Chapter 3 continues to focus on the theme of women’s community in war as depicted in Aphra Behn’s The Rover and The Feigned Courtesans. These plays were produced in 1677 and 1679 respectively, and they provide a valuable insight into the postwar period. It is demonstrated that the end of hostilities did not mean the end of war. When Charles II returned in 1660, he tried to rebuild relationships and endeavoured to govern by consensus. As Jeremy W. Webster argues, the King’s government used theatre to promote a politics of peace: “Charles’s government was committed to employing theatrical events to impress upon the minds of the populace that monarchy brought with it national unity, social accord, and economic prosperity”.35 The old wounds were not so easily healed and the quest for consensus failed. By the 1670s, there was a real danger that another civil war would break out. Responding to the renewed threats of war, Behn produced The Rover, which cast the Cavaliers as a group of marginal, penniless exiles living in Naples, where the action takes place during the carnival. Behn instils a feeling of sympathy for the exiles who were cast adrift after the King’s defeat and had to live in exile on the continent during the Interregnum. The Cavaliers provide the backdrop for a group of Italian noblewomen who are also faced with a dilemma. Hellena is being forced to join a convent and her sister Florinda is the victim of an arranged marriage. They use the freedom afforded by the carnival to mingle in the market place. Through the use of disguise, all social classes can mix freely and connect with each other. Like the Cavaliers, the women are trapped by unfavourable circumstances, but through their wit and ingenuity they find ways of engaging with the English soldiers so that in the end they find partners whom they love.
When The Feigned Courtesans was produced, the upheaval caused by the Popish Plot was pervasive. Fears of assassination attempts and conspiracies were prevalent. Behn deliberately used a Roman setting for the play in order to diffuse the current prejudice against Rome and Catholicism. The narrow-minded Puritan attitudes of Sir Signal Buffoon and Tickletext are mercilessly satirised in the play. Behn’s witty heroines, Cornelia and Florinda, who take centre stage in the drama, debunk the anti-Catholic myths and suggest that this is a society where English and Italians can coexist peacefully and can even fall in love and wed.