Textual materiality and contemporary literary borrowings in the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis comedies of Aphra Behn, 1678-1681

In the preface to her play The Luckey Chance; or, An Alderman’s Bargain, Aphra Behn invited ‘any unprejudic'd Person […] to read any of my Comedys and compare 'em with others of this Age’. This study examines Aphra Behn’s comedies staged between 1678 and 1681 in light of their textual borrowings from mid- to late seventeenth-century French and English literature and drama, or ‘others of this Age’, in order to more firmly establish Aphra Behn’s authorial contexts. Examined here, therefore, are both previously identified sources from which Behn made active borrowings, and previously unidentified sources, in both English and French, which also evidence indubitable borrowings by Behn in her Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis comedies. [Continues.]