- Characters and History
The play’s period setting in the 1650s is very significant. Cromwell’s Protectorate had suppressed pastimes and sports and, to Royalists, the period must have seemed like an indefinite extension of Lent. Joining in the festivities of carnival which were denied them at home, exiled cavaliers whiled away the time until the new order of the once-revolutionary Parliamentarians could be overthrown. Instead of being a wealthy, extravagant elite, the exiles had lost lands and money: they were now displaced and marginalised in foreign parts, and Behn’s play continually stresses their ‘outsider’ status. Willmore is not just a rover—a pirate, one who wanders, an inconstant lover—he is a ‘Tramontana rover’, which, apart from signifying someone uncouth, indicates a foreigner or stranger. In fact, most of the characters are outsiders of one kind or another: Naples is under Spanish rule, Angellica Bianca is introduced as a native of Padua, even the English are divided into the impecunious cosmopolitan cavaliers and the wealthy traveller from the country, whom they befriend but constantly taunt because he never committed himself politically and kept his privileges and estate. Established incomers prey upon more recent arrivals: Lucetta exploits Blunt’s ignorance of Naples and of her ways—though she does worry that her treatment of him may put paid to future dealings with foreigners if word gets around. The protagonists, then, are all away from their home ground and are vulnerable because of this. The usual social hierarchies are inverted. The Spanish, old enemies of the English, are either in power officially (Don Antonio is the viceroy’s son) or unofficially (Philippo takes the spoils Lucetta tricks from Blunt and reminds us of the old quarrel about the Spanish Armada in his reference to ‘old Queen Bess’s’ gold and the ‘quarrel... since eighty-eight.’ The English, who might have been gentlemen at home, are poor, riotous, and often despised abroad.
- Behn’s women characters:-
Behn’s women are more certain of their intrinsic worth than Killigrew’s female characters. They reserve the right to adjust their monetary price as it suits them, being more financially secure than many of the men in the play. Even the upright Belvile is dependent on marrying into money (the box of jewels which Florinda, his Spanish love, hides in the garden may be a metaphor for the virtue she has so much difficulty preserving, but since Jessica’s flight to Lorenzo in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, it is also a symbol of the defiant woman who breaks through family and cultural opposition to give herself and her wealth to the man of her choice). The woman-shy Frederick also has his future determined by Florinda, who tells him:
I’ll be reconciled to you on one condition—that you’ll follow the example of your friend in marrying a maid that does not hate you, and whose fortune (I believe) will not be unwelcome to you.
This world, where women can take the initiative, is the world of carnival. It is a time of misrule; everything is turned upside down, prohibitions are temporarily removed, and privileges and rank suspended. Everyone, however different, can be integrated by joining in. As Bakhtin wrote:
Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom.
- Lucetta :-
Unlike Thomaso, The Rover does not begin by focusing on the men; it opens with Hellena and Florinda discussing their lack of independence. Both women display the confidence to have opinions and desires—and to express them. Only Lucetta, of all the females in the play, seems unable to do this—perhaps because she merely exploits the carnival spirit for financial gain at the command of Philippo and is always under his control. She never manages to break free and act as she would wish. As she tells him, speaking of Blunt: ‘And art thou not an unmerciful rogue, not to afford him one night for all this? I should not have been such a Jew’. But she is not allowed to follow her own desires because, as Philippo reminds her, he wants ‘to keep as much of thee as I can to myself. Lucetta, like Angellica, demonstrates how difficult it is for women—especially kept women and prostitutes—to retain their sexual freedom. Dependent on men financially for their survival, they cannot afford the luxury of dispensing favours at will. Angellica, with her greater independence and wealth, fares better than Lucetta. She also, like Hellena and Florinda, has the advantage of a female ally.
- Supportive womon character.
Her woman, Moretta, is probably motivated more by economic considerations than emotional attachment, but we feel sure that when Angellica finally turns her back on Willmore, Moretta will be there to help her return to her old, confident state. Similarly, in I.i. Hellena fiercely takes her sister’s part in criticising their father’s wishes and her brother’s intentions to carry them out; later, Valeria rushes to the rescue when Hellena and Florinda find themselves under threat. Supportive, energetic women are Behn’s speciality.
- Daring , Dialogue :-
Behn has been credited with creating more daring dialogue between the sexes than many of her male contemporaries. In The Rover this could be due in part to her use of Killigrew’s text (which is freer than most in this respect) and particularly to her reassignment to Hellena of certain speeches which Killigrew allocated to a male character—but the freedom with which her men and women converse is also due to the way in which another aspect of carnival is allowed to flourish. Hellena has already entered fully into its spirit when the play opens, ‘Nay, I’m resolved to provide myself this carnival, if there be e’er a handsome proper fellow of my humour above ground, though I ask first.’ She has resolved to find her own man and initiate a relationship: her father and brother may be planning to save the cost of a dowry by placing her in a convent, but she is quite aware of what she has to offer—and to gain by making other plans. Her sister, Florinda, has already determined to defy their father and refuses to marry ‘the rich old Don Vincentio’, being equally sure of her worth: ‘I shall let him see I understand better what’s due to my beauty, birth, and fortune, and more—to my soul, than to obey those unjust commands.’
Work Citation
The Rover. (2020, April 23). Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/rover
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