Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre was largely a male domain, yet fewer than 50 years after Shakespeare’s death, the restoration of theatres along with the  Monarchy, saw the introduction of females as actors and playwrights. Prominent amongst the writers was Aphra Behn.  

Aphra’s background, and even her birthdate are uncertain. However, it is thought that she was Aphra Johnson born in 1640 in Canterbury. During her childhood, she obtained a good education and probably travelled widely including to Surinam. Returning to England she ostensibly had a short-lived marriage to a Mr Behn. Moving to Antwerp around 1667 she spied for King Charles II. Here she incurred debts, and had to write to earn money. Subsequently, as well as her many plays, she published poems and two short novels The Fair Jilt, and Oroonoko.

Although a work of fiction, the story of 'the Royal Slave’ who ended up as a brutally treated slave in Surinam, may well be based on the fate of many an enslaved African king or leader.

Given modern values, Orookono is hardly heroic. He was himself a slave owner who trafficked slaves with an English trader. He was a man of violence who murdered his pregnant wife. However, it is clear that Aphra admired his aristocratic bearing, his love of knowledge, his skill and above all his amazing courage. The story encourages us, when looking through the lens of history, to be wary of imposing contemporary moral judgements.

The novel demonstrates that social status and religion, at the time, were more important than colour. This is evident in Shakespeare’s Othello; the Moor is respected and lauded. Even Desdemona’s father, while objecting to the marriage, nevertheless ‘loved me [Othello]; oft invited me’. The Duke of Venice calls him ‘Valiant Othello.’ Elsewhere he is ‘brave Othello’, ‘our Great Captain’, a man who ‘commands like a full [great] soldier’,  and furthermore ‘Cyprus gallants [would drink to] the health of black Othello’.  Aphra has a similar respect for Oroonoko who is an ‘expert captain’, the ‘bravest soldier’, ‘a gallant Moor’, ‘a great man’.

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, the slave trade to the Americas was not yet racialised. On the plantations white slaves worked alongside black. Records show in 1681 Christopher Jeaffreson bought 300 prisoners from Newgate prison to work on his plantations. Unused to strong sun and heat, white people faded. Africans, more familiar with, and therefore able to survive, the sun scorched conditions, proved far more profitable until the overwhelming majority were of African heritage. In the later eighteenth century, there was growing pressure in Britain for the abolition of slavery. In reply, the anti-abolitionists tried to justify their trade. We still live with the echoes of their arguments today. These are so  malevolent and spurious that I do not wish to repeat them, suffice it to say they falsely maintained that humanity was divided into those races who were natural masters and others who needed mastering. Had Aphra Behn and her story of Oroonoko been as popular then as when she wrote it, abolitionists could have flagged the story up as an example of a noble African who was a natural leader and had mastery in abundance, thereby countering the myth of races of ‘natural slaves’.

Unfortunately for the abolitionists, her anti-slavery work had been forgotten. Even in her lifetime commentator Robert Gould (1683) described Aphra and fellow female writers disparagingly as ‘Punk and Poetess'. Some of her writing is unquestionably bawdy. Her poem The Disappointment  mischievously describes male impotency: ‘While the over-ravished shepherd lies/Unable to perform the sacrifice.’ As tastes changed, such lascivious work by a woman was condemned as utterly unacceptable, and she was ignored. Sadly, this suppression meant that there was one less powerful anti-slavery, pro-African work in the abolitionists’ armoury.

Aphra Behn (1688) Oroonoko, The Rover and Other Works edited by Janet Todd. London: Penguin.

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