The banished cavaliers! A roving blade! A popish carnival! A masquerade!

Glad to hear that even in the 1660s Essex lads’ holidays mostly involved disgracing yourself, cheating on your significant other (Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell), falling for really transparent cons, and getting into violent life threatening situations every night.

I could not stand the cavaliers, and almost abandoned this play many times because of their whinging and stupidness. My only solaces were 1) the Italian characters relentlessly berating Englishmen and 2) all the fire and wit of Hellena.

Hellena/Don Pedro/Florinda’s dynamic is hilarious and very true to real siblings. Trust that if I was knocking about Restoration-era London and the theatres had just opened again, I’d be guffawing and slapping my knee and jabbing my neighbour in the side at that first scene. Very cool that Aphra Behn is considered the first professional female playwright in England - there’s so much confidence and cheek and passion in this play, and a real sense of rebellion against patriarchal social order. But it wasn’t the easiest to read, just for the sheer unlikeableness of those main “heroes”.