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.