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Aphra Behn Research Paper

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The Restoration Period was an era of new things for theatre, women were just starting to appear on stage and with them, groundbreaking female playwrights also emerged. Among them was Aphra Behn, the first female playwright to to make a living off of her writing. Aphra’s life was full of difficult times and struggle but was still colorful and full of creation. Aphra was many things, a playwright, poet, novelist, She was a woman trying, and succeeding, to make it in a man’s world but it wasn’t without hardship. In her early years of womanhood, she was married to a Dutch merchant after moving to England after living in the West Indies for her 18 years of life. Soon after the marriage she was widowed, she then went to The Netherlands as a spy, serving King Charles II in Antwerp in 1665, during the Anglo-Dutch War. During this time she never …show more content…

She was the first woman in England to declare herself a professional writer, and she did this at the height of the Restoration Period. In all of the places throughout history for women to emerge on stage this was the time to do it. The Restorations Period was the roaring 20’s of theatre. Elizabethan Theatre was drawing from and fusing with Italian and French drama, architecture and design and with these new trend developing when was there a better time to introduce women to the stage. This was also a time were bawdy comedies were extremely popular, it became an unspoken rule of comedy and Behn did not disappoint, two of her plays The Town Fop and The Rover both went as far to show a scene taking place in a brothel. As she grew as a writer her plays became increasingly political in response to contemporary events, and in particular, the public hysteria over the Popish Plot. Although she was successful she did receive ridicule from some members of the public but she defended herself. When challenged on her play Sir Patient Fancy she responded with this

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