The Rover is a madcap Restoration-era British comedy with a dark and serious side. Through a series of mishaps, a collection of lovers are mixed, matched, and reunited, mostly through the pairing of young Spanish noblewomen with British cavaliers, but with the addition of courtesans, controlling brothers, questions of finance and virtue, dramatic betrayals, and threats of sexual violence. The Rover himself is Willmore, a British cavalier who takes great pleasure in flirting with and seducing women and is caught by surprise when he falls for Hellena, a young convent-educated woman on her way to becoming a nun, while he is also seducing notorious courtesan Angelica.
Behn ultimately wrote...
