Aphra Behn Stages the Social Scene in the Restoration Theatre

Aphra Behn Stages the Social Scene in the Restoration Theatre DawnLewcock Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008. 245 pp. $104.95. ISBN 13: 9781604975499In her recent Aphra Behn Stages the Social Scene in the Restoration Theatre, Dawn Lewcock sets out to redirect attention away from trends that attempt to read Behn as a culturally revealing personality or a politically significant figure - for instance, an early feminist or a proponent of antiracism. Instead, Lewcock wishes to consider Behn "simply as a dramatist" (2). To do so, Lewcock wants to examine Behn's plays with an eye on "practical production," treating the printed texts as "theatrical artifacts" from which the originai theatergoing experience can be recreated (xi). Although she somehow arrives at some clearly articulated conclusions emphasizing Behn's unique technical expertise in making full use of the new seenie stage, the bulk of the book is actually devoted to a much more general discussion of cultural context. Despite her own admonitions against doing so, Lewcock demonstrates a near-constant scratching at that biographical itch that comes with studying England's first professional woman writer.Lewcock presents two main lines of argument in her study. One is that Behn was among the first playwrights to realize fully the dramatic possibilities of the scenic stage (as opposed to the platform stage of pre-Restoration theater productions). The other is that Behn was a practical, professional-minded playwright, not an "outstanding literary writer" (5). Lewcock suggests that we should approach reading Behn's plays as pragmatically-crafted entertainments, not as works of moral reform, social advocacy, or politicai debate. The first thesis suggests that Lewcock's book will involve a detailed historical explanation of the differences between plays written for a platform stage and those written for the scenic stage, and an interpretation of how those differenees can be observed markedly in Behn's writing. This is not, however, what we are given. It is not until page 197, eighteen pages from the end, that Lewcock prevides any sustained discussion of Behn's use of the specific features of the scenic stage (a forestage with entrance doors, moveable scenery, and a discovery space), Almost all of what Lewcock has to say here (mainly focused on The Forc'd Marriage) can be found in a chapter previously published in Janet Todd, ed., Aphra Behn Studies (1996). Lewcock's second thesis leads her to eschew responding directly to previous scholarship on Behn. In passing, Lewcock refers to Derek Hughes The Theatre of Aphra Behn (2001) as a "complement" study to her own, which she characterizes as a "philosophically and linguistically based theoretical and literary analysis of the texts" in contrast to more "practical" approach (xii). Other recent studies that focus on the staging and reception of Behn's plays, such as Nancy Copeland's Staging Gender in Behn and Centlivre (2004) or Jane Spencer's Aphra Behn's Afterlife (2000), are mentioned nowhere. Presumably, Lewcock sees these studies as examples of the "feminist view of Behn" (8). What Lewcock proposes to offer instead is a kind of audience stimulus-response study to consider "the ways in which Behn has constructed her plays and used their staging to ensure the perceptions and apprehensions she wants from the authence" (3). How this ultimately differs from the usual considerations of practical criticism is not always apparent.In chapter 1, Lewcock summarize the available biographical evidence and outlines a broad-stroke cultural history of the period. This is an odd move given that she has just explicitly defended her own methods by criticizing other scholars for relying on biographical speculation, cultural context, and political background in order to "find fuel" for "supporting a particular argument" (2). Lewcock, of course, has a particular argument in mind as well: in her eyes, Behn is a "sheer professional" (14), a sensible, apolitical, though not amoral, woman who "wrote for her bread" (211) and was therefore primarily concerned with giving her authences "a good craftmanlike job for their money" (208). …