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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Before we get into Today's Saturday Classic, just

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Speaker 1: a quick reminder we have a live streaming event coming

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Speaker 1: up on March tenth. You can find all the information

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Speaker 1: about that and buy tickets at looped live dot com.

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Speaker 1: We also have the ticket link pinned up at the

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Speaker 1: top of our Facebook and our Twitter. We are super

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Speaker 1: excited and hope folks will join us for that. Okay,

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Speaker 1: coming up, we have an episode on Mary Sydney, Herbert,

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Speaker 1: Countess of Penbroke, who is the first woman known to

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Speaker 1: have published an English language play that happened in and

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Speaker 1: as we were recording this forthcoming episode, I had a

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Speaker 1: moment where I thought, when did Afriban do this same thing?

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Speaker 1: The answer is almost eighty entire years later, Mary Sydney,

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Speaker 1: your title is safe. Um. Aside from that, Afraban's life

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Speaker 1: of spy work and writing was a pretty exciting one.

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Speaker 1: So we're bringing that episode out as Today's Saturday Classic.

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Speaker 1: It originally came out on March man Joy, Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B.

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Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today's podcast is a request

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Speaker 1: from many listeners once again, and they include Georgia, Bree, Laura, Anna, Lauren,

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Speaker 1: and Tabitha, who asked for it after I had actually

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Speaker 1: already started working on it, and I'm sure many other people.

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Speaker 1: It moved up to the top of the list after

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Speaker 1: sort of tangentially coming up in our Ira Frederick Aldridge episode.

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Speaker 1: Aldridge played a character called Orinoco in The Revolt of Surinam,

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Speaker 1: and that was an adaptation of the play Orinoco by

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Speaker 1: Thomas Southern. And that was an adaptation of Orinoco, a

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Speaker 1: short work of fiction by today's subject Afraban. There is

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Speaker 1: really not a lot that's conclusively known about the life

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Speaker 1: of Afraban, who, in addition to being a spy, was

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Speaker 1: also a dramatist and a poet, a novelist, a translator,

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Speaker 1: and probably the first woman in English literature known to

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Speaker 1: have made a living as a writer. Even though she

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Speaker 1: was prolific in her work, her gender meant that the

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Speaker 1: sorts of institutions that were mostly keeping up with the

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Speaker 1: details of writers and artists lives at the time did

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Speaker 1: not really include her. Since she wasn't an aristocrat, there

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Speaker 1: was no official family history, and shouldn't really keep a

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Speaker 1: diary or write a memoir or or corresponding a lot

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Speaker 1: of letters, at least not many of that actually survived.

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Speaker 1: And yet, even though there is so little concrete information,

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Speaker 1: she's the subject of multiple biographies, and some of them

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Speaker 1: are quite lengthy. Uh. With so little actual documentation to

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Speaker 1: go on, a lot of these sort of pick up

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Speaker 1: tiny pieces of the historical record and then try to

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Speaker 1: glean details of her life from her written work. And

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Speaker 1: this means that a lot of biographies about her are

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Speaker 1: very heavily subject to interpretation. They tend to be influenced

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Speaker 1: a lot by the biographers focus and their interpretation of

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Speaker 1: her body of work. Uh. And in some cases, if

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Speaker 1: you've read the words, probably and may have, you've read

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Speaker 1: like a quarter of the thing at least. So we're

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Speaker 1: gonna do our best on this one. I feel like

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Speaker 1: you're describing some sort of Afroban biographical mad libs kind

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Speaker 1: of is. I mean, every biography is influenced by the biographer,

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Speaker 1: even if you're trying, you know, even if the biographer

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Speaker 1: is trying really hard to have a very objective stance.

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Speaker 1: This is particularly true with Afriban because there's so much

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Speaker 1: that's like trying to piece together a teeny little puzzle

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Speaker 1: with itty bitty pieces to make a whole life out

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Speaker 1: of yeah, with big gaps in the puzzle, So it

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Speaker 1: won't s eries you. Having listened to that introduction, that

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Speaker 1: there is very very little known about Afra Ban's early life,

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Speaker 1: and most of what we do know has been reconstructed,

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Speaker 1: as Tracy just mentioned, by following the threads available, a

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Speaker 1: lot of which are other people's claims about her, and

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Speaker 1: then the logical conclusions are drawn from there. So it

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Speaker 1: is generally agreed that she was born sometime around sixteen forty,

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Speaker 1: probably to a family who lived in why A village

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Speaker 1: in Kent, England. Colonel Thomas Culpepper claimed that Afraban's mother

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Speaker 1: was his wet nurse and her father was reported to

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Speaker 1: be a barber, so this makes the most likely candidates

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Speaker 1: for her parents, Bartholomew and Elizabeth Johnson. They had a daughter,

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Speaker 1: e Free spelled e A F F R E y,

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Speaker 1: and that was one of the many many variations in

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Speaker 1: spelling for the name Afra at the time. This young

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Speaker 1: e Free was baptized on December fourteenth of sixteen forty,

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Speaker 1: although some sources report that as the day of her birth.

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Speaker 1: With her mother as his wet nurse, Afra would have

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Speaker 1: been considered Thomas culpeppers foster sister, and the cool Peppers

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Speaker 1: were a prominent family in the area. This connection to

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Speaker 1: the cool Peppers would have given Afra access to far

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Speaker 1: more educational opportunities and a wider social circle than she

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Speaker 1: would have had as just the daughter of a wet

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Speaker 1: nurse in a barber Although we don't have a lot

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Speaker 1: of details about the specifics of her childhood and her adolescence,

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Speaker 1: we do know that Afra grew up during a period

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Speaker 1: of huge chaos and change. The English Civil Wars began

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Speaker 1: when she was still a toddler, and this is a

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Speaker 1: series of wars that obviously could be at least a

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Speaker 1: whole episode all by themselves. So very briefly, the English

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Speaker 1: Civil Wars also involved Scotland and Ireland, and they grew

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Speaker 1: out of a conflict between King Charles the First and

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Speaker 1: parliament about who ultimately had control over the military. Following

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Speaker 1: an uprising in Ireland. During the English Civil Wars, the

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Speaker 1: Parliamentarians faced off against the Royalists in a series of

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Speaker 1: conflicts that ultimately led to a victory for the parliamentarians,

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Speaker 1: the execution of Charles the First in sixteen forty nine,

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Speaker 1: the exile of his son Charles the Second, and the

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Speaker 1: political rise of Oliver Cromwell, first Lord Protector of the

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Speaker 1: Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. The total death toll

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Speaker 1: in England was almost two hundred thousand. Obviously, that is

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Speaker 1: that it was like the tiniest possible description of the

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Speaker 1: English Civil Wars. During the interregnum years that followed from

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Speaker 1: sixteen forty nine to sixteen sixty, the nation was no

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Speaker 1: longer actively at war with itself, but it still had

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Speaker 1: its fair share of strife. Many of those in Parliament

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Speaker 1: were Puritans, and they started enforcing Puritans standards and views

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Speaker 1: for the rest of the nation. Cromwell himself had a

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Speaker 1: reputation as a radical and a fanatic, and his actions

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Speaker 1: during the Civil Wars had included, among other things, a

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Speaker 1: massacre in Ireland. Throughout the interregnum, royalists continued to work

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Speaker 1: toward the goal of restoring the monarchy. There's some speculation

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Speaker 1: that toward the end of the interregnum, Ben was already

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Speaker 1: beginning her career as a spy by secretly carrying messages

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Speaker 1: for Royalist organizations. She would have been connected to these

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Speaker 1: organizations once again through Thomas Culpepper. Oliver Cromwell died in

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Speaker 1: sixteen fifty eight, and by sixteen sixty one Charles the

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Speaker 1: Second had been returned to the throne. So by the

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Speaker 1: time Aframan hit her twenties, England had already been through

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Speaker 1: a lot, and with Charles the Second's return, English life

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Speaker 1: dramatically changed once again and a lot of circles. The

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Speaker 1: restoration was met with a huge, hedonistic, fairly drunken party,

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Speaker 1: and it was in this environment that Afra Bend really

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Speaker 1: flourished a whole lot more than during the more puritanical

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Speaker 1: interregnum years. In sixteen sixty three, when she was in

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Speaker 1: her early twenties, Ben traveled to Suriname, and this would

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Speaker 1: later become the setting for her work of fiction Orinocco.

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Speaker 1: Orinocco is often discussed as part of Ben's earlier work

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Speaker 1: because her visit there would have happened, as we just said,

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Speaker 1: when she was in her early twenties, but in reality

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Speaker 1: this piece wasn't published until shortly before her death. Orinocco

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Speaker 1: tells the story of a prince from the Gold Coast

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Speaker 1: and what is now Ghana, who's invited aboard a ship

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Speaker 1: and then enslaved before being sold in Surinam, and that's

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Speaker 1: where he meets the book's narrator. This narrator is an

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Speaker 1: english woman who had come to Suriname with her father,

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Speaker 1: but he died during the sea voyage. Some biographies actually

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Speaker 1: take this plot point from Orinoco and apply it to

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Speaker 1: Ben's real life father, although he had likely died by

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Speaker 1: the early mid sixteen sixties. It's completely unclear whether this

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Speaker 1: aspect of Orinoco is supposed to be autobiographical. There's also

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Speaker 1: debate about whether the book's narrator is supposed to be

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Speaker 1: a stand in for Ben herself, and that part similarly faggy.

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Speaker 1: But since Orinocco does contain a lot of detail about

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Speaker 1: Surinam and people who really lived there in the sixteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: it's easy to think of it as evidence that the

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Speaker 1: trip to Surinam really did happen, regardless of whether the

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Speaker 1: story it tells is supposed to be autobiographical. Also, although

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Speaker 1: Ben's own views on slavery are pretty hard to tease

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Speaker 1: out from her writing, Orinocco itself was considered an abolitionist

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Speaker 1: work of fiction in both the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of attempts to try to figure

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Speaker 1: out what her racial views were based on the content

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Speaker 1: of her writing, and the most logical conclusion is that

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Speaker 1: she had a lot of the prejudices that we're sort

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Speaker 1: of ingrained in society, especially English society at the time. Um.

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Speaker 1: And it's like when you read Orinocco, it a lot

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Speaker 1: of it is very sympathetic to the people who are

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Speaker 1: enslaved in the book, but it's it's sort of a

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Speaker 1: most like proto abolitionist text, like it was definitely read

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Speaker 1: that way for a couple of centuries. But there's also

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Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in it that is, you know,

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Speaker 1: obviously laced with implicit biases and racism because it was

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Speaker 1: written in the six century, even though Orinoco itself as

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Speaker 1: a book didn't come out until much later. Afroman was

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Speaker 1: writing while in Surinam, including an early draft of a

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Speaker 1: play called The Young King or a Mistake. Like several

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Speaker 1: of Ben's other plays, it's a tragic comedy and it

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Speaker 1: tells the story of a royal brother and sister brought

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Speaker 1: up in opposite roles because of a prophecy. The boy

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Speaker 1: is quote kept from his infancy and a castle on

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Speaker 1: a lake, ignorant of his quality and of all the world,

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Speaker 1: besides never having seen any humane things save only his

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Speaker 1: old tutor, while the girl is quote bred up in

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Speaker 1: war and designed to reign in place of her brother.

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Speaker 1: It plays around with gender and ideas of masculinity and femininity,

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Speaker 1: which is a hallmark of Ben's later work as well.

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Speaker 1: Ben's trip to Surinam wasn't particularly long. She returned to

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Speaker 1: England in sixteen sixty four, and not long after she

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Speaker 1: was given an audience with King Charles the Second to

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Speaker 1: report on what she had witnessed there. It's not completely

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Speaker 1: clear whether the king saw this as part of her

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Speaker 1: spy career, but she definitely spied for him later, and

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Speaker 1: we're going to start talking about that, but first we're

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Speaker 1: going to pause and have a little bit of a

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Speaker 1: sponsor break. About the same time as she returned from

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Speaker 1: Surinam in sixteen sixty four, after Ben married a man

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Speaker 1: whose name was as you would conclude Ben or maybe

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Speaker 1: being described as quote a merchant of Dutch extraction. It

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Speaker 1: might have been the Great plague of London which struck

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Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty five that killed Ben's husband. He was

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Speaker 1: dead by sixteen six six. On top of the plague,

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Speaker 1: England was once again at war. The Second Anglo Dutch

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Speaker 1: War began on March fourth of sixteen sixty and this

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Speaker 1: was part of a series of four wars between England

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Speaker 1: and the Dutch Republic and their allies. The first three

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Speaker 1: were largely trade wars, but the fourth was in response

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Speaker 1: to Dutch involvement in the American Revolutionary War. Regardless of

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Speaker 1: whether Ben had officially been doing spy work during the

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Speaker 1: Interregnum or in Surinam, she definitely was during the Second

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Speaker 1: Anglo Dutch War because in the code name Astraea. Ultimately

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Speaker 1: reporting to the Secretary of State, Lord Henry Bennett, she

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Speaker 1: was assigned to travel to Antwerp, which is now in

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Speaker 1: Belgium but was then in Spanish Netherlands to meet with

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Speaker 1: William Scott. Scott's father, Thomas, had been the man who

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Speaker 1: signed Charles the first death warrant, for which he was

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Speaker 1: later executed, and Scott himself was essentially acting as a

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Speaker 1: double agent. He was gathering intelligence for England while also

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Speaker 1: informing on the English to the Dutch armed with bribe

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Speaker 1: money and the promise of a pardon. Ben's mission was

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Speaker 1: to figure out whether Scott had worthwhile intelligence, and if

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Speaker 1: he did, to get that intelligence back to England. Ben

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Speaker 1: was likely chosen for this mission because she and Scott

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Speaker 1: had met in Surinam. They had a bit of a

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Speaker 1: flirtation there. In theory, this flirtation was nothing serious enough

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Speaker 1: to jeopardize Ben's judgment, but it was enough of an

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Speaker 1: existing connection to Scott to sort of soften him up

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Speaker 1: a little. She was given passage to Spanish Flanders and

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Speaker 1: enough money to take care of her own needs during

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Speaker 1: a short stay there. Her brother, who was in the military,

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Speaker 1: was temporary temporarily released from service to act as her chaperone.

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Speaker 1: Apparently Lord Bennett wasn't wasn't aware that she was a widow,

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Speaker 1: which would have given her a little more autonomy than

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Speaker 1: an unmarried woman would have had. She received her money

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Speaker 1: and instructions in July of sixteen sixty six, and she

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Speaker 1: was an antwerp by August, but her time as a

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Speaker 1: spy was not very successful. She flirted with Scott until

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Speaker 1: he finally agreed to pass her information, but then he

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Speaker 1: got her to agree to leave Antwerp and meet him

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Speaker 1: in the Hague. And if she did that, not only

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Speaker 1: was she very likely to be captured, but she was

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Speaker 1: also sure to run out of her already dwindling supply

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Speaker 1: of money. And this started the pair of them on

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Speaker 1: a cycle of back and forth, with him getting her

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Speaker 1: to agree to leave Flanders, and then her pulling back

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Speaker 1: on that agreement and another hiccup. This back and forth

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Speaker 1: between Scott and Ben also got tangled up with one

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Speaker 1: William Corney, a merchant from Amsterdam who was also passing

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Speaker 1: intelligence back to Lord Bennett. Before long, the three of

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Speaker 1: them were just continually trying to undermine one another in

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Speaker 1: this convoluted backstabby triangle, word of which spread to London

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Speaker 1: and started to threaten Ben's reputation. The idea that Ben's

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Speaker 1: previous flirtation with Scott wouldn't be a threat to her

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00:14:56,360 --> 00:14:59,920
Speaker 1: also didn't really pan out, as Corny became a greater

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Speaker 1: threats to both of them. They started to rely on

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Speaker 1: and confide in each other in a way that didn't

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Speaker 1: really leave Ben a whole lot of power to try

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Speaker 1: to get the man to give her information. Eventually, Scott

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Speaker 1: fled Flanders out of fear that Corny was going to

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Speaker 1: kill him, and once he was gone, Corny focused all

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Speaker 1: his attention on Ben, tailing her and forging reports in

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Speaker 1: her name to discredit her. Scott wound up in prison,

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Speaker 1: and although he did keep writing to Ben, he couldn't

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Speaker 1: learn much while behind bars, and she had no way

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Speaker 1: to pay for a passage home. When Scott was released

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Speaker 1: from prison in sixteen sixty seven, he was also banished,

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Speaker 1: leaving Ben with no way of getting whatever intelligence he

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Speaker 1: still had. Throughout all of this, Ben was using ciphers

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Speaker 1: and codes to send information back to London, but very

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Speaker 1: little of this information was of actual value. She's often

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Speaker 1: reported as having passed on a warning of the Dutch

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Speaker 1: raid on Medway, which took place in June of sixteen

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Speaker 1: sixty seven. This raid was a devastating blow to the

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Speaker 1: British Navy, and while this is technically true, she did

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00:16:06,440 --> 00:16:11,160
Speaker 1: send that information, other agents also delivered the same information

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Speaker 1: and none of it was heated, not even when another

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Speaker 1: agent gave Lord Bennett a very specific warning about the

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Speaker 1: upcoming attack after Ben had already returned to London, and

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Speaker 1: getting back to London required Ben to beg for the

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Speaker 1: funds to do so She'd been so low on money

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Speaker 1: that she'd handed over all her possessions to her innkeeper

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Speaker 1: as collateral so she wouldn't lose her lodgings along with

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Speaker 1: everything else. Although she was able to get a couple

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Speaker 1: of loans to pay off the worst of her debts,

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Speaker 1: it was only after numerous letters and lots of borrowing

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Speaker 1: that she was able to get someone to pay for

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Speaker 1: her passage. And it's unclear who that was, but it

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Speaker 1: wasn't the administration that had sent her to Antwerp in

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Speaker 1: the first place. Even though her spy life was not

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Speaker 1: very effective, it still was pretty crummy that she was

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Speaker 1: sent on this mission with no way of getting back

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Speaker 1: home out of hostile territory. According to most accounts, after

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00:17:06,560 --> 00:17:10,000
Speaker 1: Afroban's returned to England in the spring of sixteen sixty seven,

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Speaker 1: she wound up in a debtor's prison. There's very little

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Speaker 1: detail on this. She had written multiple letters to the

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Speaker 1: people who had recruited her into the life of espionage

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00:17:19,280 --> 00:17:22,119
Speaker 1: and to other contacts that she had, all in an

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00:17:22,119 --> 00:17:24,840
Speaker 1: effort to pay off her debts, and it seems as

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00:17:24,920 --> 00:17:27,919
Speaker 1: though she either eventually did get someone to loan her

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Speaker 1: enough money to get out of prison or she made

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00:17:30,760 --> 00:17:34,399
Speaker 1: arrangement arrangements to pay her debt off gradually as she

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Speaker 1: was able to earn enough money to do so, And

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00:17:37,240 --> 00:17:39,600
Speaker 1: the way that she earned that money was by writing,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about that after we once

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00:17:41,680 --> 00:17:50,760
Speaker 1: again paused for a quick sponsor break. After she got

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Speaker 1: out of the debtor's prison, Afra Bean was able to

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00:17:53,480 --> 00:17:56,520
Speaker 1: make something of a fresh start for herself. By the

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00:17:56,520 --> 00:17:59,920
Speaker 1: summer of sixteen sixty seven. London had recently been through

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00:18:00,119 --> 00:18:04,040
Speaker 1: both the Great Plague and the Great Fire, and although

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00:18:04,080 --> 00:18:06,359
Speaker 1: the raid on Medway had taken place at the mouth

303
00:18:06,440 --> 00:18:08,920
Speaker 1: of the Thames River and not up in the city,

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00:18:08,960 --> 00:18:11,959
Speaker 1: it had destroyed much of the British naval fleet and

305
00:18:12,160 --> 00:18:15,520
Speaker 1: block hated the city, which left the already shaken people

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00:18:15,600 --> 00:18:21,280
Speaker 1: living there feeling particularly defenseless. So in a fairly dispirited

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00:18:21,359 --> 00:18:24,560
Speaker 1: and anxious city, Ben was able to quietly make a

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00:18:24,600 --> 00:18:28,280
Speaker 1: space for herself, renting lodgings and working as a copyist,

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00:18:28,720 --> 00:18:31,760
Speaker 1: probably copying the sorts of material people would want handled

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Speaker 1: with more discretion than a commercial printing press could allow.

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Speaker 1: While copying definitely would have helped her make ends meet,

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00:18:39,080 --> 00:18:42,320
Speaker 1: it was not really enough to live comfortably, and soon

313
00:18:42,760 --> 00:18:46,479
Speaker 1: Ben was also writing and publishing poems. She adopted her

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Speaker 1: code name Austraya for a pseudonym for a lot of

315
00:18:49,280 --> 00:18:51,520
Speaker 1: her written work as it was published at the time.

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00:18:52,600 --> 00:18:55,920
Speaker 1: Fortunately for Ben, King Charles the second loved the theater,

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Speaker 1: and he chartered to theater companies known as the King's

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Speaker 1: Company the Duke's Company. The King's Company had the rights

319
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Speaker 1: to a lot of existing plays, including works by Shakespeare

320
00:19:06,320 --> 00:19:09,840
Speaker 1: and Ben Johnson. The Duke's Company didn't, meaning there was

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00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:13,719
Speaker 1: a market for newly written plays. The plays themselves were

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00:19:13,760 --> 00:19:17,000
Speaker 1: often Body and Blue, with women allowed on the stage

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00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:21,760
Speaker 1: rather than having female roles played by men. It's unclear

324
00:19:21,800 --> 00:19:24,440
Speaker 1: exactly how Ben first got her foot in the door

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00:19:24,480 --> 00:19:27,399
Speaker 1: as a playwright through her spy work. She did no

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Speaker 1: Thomas Killigrew, who was head of the King's Men and

327
00:19:30,440 --> 00:19:33,240
Speaker 1: later the Master of the Revels, but it was the

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00:19:33,359 --> 00:19:36,639
Speaker 1: Duke's Company and not the King's where her work first debuted.

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Speaker 1: Of her first play to be staged there was The

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Speaker 1: First Marriage or the Jealous Bridegroom, a tragic comedy, which

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00:19:43,040 --> 00:19:48,760
Speaker 1: opened on septem Ben was much savvier about playwriting as

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00:19:48,800 --> 00:19:51,879
Speaker 1: an occupation than she had been about her espionage career.

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Speaker 1: She wanted to make sure she kept the rights to

334
00:19:54,520 --> 00:19:56,840
Speaker 1: her plays, and she wanted them to be published, which

335
00:19:56,840 --> 00:20:00,320
Speaker 1: would give her an additional source of income to her

336
00:20:00,359 --> 00:20:03,440
Speaker 1: plays were also published during her lifetime, although the first

337
00:20:03,480 --> 00:20:06,679
Speaker 1: printing of The Forced Marriage, which was probably rushed to

338
00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:10,119
Speaker 1: follow the place performance and take advantage of that publicity,

339
00:20:10,400 --> 00:20:15,280
Speaker 1: was full of errors, herosism, things printed and completely the

340
00:20:15,280 --> 00:20:19,399
Speaker 1: wrong order. It was kind of a mess. Her next

341
00:20:19,440 --> 00:20:22,359
Speaker 1: play to be staged opened just a few months later,

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00:20:22,480 --> 00:20:25,280
Speaker 1: and it was named The Amorous Prince, and like its

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00:20:25,359 --> 00:20:28,920
Speaker 1: name suggests, it's full of seductions and it plays around

344
00:20:28,920 --> 00:20:31,240
Speaker 1: a lot with gender and cross dressing in a way

345
00:20:31,359 --> 00:20:34,760
Speaker 1: that would become a frequent theme in Ben's works. Ben

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00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:38,359
Speaker 1: would go on to write nineteen plays, including the two parts.

347
00:20:38,520 --> 00:20:42,280
Speaker 1: The Rover was seventeen of them stage during her lifetime.

348
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Speaker 1: She wasn't the first woman to write for the British stage,

349
00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:48,160
Speaker 1: but the idea of a woman playwright was still rare

350
00:20:48,280 --> 00:20:52,000
Speaker 1: enough that her position was relatively unique, and she got

351
00:20:52,040 --> 00:20:54,960
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism for the more risky content of

352
00:20:55,000 --> 00:20:58,720
Speaker 1: her work, which was full of innuendo and double entendres.

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Speaker 1: This was particular literally true since in both her plays

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00:21:02,119 --> 00:21:05,199
Speaker 1: and her novels, she seemed to blur the line between

355
00:21:05,200 --> 00:21:09,600
Speaker 1: her narrator and herself. Even so, she pointed to similarities

356
00:21:09,640 --> 00:21:13,080
Speaker 1: in the work of her contemporaries and predecessors as evidence

357
00:21:13,119 --> 00:21:15,240
Speaker 1: that it would not have been frowned upon if she

358
00:21:15,320 --> 00:21:19,359
Speaker 1: were a man. As the theater gradually fell a little

359
00:21:19,359 --> 00:21:21,920
Speaker 1: bit more out of favor in the sixteen eighties, Ben

360
00:21:22,000 --> 00:21:25,439
Speaker 1: shifted her focus to writing novels, and she penned sixteen

361
00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:28,399
Speaker 1: works of fiction, all of which have narrators who were

362
00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:32,800
Speaker 1: either obviously female or have no specified gender. She also

363
00:21:32,840 --> 00:21:36,159
Speaker 1: continued to write poetry throughout her career, and although some

364
00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:39,240
Speaker 1: of her poems were incorporated into her plays and fiction,

365
00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:42,560
Speaker 1: many of them were meant for a smaller audience. They

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00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:45,520
Speaker 1: often contained inside references to what was going on in

367
00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:49,800
Speaker 1: London society and politics, sometimes with names changed, but otherwise

368
00:21:49,840 --> 00:21:53,560
Speaker 1: easily recognizable to people in the nome. Some of her

369
00:21:53,560 --> 00:21:57,359
Speaker 1: poems were essentially social and political commentary, rendered in verse

370
00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:00,560
Speaker 1: and only really understandable if you knew the context of

371
00:22:00,600 --> 00:22:05,080
Speaker 1: what was going on around her. Much of Ben's work,

372
00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:09,359
Speaker 1: especially in poetry, was romantic and sensual, and even erotic,

373
00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:11,920
Speaker 1: with both women and men as the subjects of her

374
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:14,919
Speaker 1: love poems, some of which also played with themes of

375
00:22:14,960 --> 00:22:19,680
Speaker 1: androgyny and gender fluidity. The relationships depicted in her dramas

376
00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:22,199
Speaker 1: are all over the map in terms of gender and

377
00:22:22,240 --> 00:22:25,760
Speaker 1: sexual orientation. In terms of her personal life, her most

378
00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:29,480
Speaker 1: public relationship during her time as a writer was with

379
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:32,720
Speaker 1: John Hoyle, whose own life with threat was threaded through

380
00:22:32,760 --> 00:22:36,199
Speaker 1: with lots and lots of scandal, including his relationships with

381
00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:40,520
Speaker 1: other men. As Ben's writing career became more lucrative, she

382
00:22:40,640 --> 00:22:45,040
Speaker 1: became increasingly more active in London society. She developed a

383
00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:49,199
Speaker 1: reputation for being witty and charismatic, and of liking to drink.

384
00:22:49,720 --> 00:22:53,160
Speaker 1: She earned the nickname the Incomparable Australia, and in her

385
00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:57,640
Speaker 1: poetry people called her the successor to Sappho. After more

386
00:22:57,680 --> 00:23:01,359
Speaker 1: than twenty years making a living as a writer, Afroban

387
00:23:01,480 --> 00:23:05,480
Speaker 1: died on April sixteenth nine, at roughly fifty years old.

388
00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:08,840
Speaker 1: A few days later, a piece called an Elegy upon

389
00:23:08,880 --> 00:23:12,399
Speaker 1: the death of Mrs A. Ben, The Incomparable Australia, written

390
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:16,520
Speaker 1: by quote a young lady of quality, was published. It read,

391
00:23:16,560 --> 00:23:19,840
Speaker 1: in part quote, let all our hopes to spare and

392
00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:24,800
Speaker 1: die our sex forever shall neglected lie. Aspiring man has

393
00:23:24,840 --> 00:23:30,080
Speaker 1: now regained the way to them. We've lost the dismal day.

394
00:23:30,600 --> 00:23:34,120
Speaker 1: The first biography of her came out in sixteen ninety six,

395
00:23:34,720 --> 00:23:37,879
Speaker 1: called Memoirs of the Life of Mrs Ben by a

396
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:41,080
Speaker 1: gentlewoman of her acquaintance, and that was part of her

397
00:23:41,119 --> 00:23:45,640
Speaker 1: collected histories and novels. Although its author was likely Charles Gilden,

398
00:23:46,560 --> 00:23:49,640
Speaker 1: the first uh. This first biography is definitely a mix

399
00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:53,840
Speaker 1: of embellishment, absolute total fiction, and a little bit of fact,

400
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:55,720
Speaker 1: and it was written in part to try to sell

401
00:23:55,760 --> 00:23:58,199
Speaker 1: the collection of her work with which it was published.

402
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:01,840
Speaker 1: Even so, that and passages of her fiction that seem

403
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:05,480
Speaker 1: autobiographical have been picked up and repeated as fact over

404
00:24:05,520 --> 00:24:09,639
Speaker 1: and over throughout the centuries. Although today Afra Ben is

405
00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:13,440
Speaker 1: known as one of the seventeenth centuries most influential playwrights

406
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:16,560
Speaker 1: and a groundbreaking writer in the genre of the novel,

407
00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:20,560
Speaker 1: she fell sharply out of favor after her death as

408
00:24:20,600 --> 00:24:24,199
Speaker 1: the hedonism and licentiousness and that general drunken party flare

409
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:28,600
Speaker 1: of the Restoration became socially unacceptable. So did Afraban and

410
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:32,119
Speaker 1: her work. Critics decried her as a woman of loose

411
00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:36,959
Speaker 1: moral character, and they condemned her work outright. That started

412
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:39,639
Speaker 1: to change, though, in the early twentieth century, when the

413
00:24:39,680 --> 00:24:43,320
Speaker 1: English writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group picked

414
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:46,360
Speaker 1: up her life and work as part of feminist history.

415
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:50,000
Speaker 1: Poet and novelist Vita Sackville West wrote Afra Ben The

416
00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:53,919
Speaker 1: Incomparable Austraia, which was a biographical fiction that seems to

417
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:58,199
Speaker 1: treat Ben's life as a missed opportunity. Author Virginia Woolfe

418
00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:01,040
Speaker 1: wrote of her quote, all women and together ought to

419
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:04,439
Speaker 1: let flowers fall upon the tomb of afro Ben, for

420
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 1: it was she who earned them the right to speak

421
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:11,159
Speaker 1: their minds. It's kind of funny they both seemed to

422
00:25:11,200 --> 00:25:13,479
Speaker 1: praise her so highly for having made a living as

423
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:17,720
Speaker 1: a writer. Uh and have an affinity for some of

424
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:21,399
Speaker 1: the like same sex content of her poems and some

425
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:25,160
Speaker 1: of which are read as uh like explicitly lesbian love poems.

426
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:28,919
Speaker 1: But they have this theme, this sort of undertone of

427
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: like I wish she hadn't been writing such garbage in

428
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:37,639
Speaker 1: terms of like all this very coarse humor and body sexuality. Um,

429
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:39,960
Speaker 1: but you know, today I think folks are a lot

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Speaker 1: a lot more accepting of that part of it than

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Speaker 1: they maybe were in the nineteen hundreds. Heany so much

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Speaker 1: for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is

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Speaker 1: Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart

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Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of

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