"Shuffled Together under the Name of a Farce": Finding Nature in Aphra Behn's The Emperor of the Moon

Was Aphra Behn (1640–1689) a scientist?¹ Probably not.²

Figure 1.

Schematic detail of a Newtonian reflective telescope, Philosophical Transactions 81, March 25, 1672, RB 487000:0681, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Could she have influenced the flow of thought about science despite her status as a disciplinary outsider? Perhaps. A focus on her late writing suggests an engagement with science concepts, objects, and philosophers that renders Behn at the very least a competent, critical, credible participant in the late seventeenth-century "new science" conversation, if not a natural philosopher in her own right.³ Behn's late play, The Emperor of the Moon (1687), is emblematic of her interdisciplinary interests. A reexamination of the play's text and a historically informed imagination of its performances, considered along with Behn's other writing and translations of this period, indicates how Behn indeed contributed to late seventeenth-century cultural trends in science. Emperor holds an important place in late seventeenth-century theatre studies; it is the second-most performed of her works, after The Rover.⁴ The play is prototypical of the English farce and pantomime entertainments that would sweep London's popular theatres over the course of the eighteenth century. Many scholars have addressed Behn's writing within the contexts of Restoration politics, protofeminism, and dramatic form. I suggest that Emperor is also an important mediator of interdisciplinary Restoration histories because of the questions Behn persistently raises about natural philosophy. Seen in this context, Aphra Behn, renowned as England's first uncloseted female playwright, should be recognized as a dynamic female contributor to the history of science.

In this article, Behn's late work is construed within a holistic historiographical narrative that, as philosopher of science Sandra Harding puts it, acknowledges the labors of "knowers who are not permitted to sit next to the scientist at their lab benches."⁵ This feminist critique matters to performance and science histories because it articulates an early modern precedent for women's interdisciplinary participation in historically gender-exclusive science fields such as astronomy and physics while highlighting Behn's "pro-democratic" theatrical methods by which science was performed outside the domain of the laboratory.⁶ Behn's participation in the popularization of science concepts through her late drama and prose may be understood as protofeminist for the increased access it afforded readers and audience members who were not working within the relatively closed ranks of the Royal Society, women as well as men. Behn's playful treatment of science concepts for mixed-gender audiences aligns her work with scientific material produced by early female practitioners of science such as Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623–1673), and Gabrielle Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet (1706–1749), both of whom also worked interdisciplinarily.⁷ Recognition of interdisciplinary endeavors is essential to a feminist science historiography, because it is within extra-laboratory domains that much work by women has historically been performed. Bruno Latour's actor-network theory (ANT) aids in creating a critical shift in emphasis from political intrigue to science objects and ideas. Behn warrants an interdisciplinary reframing process in line with Latour's sociological science historiography because of her reliance upon the telescope (a science object) for storytelling purposes (figure 1). A science-oriented historiography of Emperor of the Moon, combined with an analysis of Behn's translator's preface to her translation of Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle's (1657–1757) Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686) (A Discovery of New Worlds. From the French [1688]), situates Aphra Behn as a significant female voice in Restoration science culture.⁸

Reshuffling Discipline: Aphra Behn and the "New Science"

Emperor of the Moon, an adaptation of Nolant de Fatouville's (d. 1715) Arlequin, empereur dans la lune (1684), is emblematic of the exchange of philosophical and theatrical ideas that transpired across the English Channel during the Age of Reason.⁹ The English and French versions of this play feature telescopes and science...