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  The Poetry of Aphra Behn

  Aphra Behn

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  Aphra Behn was a prolific and well-established poet and playwright but facts about her life remain scant and difficult to confirm. What can safely be said is that Aphra Behn is regarded as a key English playwright and a major figure in Restoration theatre.  Her poetry is now far more appreciated and seen as a breakthrough for women of the 17th Century and beyond.  
   
  Aphra was baptised on 14th December 1640 and grew up with the gathering tensions leading to the English Civil War, a time of much division and difficulty as the King, Parliament, and their respective forces, came closer and then finally into open conflict. 
   
  By 1664 her marriage was over, less than a year after it began. She now used Mrs Behn as her professional name and moved towards pursuing a more sustainable and substantial career, working for the King's Company and the Duke's Company players as a scribe. Her first play ‘The Forc’d Marriage’, was staged in 1670, and thereafter many followed, including her later comic works, which were more commercially successful.  She wrote 19 plays in all and contributed to many others as well as several works of prose. 
   
  Along with her literary career there are claims she was a spy, that she travelled abroad, possibly as far as Surinam.  She also claimed to have met a slave leader in Africa and based her story ‘Oroonoko’ on his life.  Other accounts suggest that during her life she was also known as Ann Behn, Agent One-Sixty and Astrea. Her financial troubles seem to have also incurred her a brief stay in a debtors' prison. Whatever the truth, both her life and work seem rich, textured and full of adventure. 
   
  From the mid 1680’s Aphra’s health began to decline.  This was exacerbated by her continual state of debt and descent into poverty although she was often fond of saying that she had led a ‘life dedicated to pleasure and poetry.’ 
    
  Aphra Behn died on 16th April 1689. She is buried in the East Cloister of Westminster Abbey and the inscription on her tombstone reads: "Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality."  
  1 - The Poetry of Aphra Behn - An Introduction 
  2 - The Disappointment by Aphra Behn 
  3 - On a Juniper Tree, Cut Down to Make Busks by Aphra Behn 
  4 - The Willing Mistress by Aphra Behn 
  5 - To Lysander by Aphra Behn 
  6 - Love Armed by Aphra Behn 
  7 - On Desire by Aphra Behn 
  8 - The Counsel by Aphra Behn 
  9 - Love's Witness by Aphra Behn 
  10 - The Invitation by Aphra Behn 
  11 - To Mrs B by Aphra Behn 
  12 - On Her Loving Two Equally by Aphra Behn 
  13 - The Dream by Aphra Behn 
  14 - Song by Aphra Behn 
  15 - A Ballad on Mr J H to Amoret, Asking Why I Was So Sad by Aphra Behn 
  16 - The Return by Aphra Behn 
  17 - Oh How the Hand the Lover Ought to Prize by Aphra Behn 
  18 - The Dog in the Manger by Aphra Behn 
  19 - Angellica's Lament by Aphra Behn 
  20 - A Congratulatory Poem by Aphra Behn 
  21 - A Letter to a Brother of the Pen in Tribulation by Aphra Behn 
  22 - Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven That Died Before by Aphra Behn 
  23 - A Thousand Martyrs aka The Libertine by Aphra Behn 
  24 - On the Death of the Late Earl of Rochester by Aphra Behn

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  Prometheus Bound (Browning...

  Aeschylus

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  Whether or not it was actually written by Aeschylus, as is much disputed, "Prometheus Bound" is a powerful statement on behalf of free humanity in the face of what often seem like the impersonal, implacable Forces that rule the Universe.  As one of the most compelling rebel manifestos ever composed, it has appealed not only to the expected host of scholars of Greek drama, but also to a fascinatingly free-spirited array of translators, especially since the early 19th century; Percy Bysshe Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, and activist-poet Augusta Webster are among those who have tried their poetic and linguistic powers at rendering it into English.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning published not one but two completely different translations of it, the first in 1833 when she was twenty-seven years old and the second eighteen years later.  It is this second, far greater, translation presented here. - Summary by Expatriate

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  Henry VI Part 3

  William Shakespeare

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  Henry VI, Part 3 or The Third Part of Henry the Sixt (often written as 3 Henry VI) is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591, and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas 1 Henry VI deals with the loss of England's French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses, and 2 Henry VI focuses on the King's inability to quell the bickering of his nobles, and the inevitability of armed conflict, 3 Henry VI deals primarily with the horrors of that conflict, as the once ordered nation is thrown into chaos and barbarism as families break down and moral codes are subverted in the pursuit of revenge and power.Among Shakespeare's history plays Henry VI Part 3 and Richard II contain the only intances in which a living monarch is displaced. However, unlike Richard who fell because of his misunderstanding of the limits of his sovereignty, the demise of Henry was due to his total incapacity to exercise his sovereign power. The inability of the king to deal with the brutal realities of regal life is dramatically displayed in Act 2 Scene 5 where Henry witnesses the agonies of the father who has killed his son and the son who has killed his father, and sadly acknowledges that this civil strife has been caused by the King's ineptitude. The crowning indignity comes in Act 3 Scene 1 where the king in hiding is easily detected and trapped by two rustics who triumphantly prepare to lead him before the man who has deposed him, Edward IV. Henry's death comes at the hands of the brother of Edward, the vicious and rampantly ambitious Richard, who later rises to the heights of supreme tyranny in Richard III. After Henry's son and heir, Edward, is murdered, also by the future Richard III, and Henry's most influential supporter, the Earl of Warwick, dies, the House of Lancaster lies in ruins.

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  The Passing of the Year

  Robert W. Service

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  LibriVox volunteers bring you 8 recordings of The Passing of the Year by by Robert W. Service. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for December 18, 2011.Robert William Service was a poet and writer who has often been called "the Bard of the Yukon". This poem taken from Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, published in 1912.(Summary from Wikipedia)I have no doubt at all the Devil grinsAs seas of ink I spatter.Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins —The other kind don't matter.(frontispiece)

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  Water Whispers audio poem

  Kaitlynzq

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  Water Whispers audio poemmultiple poems designed to connectto form a story as a heart’s breathan excerpt from Water Whispers audio poem“new, unfamiliar, and yet, I knowa paintbrush, most delicate of touchalong the fabric of an instruments stringsto know you, my love”

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  Accidental Death of an Anarchist...

  Dario Fo, Franca Rame

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  An irrepressible fraudster known only as the Maniac is brought into Police Headquarters just as the officers are preparing for a judicial review of the recent 'accidental' death of a suspect in custody.
  Outwitting his captors, the Maniac dupes them into performing a farcical recreation of the incident, exposing the absurd corruption and terrifying idiocy at the heart of the system.
  Dario Fo and Franca Rame's riotous satire, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, has been widely performed around the world since its premiere in 1970. Tom Basden's hilarious, bang-up-to-date adaptation was first performed at Sheffield Theatres in September 2022.

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