Belinda takes on the role of ________; she tends to mediate conflict through humor.

ADDISON

Miller, Stephen. "The Strange Career of Joseph Addison," SR, 122.4 (2014), 650–660.

Intended for general readers, this essay offers a range of positive comments from eighteenth-century admirers to show Addison's high reputation as a moralist, stylist, and thinker. Why, then, has Addison more recently received mostly faint or grudging praises? What changed his reputation so radically?

Mr. Miller points an accusing finger at influential twentieth-century critics, particularly T. S. Eliot, who saw Addison as facile and smug, complacent and comfortably middle-class. He goes on to argue recuperatively that Addison deserves to be read and appreciated in the context of his highly politicized and contentious times. He was ahead of his contemporaries in many of his interests, particularly in his understanding of the marketplace economy, and his various writings, especially his Spectator essays, reflected his important role as a polite, reasonable, and calming presence amidst an unsettling and dangerous cacophony of voices. Credit where credit is due, then.

BEHN

Adcock, Rachel. "'Jack Presbyter in His Proper Habit': Subverting Whig Rhetoric in Aphra Behn's Roundheads (1682)," WoWr, 22 (2015), 34–55.

In late 1681 or early 1682, during the political chaos of the Exclusion crisis and the Titus Oates debacle, The Roundheads was part of "a propaganda battle between Whig and Tory sympathizers," with Behn adapting John Tatham's The Rump (1660) to make her points. She uses the ghost of Hewson, for example, to introduce the play, mocking the "Presbittery" that he had so strongly supported in the revolt that led to the execution of the king and the founding of the Commonwealth. Behn focuses on the last days of the Commonwealth, as did Tatham, using satire and farce to reveal its leaders as clinging to the wealth extracted from the Tories, along with the lasciviousness with which they sought Tory women—or any women. What may appear to be a contemporizing of an old play is not so simple, as Ms. Adcock illustrates.

It is rare to encounter a study of any of Behn's plays that covers as much ground so quickly, an intense and concise study of text, context, and subtext. Ms. Adcock [End Page 1] clarifies the chaotic political scene that provoked the writing of the play, providing illustrations that serve her argument well, such as Stephen College's infamous "Solemn Mock Procession of the Pope, Cardinalls, Jesuits … November ye 17th, 1679." Ms. Adcock contextualizes both Hewson's prologue and Behn's dedication to illuminate Behn's appeal to the dedicatee, Henry Fitzroy, the Duke of Grafton (one of the King's sons by Barbara Villiers Palmer, Lady Castlemaine) for his protection against the "Legions" that have been "drawn down … upon its head, for its Loyalty."

Turning to the play itself, Ms. Adcock focuses especially on Ananias Gogle, the hypocritical Puritan preacher, who grasps gold and female flesh with equal rapacity. However, establishing that Behn believed the "Whig non-conformists" presented a greater threat to the social fabric than did the Jesuits, Ms. Adcock reads the end of the play as less than a celebration of Tory victory. With chilling ambiguity, Lady Lambert bids farewell to her "dear Mansion" and all "hopes of Royalty," but she nonetheless accepts Loveless and his newly restored fortunes, whereas Lady Desbro' accepts only the "Protection" of Freeman. The suggestion that Tory victors are little better than Whig losers, that Tory greed and sexual aggressiveness match that of the Whigs, ends a play that has in its fifth act a parliament of women who, alas, had clearly hoped for a different world. The clarity of Ms. Adcock's thesis, the cogency of her argument, and the precision of her supporting evidence combine into not just a first-rate study of Behn's Roundheads but also model scholarship and presentation.

________

Ballaster, Ros...

BEHN

Beebe, Ann. "'I Sent Over These Adventures': Women in The Female American and The Widow Ranter," WS, 45.7 (2016), 624–637.

Ms. Beebe's discussion of the similarities between Aphra Behn's The Widow Ranter (pub. 1690) and the anonymous The Female American; or, The Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield (1767) largely serves to establish the growing importance of Behn's play and the continuing interest in finding a proper, literary home for the intriguing Female American. What it does not do is deliver on its promise to demonstrate a "compelling correspondence between Behn's female characters and Unca Eliza Winkfield." More rightly, it demonstrates how acts of thoughtful, detailed comparison between texts can generate correspondence even without evidence of direct lines of influence.

Ms. Beebe concedes this latter point right away: "While the author of The Female American may not have read The Widow Ranter specifically, he or she is likely familiar with Restoration drama and Aphra Behn." Yet having acknowledged the greater likelihood of a familiarity with Restoration drama and with Aphra Behn by reputation (largely scandalous by 1767), she still organizes her argument around The Widow Ranter "serv[ing] as an inspiration for The Female American." This claim of direct inspiration rests on thin evidence throughout. A key point of comparison, for instance, is the novel's tragicomic plot and its generic hybridity, two features of Restoration drama in general. Discovering a quest for "voice" and "autonomy" for the female characters is likely enough for any text viewed through a feminist perspective. At the end of Ms. Beebe's argument, crossdressing emerges as a final example of what unites the characterization of these two works' eponymous heroines, The Widow Ranter and Unca Eliza—but crossdressing has long served as one of the most generic of subversive techniques for questioning patriarchal authority. Even Ms. Beebe's more interesting discussion of how each work employs humor to assert "woman's right to make her own financial and matrimonial decisions" suggests more differences than similarities, as Widow Ranter's "bawdy humor" contrasts with Unca Eliza's "sly humor."

This essay makes a productive case for [End Page 1] the significance of colonial America as an imaginative context for women-centered narratives during the long eighteenth century. As Ms. Beebe notes, both "the novel and the play reference historical documents from colonial North America in order to authenticate and authorize the distinctly female stories at their centers," and each "imagines a feminist colonial utopia, however briefly, in which a woman's story is valued enough to be returned to England and shared with the public." These works may not share a direct relationship, but considering them together helps us to see how the contested, "unruly" spaces of an imagined new world can result in more fluid, hybrid, femalecentered narratives.

________

Evans, Mel. "Style and Chronology: A Stylometric Investigation of Aphra Behn's Dramatic Style and the Dating of The Young King," Lang&Lit, 27.2 (2018), 103–132.

The Young King was staged in 1679 but not printed until early 1683 (entered, Michaelmas 1682). This alone attracts attention since Behn's plays were usually published within six months of production. Adding to the questions is Behn's dedication to Philaster; all of her other dedications were to identifiable persons. Further, Behn signs her dedication to Philaster not with initials or name, but with her spy name, Astrea. Finally, in her dedication, Behn raises still more questions by terming the play a "youthful sally of my Pen, this first Essay of my Infant-Poetry," adding that she waited to bring this play forward because she "feared reproach of being an American." Might The Young King have been written—or at least started—while she was in the New World in the early 1660s?

Ms. Evans addresses this and related questions through stylometric analysis. Using databases of frequently used words, most frequent function words, and mid-frequency words (called zeta words), computers develop a signature "fingerprint," which differs from writer...

Which of the following are the 3 Cs of team players?

Does personal friendship help organizational productivity?

Which of the following is not a maintenance function of a group?

What is a team called that is composed of specialists from several different areas such as finance marketing production and design?