Aphra Behn Practice Questions

Correct answer: She was the first Englishwoman to earn her living primarily through her professional writing.

Aphra Behn broke substantial ground by becoming the first Englishwoman to support herself entirely through the sale of her plays, poetry, and fiction. Following her return from an unprofitable spying mission for King Charles II, she turned to the commercial theater out of financial necessity. Her success paved the way for subsequent generations of professional female authors.

Correct answer: Astrea

During the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1666, Behn was sent to Antwerp by the Crown to gather intelligence, operating under the secret pseudonym Astrea. Although the government failed to pay her for her services, forcing her into a brief stay in a debtors' prison, she preserved the name. She later adopted 'Astrea' as her signature literary pen name for her published poetry and drama.

Correct answer: The Forced Marriage

*The Forced Marriage; or, The Jealous Bridegroom* was Behn's theatrical debut in December 1670. The play is a tragicomedic exploration of a theme that would define her career: the cruelty of arranged marriages dictated by parental greed and financial contracts. Its successful performance established her long-term relationship with Thomas Betterton's acting company.

Correct answer: The exile of English Royalists during the Interregnum, specifically during Carnival season in Naples

*The Rover* takes place in Naples during Carnival, focusing on a band of banished English cavaliers loyal to the exiled Charles II. This setting provides a carnivalesque atmosphere where normal social hierarchies, sexual boundaries, and political rules are temporarily suspended. It allowed Behn to critique the libertine lifestyle while celebrating the resilience of the royalist cause.

Correct answer: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Captain Willmore is an unrepentant, charismatic, and volatile libertine whose erratic behaviors and witty charm closely mirror John Wilmot, the notorious Earl of Rochester. Behn maintained a complicated personal and professional admiration for Rochester's radical poetry and philosophy. Willmore's wild nature represents both the appeal and the distinct danger of the Restoration rake archetype.

Correct answer: Angellica

Angellica Bianca is a celebrated, high-class courtesan who hangs out her portrait with a steep price tag to attract elite clients. Unlike the virgin heroines, she is financially independent and fiercely articulate about the commodification of sex. Her tragedy unfolds when she breaks her own professional rules by falling genuinely in love with Willmore, who ultimately betrays her.

Correct answer: Hellena

Hellena is a sharp-tongued, defiant young woman whose family intends to force her into a religious life as a nun. Refusing this fate, she utilizes the anonymity of Carnival costumes to match wits directly with Captain Willmore on the streets of Naples. She successfully subverts her family's dynamic, trading a cloister for a marriage contract built on intellectual equality.

Correct answer: She faces violent threats of sexual assault from several men who misread her presence outside.

Florinda is nearly assaulted by Willmore when he is drunk, and later by Blunt and a group of gentlemen when she takes refuge in Blunt's quarters. Behn uses these highly tense, dark scenes to expose the physical vulnerability of women in a libertine society that treats unescorted or displaced women as public property. It shifts the comedy away from pure fantasy into a sober assessment of systemic sexual violence.

Correct answer: Ned Blunt

Ned Blunt is a naive, wealthy English country gentleman who foolishly believes that the manipulative Lucetta has fallen genuinely in love with his rustic charms. After being dropped down a sewer trapdoor in his undergarments and robbed of everything, his humiliation curdles into a toxic, misogynistic rage. His character provides both low slapstick comedy and a sharp critique of vengeful male ego.

Correct answer: The Puritan parliamentarians and Oliver Cromwell's former supporters

*The Roundheads; or, The Good Old Cause* was written during the height of the Exclusion Crisis as a piece of aggressive Tory propaganda. Behn drew heavily on John Tatham's earlier play to depict the Puritan leaders of the late Commonwealth as corrupt, power-hungry, and hypocritical tyrants. The play was intended to discredit the contemporary Whig faction by linking them to the executioners of Charles I.

Correct answer: Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury

Sir Timothy Treat-all is a wealthy, seditious city magistrate who plots against the monarchy, serving as a direct, thin-skinned parody of the Earl of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury was the prime architect of the Whig effort to exclude the Catholic Duke of York from inheriting the throne. Behn used the stage to frame the Whig leadership as self-serving, ridiculous, and fundamentally treacherous.

Correct answer: The Emperor of the Moon

*The Emperor of the Moon* is a highly experimental farce based heavily on the physical traditions of the Italian *commedia dell'arte*. It centers on Doctor Baliardo, a gullible scholar who is tricked by his daughters' lovers into believing they are celestial princes from the Moon. The play was a massive success due to its spectacular special effects, intricate flying machinery, and elaborate staging.

Correct answer: The horror of May-December marriages, where young women are sold to decrepit, wealthy old men

*The Lucky Chance* deals directly with two young women trapped in marriages to ancient, wealthy, and impotent old men (Sir Feeble Fainwould and Sir Cautious Fulbank). Behn frames these relationships not as respectable social institutions, but as legal forms of prostitution and human trafficking driven entirely by money. The play defends the right of young lovers to assert their emotional and physical autonomy over parental tyranny.

Correct answer: She argued the same jokes praised as 'wit' in men's work were condemned in hers.

Behn's preface is an early monument of feminist literary criticism. She fiercely pointed out that male playwrights like Dryden, Wycherley, and Etherege routinely included highly explicit sexual plots without facing public condemnation. She asserted that her genius should be judged on its literary and dramatic merits, free from the artificial restrictions placed upon her gender.

Correct answer: The Widow Ranter

*The Widow Ranter; or, The History of Bacon in Virginia* was staged a year after Behn's death. It represents an incredibly rare seventeenth-century dramatic depiction of colonial life in America. The play blends historical facts about Nathaniel Bacon's 1676 rebellion with comic subplots featuring cross-dressing women and unpolished colonial officials, displaying Behn's ongoing interest in global spaces and political authority.

Correct answer: She specialized in complex plots packed with mistaken identities, disguises, masks, and parallel love affairs.

Behn was a master of the Spanish-style comedy of intrigue, which prioritized kinetic stage movement and plot complexity over the slow, talkative 'comedy of manners.' Her plays are famous for their energy, utilizing architectural elements like balconies, closets, and dark alleys to keep the audience guessing. This style required immense technical skill to manage multiple intersecting storylines simultaneously without losing coherence.

Correct answer: Elizabeth Barry

Elizabeth Barry, the undisputed queen of the Restoration stage, was a frequent collaborator and intimate friend of Behn. Barry famously created the role of Hellena in *The Rover* and used her extraordinary emotional range to deliver Behn's sharp, challenging prologues directly to the audience. The professional partnership between Behn as writer and Barry as actress was one of the most potent dynamics in early English theater.

Correct answer: An actress held a mirror to the audience while pointing a pistol at the critics.

In the striking prologue to her debut play, an actress targeted the male critics in the audience, using the metaphor of warfare to state that women were now invading the territory of wit. By pointing a weapon and using a mirror, Behn signaled her intent to aggressively confront, rather than meekly appease, the male-dominated literary establishment of London.

Correct answer: She wrote an epilogue to Romulus and Hersilia that insulted the Duke of Monmouth.

Though Behn was a staunch, lifelong Royalist, her sharp political wit occasionally crossed official lines. In her epilogue for *Romulus and Hersilia*, she laid into the Duke of Monmouth for his treasonous ambitions against his father, Charles II. Because the political atmosphere of the Exclusion Crisis was so volatile, the crown ordered both Behn and the actress who delivered the lines to be taken into custody for questioning.

Correct answer: Inside Westminster Abbey, specifically in the East Cloister, separate from Poets' Corner

Following her death in April 1689, Behn was laid to rest in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. Her gravestone features a famous, bitter couplet about how wit is treated poorly by the world. Though Victorian critics later tried to erase her from literary history due to her frank depictions of female desire, her physical burial place stands as a permanent testament to her monumental impact on English literature.