WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Aphra Behn 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:05.960 Happy Saturday. Before we get into Today's Saturday Classic, just 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:09.320 a quick reminder we have a live streaming event coming 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:12.840 up on March tenth. You can find all the information 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:17.799 about that and buy tickets at looped live dot com. 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:20.000 We also have the ticket link pinned up at the 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:22.880 top of our Facebook and our Twitter. We are super 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:26.280 excited and hope folks will join us for that. Okay, 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:29.320 coming up, we have an episode on Mary Sydney, Herbert, 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:32.159 Countess of Penbroke, who is the first woman known to 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:37.159 have published an English language play that happened in and 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:40.000 as we were recording this forthcoming episode, I had a 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:45.120 moment where I thought, when did Afriban do this same thing? 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:52.440 The answer is almost eighty entire years later, Mary Sydney, 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:56.640 your title is safe. Um. Aside from that, Afraban's life 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:59.000 of spy work and writing was a pretty exciting one. 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:02.160 So we're bringing that episode out as Today's Saturday Classic. 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:10.319 It originally came out on March man Joy, Welcome to 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.080 Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:23.760 Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. 0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:28.560 Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today's podcast is a request 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:33.640 from many listeners once again, and they include Georgia, Bree, Laura, Anna, Lauren, 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:37.000 and Tabitha, who asked for it after I had actually 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:41.639 already started working on it, and I'm sure many other people. 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:43.960 It moved up to the top of the list after 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:49.000 sort of tangentially coming up in our Ira Frederick Aldridge episode. 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:54.400 Aldridge played a character called Orinoco in The Revolt of Surinam, 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:58.040 and that was an adaptation of the play Orinoco by 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.480 Thomas Southern. And that was an adaptation of Orinoco, a 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:07.800 short work of fiction by today's subject Afraban. There is 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.000 really not a lot that's conclusively known about the life 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.640 of Afraban, who, in addition to being a spy, was 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:17.360 also a dramatist and a poet, a novelist, a translator, 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:21.600 and probably the first woman in English literature known to 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:24.920 have made a living as a writer. Even though she 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.040 was prolific in her work, her gender meant that the 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:30.760 sorts of institutions that were mostly keeping up with the 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:33.799 details of writers and artists lives at the time did 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:37.480 not really include her. Since she wasn't an aristocrat, there 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:41.160 was no official family history, and shouldn't really keep a 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:44.320 diary or write a memoir or or corresponding a lot 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:46.800 of letters, at least not many of that actually survived. 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:51.040 And yet, even though there is so little concrete information, 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:54.800 she's the subject of multiple biographies, and some of them 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.960 are quite lengthy. Uh. With so little actual documentation to 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:00.680 go on, a lot of these sort of pick up 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:03.600 tiny pieces of the historical record and then try to 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.040 glean details of her life from her written work. And 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:09.600 this means that a lot of biographies about her are 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:13.760 very heavily subject to interpretation. They tend to be influenced 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:17.120 a lot by the biographers focus and their interpretation of 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:19.680 her body of work. Uh. And in some cases, if 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:22.120 you've read the words, probably and may have, you've read 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:27.440 like a quarter of the thing at least. So we're 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:30.200 gonna do our best on this one. I feel like 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:35.119 you're describing some sort of Afroban biographical mad libs kind 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:40.560 of is. I mean, every biography is influenced by the biographer, 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:43.160 even if you're trying, you know, even if the biographer 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:45.360 is trying really hard to have a very objective stance. 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:49.880 This is particularly true with Afriban because there's so much 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:53.440 that's like trying to piece together a teeny little puzzle 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:55.880 with itty bitty pieces to make a whole life out 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:59.480 of yeah, with big gaps in the puzzle, So it 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:02.280 won't s eries you. Having listened to that introduction, that 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:06.040 there is very very little known about Afra Ban's early life, 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:08.720 and most of what we do know has been reconstructed, 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:13.600 as Tracy just mentioned, by following the threads available, a 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:16.400 lot of which are other people's claims about her, and 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:20.800 then the logical conclusions are drawn from there. So it 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.919 is generally agreed that she was born sometime around sixteen forty, 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:27.640 probably to a family who lived in why A village 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:32.960 in Kent, England. Colonel Thomas Culpepper claimed that Afraban's mother 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:35.800 was his wet nurse and her father was reported to 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.720 be a barber, so this makes the most likely candidates 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:43.039 for her parents, Bartholomew and Elizabeth Johnson. They had a daughter, 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:46.240 e Free spelled e A F F R E y, 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:49.120 and that was one of the many many variations in 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:52.599 spelling for the name Afra at the time. This young 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:56.200 e Free was baptized on December fourteenth of sixteen forty, 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:59.320 although some sources report that as the day of her birth. 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.320 With her mother as his wet nurse, Afra would have 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:07.360 been considered Thomas culpeppers foster sister, and the cool Peppers 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.800 were a prominent family in the area. This connection to 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:13.400 the cool Peppers would have given Afra access to far 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:17.720 more educational opportunities and a wider social circle than she 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:20.000 would have had as just the daughter of a wet 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:23.040 nurse in a barber Although we don't have a lot 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:26.800 of details about the specifics of her childhood and her adolescence, 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:30.200 we do know that Afra grew up during a period 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:34.880 of huge chaos and change. The English Civil Wars began 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:36.680 when she was still a toddler, and this is a 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:39.240 series of wars that obviously could be at least a 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:43.600 whole episode all by themselves. So very briefly, the English 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.960 Civil Wars also involved Scotland and Ireland, and they grew 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.600 out of a conflict between King Charles the First and 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:54.080 parliament about who ultimately had control over the military. Following 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:58.760 an uprising in Ireland. During the English Civil Wars, the 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:02.520 Parliamentarians faced off against the Royalists in a series of 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:06.680 conflicts that ultimately led to a victory for the parliamentarians, 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.560 the execution of Charles the First in sixteen forty nine, 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:13.120 the exile of his son Charles the Second, and the 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:16.640 political rise of Oliver Cromwell, first Lord Protector of the 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:20.960 Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. The total death toll 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:26.560 in England was almost two hundred thousand. Obviously, that is 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:30.520 that it was like the tiniest possible description of the 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:34.880 English Civil Wars. During the interregnum years that followed from 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.880 sixteen forty nine to sixteen sixty, the nation was no 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:41.120 longer actively at war with itself, but it still had 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:44.680 its fair share of strife. Many of those in Parliament 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:48.600 were Puritans, and they started enforcing Puritans standards and views 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:51.839 for the rest of the nation. Cromwell himself had a 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:55.200 reputation as a radical and a fanatic, and his actions 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.359 during the Civil Wars had included, among other things, a 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:04.440 massacre in Ireland. Throughout the interregnum, royalists continued to work 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:08.440 toward the goal of restoring the monarchy. There's some speculation 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:11.640 that toward the end of the interregnum, Ben was already 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:15.480 beginning her career as a spy by secretly carrying messages 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:19.280 for Royalist organizations. She would have been connected to these 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:25.120 organizations once again through Thomas Culpepper. Oliver Cromwell died in 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:28.120 sixteen fifty eight, and by sixteen sixty one Charles the 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:30.240 Second had been returned to the throne. So by the 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:33.800 time Aframan hit her twenties, England had already been through 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:38.000 a lot, and with Charles the Second's return, English life 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.640 dramatically changed once again and a lot of circles. The 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:46.560 restoration was met with a huge, hedonistic, fairly drunken party, 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.080 and it was in this environment that Afra Bend really 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:54.880 flourished a whole lot more than during the more puritanical 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:58.880 interregnum years. In sixteen sixty three, when she was in 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:02.640 her early twenties, Ben traveled to Suriname, and this would 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:06.000 later become the setting for her work of fiction Orinocco. 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.600 Orinocco is often discussed as part of Ben's earlier work 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:12.360 because her visit there would have happened, as we just said, 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:15.120 when she was in her early twenties, but in reality 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:19.960 this piece wasn't published until shortly before her death. Orinocco 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.480 tells the story of a prince from the Gold Coast 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.200 and what is now Ghana, who's invited aboard a ship 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:28.600 and then enslaved before being sold in Surinam, and that's 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:31.960 where he meets the book's narrator. This narrator is an 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.720 english woman who had come to Suriname with her father, 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:38.679 but he died during the sea voyage. Some biographies actually 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:41.280 take this plot point from Orinoco and apply it to 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:45.319 Ben's real life father, although he had likely died by 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.000 the early mid sixteen sixties. It's completely unclear whether this 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:53.600 aspect of Orinoco is supposed to be autobiographical. There's also 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.440 debate about whether the book's narrator is supposed to be 0:08:56.480 --> 0:09:00.200 a stand in for Ben herself, and that part similarly faggy. 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:03.400 But since Orinocco does contain a lot of detail about 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:06.920 Surinam and people who really lived there in the sixteen sixties, 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:09.440 it's easy to think of it as evidence that the 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:12.920 trip to Surinam really did happen, regardless of whether the 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:17.520 story it tells is supposed to be autobiographical. Also, although 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.840 Ben's own views on slavery are pretty hard to tease 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:25.040 out from her writing, Orinocco itself was considered an abolitionist 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:29.440 work of fiction in both the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. Yeah, 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.400 there are a lot of attempts to try to figure 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:37.000 out what her racial views were based on the content 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:39.880 of her writing, and the most logical conclusion is that 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:43.080 she had a lot of the prejudices that we're sort 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:49.560 of ingrained in society, especially English society at the time. Um. 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.120 And it's like when you read Orinocco, it a lot 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.679 of it is very sympathetic to the people who are 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:57.920 enslaved in the book, but it's it's sort of a 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:04.040 most like proto abolitionist text, like it was definitely read 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:06.440 that way for a couple of centuries. But there's also 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:08.600 a lot of stuff in it that is, you know, 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:14.360 obviously laced with implicit biases and racism because it was 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:22.400 written in the six century, even though Orinoco itself as 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.640 a book didn't come out until much later. Afroman was 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:29.000 writing while in Surinam, including an early draft of a 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:32.960 play called The Young King or a Mistake. Like several 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.720 of Ben's other plays, it's a tragic comedy and it 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.560 tells the story of a royal brother and sister brought 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:42.079 up in opposite roles because of a prophecy. The boy 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:44.800 is quote kept from his infancy and a castle on 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:47.760 a lake, ignorant of his quality and of all the world, 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:51.400 besides never having seen any humane things save only his 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:55.400 old tutor, while the girl is quote bred up in 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:58.520 war and designed to reign in place of her brother. 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.960 It plays around with gender and ideas of masculinity and femininity, 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:06.720 which is a hallmark of Ben's later work as well. 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:12.080 Ben's trip to Surinam wasn't particularly long. She returned to 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:15.400 England in sixteen sixty four, and not long after she 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:18.000 was given an audience with King Charles the Second to 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:21.480 report on what she had witnessed there. It's not completely 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:23.920 clear whether the king saw this as part of her 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:27.120 spy career, but she definitely spied for him later, and 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:29.360 we're going to start talking about that, but first we're 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:30.720 going to pause and have a little bit of a 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:41.400 sponsor break. About the same time as she returned from 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.920 Surinam in sixteen sixty four, after Ben married a man 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:48.520 whose name was as you would conclude Ben or maybe 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:53.080 being described as quote a merchant of Dutch extraction. It 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:55.880 might have been the Great plague of London which struck 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:58.880 in sixteen sixty five that killed Ben's husband. He was 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:02.720 dead by sixteen six six. On top of the plague, 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:06.520 England was once again at war. The Second Anglo Dutch 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:10.120 War began on March fourth of sixteen sixty and this 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:12.720 was part of a series of four wars between England 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:16.360 and the Dutch Republic and their allies. The first three 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:19.120 were largely trade wars, but the fourth was in response 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:24.480 to Dutch involvement in the American Revolutionary War. Regardless of 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:27.680 whether Ben had officially been doing spy work during the 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:31.439 Interregnum or in Surinam, she definitely was during the Second 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:35.640 Anglo Dutch War because in the code name Astraea. Ultimately 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:38.680 reporting to the Secretary of State, Lord Henry Bennett, she 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:41.200 was assigned to travel to Antwerp, which is now in 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.400 Belgium but was then in Spanish Netherlands to meet with 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:49.120 William Scott. Scott's father, Thomas, had been the man who 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:52.200 signed Charles the first death warrant, for which he was 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:56.200 later executed, and Scott himself was essentially acting as a 0:12:56.240 --> 0:13:00.319 double agent. He was gathering intelligence for England while also 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:04.160 informing on the English to the Dutch armed with bribe 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:07.200 money and the promise of a pardon. Ben's mission was 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.800 to figure out whether Scott had worthwhile intelligence, and if 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:15.600 he did, to get that intelligence back to England. Ben 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:18.559 was likely chosen for this mission because she and Scott 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:20.720 had met in Surinam. They had a bit of a 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:25.480 flirtation there. In theory, this flirtation was nothing serious enough 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:28.640 to jeopardize Ben's judgment, but it was enough of an 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:31.840 existing connection to Scott to sort of soften him up 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.280 a little. She was given passage to Spanish Flanders and 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:37.560 enough money to take care of her own needs during 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.800 a short stay there. Her brother, who was in the military, 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:45.120 was temporary temporarily released from service to act as her chaperone. 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:48.600 Apparently Lord Bennett wasn't wasn't aware that she was a widow, 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:50.880 which would have given her a little more autonomy than 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.680 an unmarried woman would have had. She received her money 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:58.440 and instructions in July of sixteen sixty six, and she 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.280 was an antwerp by August, but her time as a 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:05.079 spy was not very successful. She flirted with Scott until 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:08.120 he finally agreed to pass her information, but then he 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:10.760 got her to agree to leave Antwerp and meet him 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.400 in the Hague. And if she did that, not only 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.200 was she very likely to be captured, but she was 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:19.080 also sure to run out of her already dwindling supply 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.080 of money. And this started the pair of them on 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:25.040 a cycle of back and forth, with him getting her 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:28.320 to agree to leave Flanders, and then her pulling back 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:32.160 on that agreement and another hiccup. This back and forth 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.120 between Scott and Ben also got tangled up with one 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:39.000 William Corney, a merchant from Amsterdam who was also passing 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.200 intelligence back to Lord Bennett. Before long, the three of 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:45.040 them were just continually trying to undermine one another in 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:49.560 this convoluted backstabby triangle, word of which spread to London 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:53.360 and started to threaten Ben's reputation. The idea that Ben's 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.240 previous flirtation with Scott wouldn't be a threat to her 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.920 also didn't really pan out, as Corny became a greater 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:02.960 threats to both of them. They started to rely on 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:05.960 and confide in each other in a way that didn't 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:08.280 really leave Ben a whole lot of power to try 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:12.440 to get the man to give her information. Eventually, Scott 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.120 fled Flanders out of fear that Corny was going to 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:18.400 kill him, and once he was gone, Corny focused all 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:22.280 his attention on Ben, tailing her and forging reports in 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.880 her name to discredit her. Scott wound up in prison, 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:28.600 and although he did keep writing to Ben, he couldn't 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:31.480 learn much while behind bars, and she had no way 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:34.680 to pay for a passage home. When Scott was released 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:38.040 from prison in sixteen sixty seven, he was also banished, 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:41.440 leaving Ben with no way of getting whatever intelligence he 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:46.040 still had. Throughout all of this, Ben was using ciphers 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:49.200 and codes to send information back to London, but very 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:53.320 little of this information was of actual value. She's often 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:56.240 reported as having passed on a warning of the Dutch 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:59.000 raid on Medway, which took place in June of sixteen 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:02.480 sixty seven. This raid was a devastating blow to the 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:06.360 British Navy, and while this is technically true, she did 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:11.160 send that information, other agents also delivered the same information 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:14.120 and none of it was heated, not even when another 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:17.520 agent gave Lord Bennett a very specific warning about the 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:21.960 upcoming attack after Ben had already returned to London, and 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.000 getting back to London required Ben to beg for the 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:28.120 funds to do so She'd been so low on money 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:31.000 that she'd handed over all her possessions to her innkeeper 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:34.280 as collateral so she wouldn't lose her lodgings along with 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:37.280 everything else. Although she was able to get a couple 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:39.320 of loans to pay off the worst of her debts, 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.600 it was only after numerous letters and lots of borrowing 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:45.040 that she was able to get someone to pay for 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:49.400 her passage. And it's unclear who that was, but it 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:51.960 wasn't the administration that had sent her to Antwerp in 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:55.080 the first place. Even though her spy life was not 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:58.360 very effective, it still was pretty crummy that she was 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.920 sent on this mission with no way of getting back 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:06.480 home out of hostile territory. According to most accounts, after 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:10.000 Afroban's returned to England in the spring of sixteen sixty seven, 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:13.320 she wound up in a debtor's prison. There's very little 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:16.199 detail on this. She had written multiple letters to the 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:19.160 people who had recruited her into the life of espionage 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:22.119 and to other contacts that she had, all in an 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:24.840 effort to pay off her debts, and it seems as 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:27.919 though she either eventually did get someone to loan her 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:30.680 enough money to get out of prison or she made 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.399 arrangement arrangements to pay her debt off gradually as she 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:37.199 was able to earn enough money to do so, And 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:39.600 the way that she earned that money was by writing, 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:41.640 and we're going to talk about that after we once 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:50.760 again paused for a quick sponsor break. After she got 0:17:50.760 --> 0:17:53.439 out of the debtor's prison, Afra Bean was able to 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:56.520 make something of a fresh start for herself. By the 0:17:56.520 --> 0:17:59.920 summer of sixteen sixty seven. London had recently been through 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:04.040 both the Great Plague and the Great Fire, and although 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:06.359 the raid on Medway had taken place at the mouth 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:08.920 of the Thames River and not up in the city, 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:11.959 it had destroyed much of the British naval fleet and 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:15.520 block hated the city, which left the already shaken people 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:21.280 living there feeling particularly defenseless. So in a fairly dispirited 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.560 and anxious city, Ben was able to quietly make a 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:28.280 space for herself, renting lodgings and working as a copyist, 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:31.760 probably copying the sorts of material people would want handled 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:34.800 with more discretion than a commercial printing press could allow. 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:38.960 While copying definitely would have helped her make ends meet, 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:42.320 it was not really enough to live comfortably, and soon 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:46.479 Ben was also writing and publishing poems. She adopted her 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:49.280 code name Austraya for a pseudonym for a lot of 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:51.520 her written work as it was published at the time. 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:55.920 Fortunately for Ben, King Charles the second loved the theater, 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:59.399 and he chartered to theater companies known as the King's 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:03.200 Company the Duke's Company. The King's Company had the rights 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.240 to a lot of existing plays, including works by Shakespeare 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:09.840 and Ben Johnson. The Duke's Company didn't, meaning there was 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:13.719 a market for newly written plays. The plays themselves were 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:17.000 often Body and Blue, with women allowed on the stage 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:21.760 rather than having female roles played by men. It's unclear 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:24.440 exactly how Ben first got her foot in the door 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.399 as a playwright through her spy work. She did no 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:30.359 Thomas Killigrew, who was head of the King's Men and 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:33.240 later the Master of the Revels, but it was the 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:36.639 Duke's Company and not the King's where her work first debuted. 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:39.399 Of her first play to be staged there was The 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:43.040 First Marriage or the Jealous Bridegroom, a tragic comedy, which 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:48.760 opened on septem Ben was much savvier about playwriting as 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:51.879 an occupation than she had been about her espionage career. 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:54.439 She wanted to make sure she kept the rights to 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:56.840 her plays, and she wanted them to be published, which 0:19:56.840 --> 0:20:00.320 would give her an additional source of income to her 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:03.440 plays were also published during her lifetime, although the first 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:06.679 printing of The Forced Marriage, which was probably rushed to 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:10.119 follow the place performance and take advantage of that publicity, 0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:15.280 was full of errors, herosism, things printed and completely the 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:19.399 wrong order. It was kind of a mess. Her next 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.359 play to be staged opened just a few months later, 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:25.280 and it was named The Amorous Prince, and like its 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:28.920 name suggests, it's full of seductions and it plays around 0:20:28.920 --> 0:20:31.240 a lot with gender and cross dressing in a way 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:34.760 that would become a frequent theme in Ben's works. Ben 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:38.359 would go on to write nineteen plays, including the two parts. 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.280 The Rover was seventeen of them stage during her lifetime. 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:45.520 She wasn't the first woman to write for the British stage, 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:48.160 but the idea of a woman playwright was still rare 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:52.000 enough that her position was relatively unique, and she got 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:54.960 a lot of criticism for the more risky content of 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:58.720 her work, which was full of innuendo and double entendres. 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:02.080 This was particular literally true since in both her plays 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.199 and her novels, she seemed to blur the line between 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:09.600 her narrator and herself. Even so, she pointed to similarities 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:13.080 in the work of her contemporaries and predecessors as evidence 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:15.240 that it would not have been frowned upon if she 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:19.359 were a man. As the theater gradually fell a little 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:21.920 bit more out of favor in the sixteen eighties, Ben 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:25.439 shifted her focus to writing novels, and she penned sixteen 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:28.399 works of fiction, all of which have narrators who were 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:32.800 either obviously female or have no specified gender. She also 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:36.159 continued to write poetry throughout her career, and although some 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:39.240 of her poems were incorporated into her plays and fiction, 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.560 many of them were meant for a smaller audience. They 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:45.520 often contained inside references to what was going on in 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:49.800 London society and politics, sometimes with names changed, but otherwise 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:53.560 easily recognizable to people in the nome. Some of her 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:57.359 poems were essentially social and political commentary, rendered in verse 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:00.560 and only really understandable if you knew the context of 0:22:00.600 --> 0:22:05.080 what was going on around her. Much of Ben's work, 0:22:05.200 --> 0:22:09.359 especially in poetry, was romantic and sensual, and even erotic, 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:11.920 with both women and men as the subjects of her 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:14.919 love poems, some of which also played with themes of 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:19.680 androgyny and gender fluidity. The relationships depicted in her dramas 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:22.199 are all over the map in terms of gender and 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:25.760 sexual orientation. In terms of her personal life, her most 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:29.480 public relationship during her time as a writer was with 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:32.720 John Hoyle, whose own life with threat was threaded through 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:36.199 with lots and lots of scandal, including his relationships with 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:40.520 other men. As Ben's writing career became more lucrative, she 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:45.040 became increasingly more active in London society. She developed a 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:49.199 reputation for being witty and charismatic, and of liking to drink. 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:53.160 She earned the nickname the Incomparable Australia, and in her 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:57.640 poetry people called her the successor to Sappho. After more 0:22:57.680 --> 0:23:01.359 than twenty years making a living as a writer, Afroban 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.480 died on April sixteenth nine, at roughly fifty years old. 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:08.840 A few days later, a piece called an Elegy upon 0:23:08.880 --> 0:23:12.399 the death of Mrs A. Ben, The Incomparable Australia, written 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:16.520 by quote a young lady of quality, was published. It read, 0:23:16.560 --> 0:23:19.840 in part quote, let all our hopes to spare and 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:24.800 die our sex forever shall neglected lie. Aspiring man has 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:30.080 now regained the way to them. We've lost the dismal day. 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:34.120 The first biography of her came out in sixteen ninety six, 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:37.879 called Memoirs of the Life of Mrs Ben by a 0:23:37.920 --> 0:23:41.080 gentlewoman of her acquaintance, and that was part of her 0:23:41.119 --> 0:23:45.640 collected histories and novels. Although its author was likely Charles Gilden, 0:23:46.560 --> 0:23:49.640 the first uh. This first biography is definitely a mix 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:53.840 of embellishment, absolute total fiction, and a little bit of fact, 0:23:53.880 --> 0:23:55.720 and it was written in part to try to sell 0:23:55.760 --> 0:23:58.199