Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn was among the wittiest and most prolific playwrights of her day The Widow Ranter is a tragi-comedy, The False Count concerns the marriage of a young woman to a much older man whilst The Lucky Chance ran into instant criticism for immorality. The Rover is her most famous comedy and Abdelazar is her only tragedy." Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common... All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn." (Virginia Woolf on Aphra Behn)

"I’m no tame sigher, but a rampant lion of the forest," says Willmore, the Rover, on shore after a long voyage. "I have a world of love in store," he claims, searching through the streets for a woman to prove it. When he meets two young Spanish woman-"I love mischief," says one-all the chemistry of comic satire lets loose. The Rover roamed the English stage for a century and has been rediscovered in our own time as a theatrical masterpiece of wit and daring. Aphra Behn (1640–1689) combined dramatic genius and training with personal experience that gave her rare insight into manners and roles. She spied on the Dutch for the English king and was once imprisoned for debt. Behn is one of the very few great English playwrights to be honored in life by popular scandal and in death by burial at Westminster Abbey. She was the first English woman to earn her living by writing.