a black man who has married a white girl without the permission of her father.  Also, a reference that modern readers may be unaware of is that the villain, Iago, is a Spaniard and not Caucasian, which increases racial tensions in the play.

n  Gender and the social expectations of people based on their gender is thrown into question when Desdemona demonstrates that she is neither obedient, silent and through these unwomanly characteristics is assumed to be unchaste. 

n  The hierarchical class system is upturned when Othello, a higher class military man who is praised for his prowess and morality murders his wife on assumption and paranoid fear.  The higher class was thought to possess a greater morality than those of the lower classes.

What is gender?

Aphra Behn’s “The Rover” comments on the state of women under the misappropriated rule of men and even though it was written in the mid 1600’s, women are still toyed with and objectified, albeit sometimes at their own behest, by men; ergo, the passions that inspired “The Rover” have not yet died.  In “Stage Beauty” there is a sex scene between Maria and Ned where he tells her what gender role she is playing based on her position and in a subsequent scene he attempts to teach Maria how to act like a woman.  Ned assures Maria that he is not trying to teach her to act like a woman, but that he is trying to teach her how to act like Desdemona.  The fact that he is trying to teach her a female role is significant because it betrays the fact that gender is to a very large extent performative.  During the 1600’s, when “Stage Beauty” was set and “The Rover” was written, women had just begun to find some shred of identity because they were finally allowed to play their own gender on the theatrical stage.  Then and to a large degree now, women were told by the patriarchal hegemony how women were supposed to act—they were told that the male interpretation of femininity was the natural behavioral, and even structural (corset?) form of womanhood.  The female identity was determined by a male interpretation of a subaltern and entirely ‘other’ group which they did not and could not understand. 

At one point in “Stage Beauty” the question was asked, “a woman playing a woman—what’s the trick in that?”, and the beauty of it is that once women were allowed to perform, the female gender was no longer a mildly amusing trick.

A Discovery of Interest

Welcome to the first day of Bloggdom—things only get crazier from here.

The other afternoon I traipsed down to my campus library, or ‘Commons’/Café/ computer lab/ Dorian-inspired building with crazy moving stacks, in order to figure out what I would write my first essay on.  I know two things—I am deeply interested in criminality/degeneration and the general female experience and I know that Restoration drama has a reputation for unabashed sexuality, instances of criminal activity and the emergence of women on the stage and behind the script.  I decided that I would look closely at Aphra Behn’s “The Rover” (1677) and John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” (1728) because all of my major interests are addressed within the two pieces and because the pieces are separated by about 50 years and reflect not only the differences in gender perception, but the developments and shifts in social attitude concerning gender and crime issues over the course of time. 

Aphra Behn introduced a new perspective on 18^th century society, particularly the roles of women within the patriarchal system, because she is considered to be the first professional female playwright.  She uses innuendo and comedy to comment on the vulnerability of women and on the limitations of their gender (angel or whore?).  Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” similarly  depicts different types of  women but particularly addresses crime, the differences between male and female crimes and the social implications and expectations for each.  Both plays engage with similar material—love, virtue and vice, sex, money—but are the themes engaged differently and does the gender of the playwright influence the message of the play?

In order to answer my vast queries I looked for articles and books that would tell me about the Restoration and 18^th Century’s history, in terms of politics, and society, including gender, race, religion, etc, in order to better grasp the context of the theatre of the time.  I found four books hidden in the moving stacks of the common’s basement (I feel like I have stepped into a sci-fi Harry Potter every time I go down there) that will give me a good place to start with period context. I also looked specifically for texts that addressed female sexuality and the different manifestations of it—prostitution, abstinence, etc. and found three articles that deal with female sexuality, rape, and quite honestly, a random one that I am not too sure about.   Since I am interested in the effect of the writer’s gender on the works I looked to literary theory, though am unsure whether theory is entirely appropriate for this paper.

1.      Barthes/ Fish—Authorial intention or reader response?

2.      Spivak—Can women as subaltern have a voice?

3.      Gilbert and Gubar—Anxiety of Authorship. Can 18^th century women ‘author’ their own lives—is the ability to choose virtue or vice, celibacy or prostitution the product of freedom, or the acknowledgement of one’s own subalternity. 

In any case, I am not finished with my questions, nor am I finished with my research, but more than ever I am excited to dig in. 

Live long and prosper J