Q:- Rover as a Restoration Comedy.
The Restoration Comedy is an English comedy performed in the Restoration Period (1660-1710). It started developing after the public stage was banned for 18 years. When King Charles II became the king of England, he brought the ideas of the French with him. He allowed two patents for theatres: The Kings' Company and The Duke's Company.
What is Restoration Comedy?
The Restoration Comedy is also called the Comedy of Manners. It depicts the lives, manners, and habits of upper-class society with their vices, intrigues, and behaviour. It reflects the very spirit of the age. It deals with the behaviour of men and women living under special social codes. Rover shows relationships, along with the intrigues of men and women belonging to a sophisticated society.
# Comedy of Manners
Social Liberty –
The Restoration period breakaway from the Puritan adherence on morality. The play projects the festivals and celebration which was restricted during the Puritan age. The play is set in the Carnival stage where the major characters Hellena and Florinda who are in quest for their true love. It is not only women who enjoyed social liberty but also men. Many men and women during the Restoration period enjoyed life with engaging themselves into infidel relationships. The social liberty was at its highest peak where characters such as Willmore who is the rover of the play as well as Blunt who completely engaged themselves with a sense of true liberty of the age.
Gender Equality–
Women were not given equal space and representation during the Renaissance age or before Renaissance. It was during the Restoration Period women starts to act on the stage taking the roles of a woman characters . In the play, the main driving force are the woman characters and the story revolves around Hellena and Florinda. Behn who is a female playwright has given equal platform to woman in her plays.
Love Intrigues–
As a comedy of manners, there are love intrigues in the play. We have the love intrigues of sisterhood where Hellena , Florinda and Valeria shows a strong powerful force of sisterhood and shows love for another. They participate together by disguising themselves as gypsies in search for their love one’s especially Belville and later Willmore. There are also love intrigues between friends including Frederick, Blunt and Belville where these man also support each other for instance Frederick helps Blunt to capture Florinda whom they thought was a prostitute.
Immoral Behaviour –
The immoral behaviour was a product of Restoration Period. Puritans suppressed immoral behaviour during their rule and hence the Restoration Period saw social engagement in sophisticated and superficial activities. In the play, man flirts with woman for instance Willmore flirts with Hellena and the prostitutes such as Lucetta who goes around seducing man like Blunt and cheats them off is a clear example of immoral behaviour activities. Comedy of manners have satirized the upper class society and Angelica Bianca belongs to the upper class where she sleeps with Willmore committing adultery which according to the Puritans will be immoral and the same action goes to Willmore as well.
The Restoration Comedy shows the violations of social conventions and decorum by the characters by:
Witty dialogues
Wordplay
Interesting plot lines
Sexual references
Objectification
Rake figure
Deception and disguise
Social pressure on love and marriage
In short, the Restoration Comedy is a mirror of the manners of the society in which it's written.
The Rover
Aphra Behn was the only obscure and improved woman "to write for the breed". She was the first British woman to write to earn a living from writing. Her most celebrated play, "The Rover," is a classical Restoration comedy. Based on earlier work Thomaso by Thomas Killigrew, written in 1654 but was not published until ten years later. The rover was an instant success.
"The Rover'' deals with the romantic intrigues of English men and Spanish women in Naples over a carnival weekend. It is set during the Interregnum. Willmore is a rakish libertine who spends months travelling across the seas. He falls in love with every woman he sees, including Hellena, a young noblewoman, and Angellica, a courtesan. Hellena's sister Florinda is in love with the English colonel Belvile. Her brother Don Pedro wants her to marry his friend Don Antonio, the Viceroy's son.
Plot
The plot consists of various bed-tricks, unrequited love, and cases of mistaken identity. Written in verse and prose, it references English society even though it's in Naples. The tone is cynical while the language and actions are sexually oriented, which Charles II encouraged. The characters in the play drive through lust, greed, and revenge. Their goals are limited to fraud or courtship.
Witty Dialogues
"The Rover" has various features of a Restoration Comedy. Witty dialogues are one of the important features of the comedy of manners. The play is full of witty dialogue, especially by Hellena. In Act 1, Scene II, we find Hellena and Willmore flirting with each other. The characters have sharp tongues. They are good at clever comebacks, and the language is full of double meaning.
Rake
The rake was an invention of the Restoration period. In "The Rover," Willmore is the rakish figure. With his cavalier libertine reputation, he is irresistible to women. He is a seductive, and arrogant character, representing the male prowess in the play.
Objectification
Objectification is another feature of the Restoration Comedy. Willmore is the object of desire for both Hellena and Angellica in the play. We can observe his witty humour in the final lines of the play he uttered:
"No other dangers can be dreaded."
Who ventures in the storms of the marriage bed? "
Cross-dressing
Women could act at the time of the Restoration period. Cross-dressing was in high demand at that time. Aphra Behn was the first person to pay attention to the life and mind of a courtesan in her portrayal of Angellica in "The Rover."
In Rover, we see Hellena disguising herself as a young boy so she can keep tabs on Willmore, whom she has fallen for. She warns Angellica of Willmore wooing another woman and then "paid his broken vows to you". Hellena's cross-dressing proves that male dress allows freedom to women.
Disguise and deception
Seeking revenge later in the play, Angellica threatens Willmore with a pistol. Her choice of weapon, a gun, used in those times only by men, is symbolic of her attempt to take control of her sexual desires. She masculinizes herself instead of feminising her lust. Both Hellena and Angellica masquerade themselves as men.
This demonstrates how women can take ownership of rights associated only with men: romance, justice, and sexuality. Deception shown in the play by women was a huge part of the Restoration period.
How Restoration women were different from Puritans?
Following the collapse of Puritan protection in 1660, the Restoration period began. The lifestyle of party sex and extravagant spending was followed by King Charles II. Yet, the social and sexual freedom of this libertinism was not extended to the female gender. Florinda is destined to marry, Hellena to a convent, and Angellica to pay for prostitution.
As the carnival ends, they all abandon their fates and go after their freedom. Aphra Behn speaks of this double standard that limits her female peers' sexual desire to home or brothel. She wanted women to escape the restrictions that define them. The women in the play are nothing like the Puritans. They have strong personalities consisting of wit, humour, competence, and the ability to feel and act confident. They desire to pursue their sexual desires just like men.
Both Florinda and Hellena, attempts to challenge their brother's arrangement are successful in the end. This shows the violation of social convention and decorum at the time of the Restoration era. Marriage for money rather than love was the hallmark of the Restoration era in the late 17th century. Florinda finally gets married to Belvile while Hellena escapes her future as a “handmaid to lazars and cripples”, in the nunnery.
Conclusion
The play has almost all the characteristics of a Restoration comedy. It is one of the best Restoration comedies ever written. The play demonstrates various aspects of life: from the narrow social limitations to the treatment of women in society. The use of witty dialogues and sex as a bartering chip to women violates social convention.
Even though the play asks probing questions underpinning the family and society, the ending is reassuring to the audience. As Charles Lamb concluded, "Restoration Comedies are a world of themselves, almost as much as fairy land.
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