English Literature / Unit 10 ENL 0909 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Behn the Playwright: The Rover
Captions available
The idea
Behn wrote for the stage after a spy mission for Charles the Second; a debtor's prison stay is told of her, though the evidence is doubtful. Her comedy The Rover, of sixteen seventy-seven, follows English cavaliers in Naples at Carnival, where young women disguise themselves to escape arranged marriages and a convent.
In practice
Carnival, masks, women choosing.
Where people slip
Her plays address women's limited choices.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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