Volume I Part 4 (1/2)

Published by W. Walker, 8 Grays Inn Square.' The original oil painting was purchased at the Stow Sale in 1848 (No. 57 in the sale catalogue), by J. S. Caldwell, a literary antiquarian, Linley Wood, Staffords.h.i.+re.

A letter which I wrote to _The Times Literary Supplement_ (26 November, 1914) on the subject of these portraits brought me a most courteous permission from Major-General F. C. Heath Caldwell, the present owner of Linley Wood, to view the picture.

With regard to the well-known and most frequently reproduced portrait by Riley, this, engraved by R. Wise, figures as frontispiece to _The Unfortunate Bride_ (t.i.tle page, 1700, and second t.i.tle page, 1698).

It is also given before the _Novels_ (1696, 1698, and other editions).

Engraved by B. Cole, the same portrait fronts the _Plays_, 4 vols., 1724, and the _Novels_, 2 vols., 1735. It again appears 'H. R. Cook, Sculp.', published 1 August, 1813, by I. W. H. Payne, when it was included as an ill.u.s.tration to the _Lady's Monthly Museum_.

The portrait by Sir Peter Lely, which is reproduced as frontispiece to this edition of Mrs. Behn, was exhibited at the South Kensington Portrait Exhibition of 1866 by Philip Howard, Esq., of Corby Castle, the head of the Corby branch of the Howard family.

The portrait of Mrs. Behn which appears as frontispiece to the _Plays_, 2 vols., 1716, is none other than Christina of Sweden from Sebastian Bourdon's drawing now in the Louvre.

A so-called portrait of Mrs. Behn, 'pub. Rob't Wilkinson', no date, is of no value, being, at best, a bad pastiche from some very poor engraving.

Errors and Irregularities: General Introduction

even such a mad sc.r.a.pegrace as Dryden's Woodall _text unchanged_ the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Field's _all apostrophes in original_ [Footnote 21.]

... knowledge of the / theatre and technicalties theatrical _text unchanged_

THE ROVER; OR,

THE BANISH'D CAVALIERS.

PART I.

[Transcriber's Note:

Entrances and bracketed stage directions were printed in _italics_, with proper names in roman type. The overall _italic_ markup has been omitted for readability.]

ARGUMENT.

During the exile of Charles II a band of cavaliers, prominent amongst whom are Willmore (the Rover), Belvile, Frederick, and Ned Blunt, find themselves at Naples in carnival time. Belvile, who at a siege at Pampluna has rescued a certain Florinda and her brother Don Pedro, now loves the lady, and the tender feeling is reciprocated. Florinda's father, however, designs her for the elderly Vincentio, whilst her brother would have her marry his friend Antonio, son to the Viceroy.

Florinda, her sister h.e.l.lena (who is intended for the veil), their cousin Valeria, and duenna Callis surrept.i.tiously visit the carnival, all in masquerade, and there encounter the cavaliers. Florinda arranges to meet Belvile that night at her garden-gate. Meanwhile a picture of Angelica Bianca, a famous courtezan, is publicly exposed, guarded by bravos. Antonio and Pedro dispute who shall give the 1000 crowns she demands, and come to blows. After a short fray Willmore, who has boldly pulled down the picture, is admitted to the house, and declares his love, together with his complete inability to pay the price she requires. Angelica, none the less, overcome with pa.s.sion, yields to him.

Shortly after, meeting h.e.l.lena in the street, he commences an ardent courts.h.i.+p, which is detected by the jealous Angelica, who has followed him vizarded. Florinda that night at the garden-gate encounters Willmore, who, having been toping in the town, is far from sober, and her cries at his advances attract her brother and servants, whom she eludes by escaping back to the house. After a brawl, Willmore has to endure the reproaches of Belvile, who has appeared on the scene. During their discussion Antonio makes as about to enter Angelica's house before which they are, and Willmore, justling him to one side, wounds him.

He falls, and the officers who run up at the clash of swords, arrest Belvile, who has returned at the noise, as the a.s.sailant, conveying him by Antonio's orders to the Viceroy's palace. Antonio, in the course of conversation, resigns Florinda to his rival, and Belvile, disguised as Antonio, obtains Florinda from Don Pedro. At this moment Willmore accosts him, and the Spaniard perceiving his mistake, soon takes his sister off home. Angelica next comes in hot pursuit of Willmore, but they are interrupted by h.e.l.lena, dressed as a boy, who tells a tale of the Rover's amour with another dame and so rouses the jealous courtezan to fury, and the twain promptly part quarrelling. Florinda, meanwhile, who has escaped from her brother, running into an open house to evade detection, finds herself in Ned Blunt's apartments. Blunt, who is sitting half-clad, and in no pleasant mood owing to his having been tricked of clothes and money and turned into the street by a common cyprian, greets her roughly enough, but is mollified by the present of a diamond ring. His friends and Don Pedro, come to laugh at his sorry case, now force their way into the chamber, and Florinda, whom her brother finally resigns to Belvile, is discovered. She is straightway united to her lover by a convenient priest. Willmore is then surprised by the apparition of Angelica, who, loading him with bitter reproaches for his infidelity, is about to pistol him, when she is disarmed by Antonio, and accordingly parts in a fury of jealous rage, to give place to h.e.l.lena who adroitly secures her Rover in the noose of matrimony.

SOURCE.

The entire plan and many details of both parts of _The Rover_ are taken openly and unreservedly from Tom Killigrew's _Thomaso, or The Wanderer_, an unacted comedy likewise in two parts, published for the first time in his collected works by Henry Herringman (folio, 1663-4). It is to be noticed, however, that whilst Killigrew's work is really one long play of ten closely consecutive acts, the scene of which is continually laid in Madrid, without any break in time or action, Mrs. Behn, on the other hand, admirably contrives that each separate part of _The Rover_ is complete and possesses perfect unity in itself, the locale being respectively, and far more suitably, in two several places, Naples and Madrid, rather than confined to the latter city alone. Mrs. Behn, moreover, introduces new characters and a new intrigue in her second part, thus not merely sustaining but even renewing the interest which in _Thomaso_ jades and flags most wearily owing to the author's prolixity and diffuseness.