Publisher's Synopsis
Materially founded upon George Wilkins' popular play, The Miseries of Enforced Marriage. Sir Timothy himself is moulded to some extent upon Sir Francis Ilford, but, as Geneste aptly remarks, he may be considered a new character. In the older drama, Clare, the original of Celinda, dies tragically of a broken heart. It cannot be denied that Behn has greatly improved Wilkins' scenes. The well-drawn character of Betty Flauntit is her own, and the realistically vivacious bagnio episodes of Act iv replace a not very interesting or lively tavern with a considerable accession to wit and humour, although perhaps not to strict propriety.Aphra Behn was a major British author from the Restoration era, writing under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. As a leading dramatist, coterie poet, translator and proto-novelist, she contributed many important literary works. She was also one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, breaking cultural barriers, and serving as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Behn is famously remembered in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own: "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.." Although her sensational biography has often overshadowed her literary achievements, much solid bibliographical and critical work has been done since the 1990s to establish her oeuvre and its value.
