‘What need has she to think of Heaven upon her Wedding-day?’: Aphra Behn, hypocrisy, and the Puritan tradition

This chapter, in its unlikely pairing of Aphra Behn and Richard Baxter, is focused on the work and perspective of a leading Tory literary writer, seeking in part to show how the concerns of the emergent Puritan tradition looked from—and had an impact on—that culturally mainstream position. It also suggests what Behn’s religious perspective might have been, and how her probable Anglicanism inflects her Tory position and sheds light on her career. Reference is made to a variety of plays by Behn, and to her ‘A Paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer’, as well as to works by Baxter and The Book of Common Prayer.