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A theatrical study cannot consider Behn in isolation, and the second chapter discusses the theatrical background using comparisons and examples from other dramatists as and when appropriate. It argues that the debates and experiments amongst the dramatists at the time illustrate the beginnings of the development of a theoretical structure, which included painted scenery in the acceptable conventions of the illusion of reality for the audience. Behn was writing her first plays just as the debates were at their height, when the dramatists were becoming playwrights through their growing consciousness of theatricality, and was writing at the time when the theatres began to use painted scenery to give an illusion of real or actual locations, and sliding shutters, which gave opportunities for discoveries and disclosures, for the first time on the public stage. The second consideration, therefore, has been the ways in which the theatre had changed and adjusted from the platform staging to encompass the scenic stage, and hence how the implicit conventions, codes, and signals from the stage became structured into the play texts. This was probably one of the most important changes in the history of the theatre, and would affect the visual perception of any play in various, often subtle, ways. This also contributed to the way the style of play preferred by the audience moved away from tragedy and towards comedy.
The third chapter examines what seems to have been the basis for humour in the Restoration audience—what types and styles of comedy were popular—and argues that public taste was veering towards the mock heroic and the comic, that there was a satirical ambience which predisposed audience tastes towards comedy and away from tragedy, and thus set the style in which Behn wrote.
The fourth chapter discusses what the actors brought to a performance in the way of technique and style of acting, costume, and disguise, especially the impact of the actresses’ own personality and reputation. It argues that Behn intentionally incorporates these attributes to affect and alter the relationship between the audience and the actors, in their attitudes towards her characters’ motivations and behaviour.