Although Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko
is, on the surface, a story about slavery in the Americas, it is much more
likely that Behn was writing a treatise on monarchy and the Stuart rule in
England than a plea for the end of slavery. However, after Behn’s death Oroonoko
took on a life of its own. The story of the enslaved prince was made into a
play only six years after Behn died, then over the next two hundred years it
was reproduced over and again by numerous authors, each of whom slightly
altered the text to fit their own agenda and their own audience’s needs and
expectations. The most significant changes to Behn’s story were made by Thomas
Southerne, who first transformed Oroonoko into a play in 1695; John
Hawkesworth, who in 1759 cut Southerne’s comic subplot and created the play
form that others later followed; and John Ferriar, who changed Oroonoko
into a thoroughly abolitionist story in 1788 – precisely 200 years after Behn’s
original novella was published. By the time it reached its final
transformations, Oroonoko was a solidly anti-slavery piece.
Aphra
Behn published Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave in 1688, the year before
her death. The original intent of her book has been debated, but it was most
likely a royalist treatise inspired by the events surrounding the end of the
Stuart reign in England. Many scholars compare the predicament of Oroonoko
himself to that of King James, noting that Oroonoko “bears in captivity the
same name—Caesar—which Behn uses to address both Charles II and James II”
(Spencer 225). Truly, Behn condemns the enslavement of a monarch in her novella
far more than she does slavery itself. For example, Oroonoko reprimands the
slave ship captain who tricks him into captivity not for dealing in the slave
trade, but rather for his dishonesty and false Christianity. When departing the
ship, Oroonoko utters, “’Tis worth my Suffering to gain so true a Knowledge
both of you, and your Gods by whom you swear” (67). Indeed, Oroonoko actually
argues for slavery (that is, the traditional
tribal dealings with slavery) in Behn’s novella: “Have they Won us in
Honourable Battel? And are we, by the chance of War, become their Slaves? This
wou’d not anger a Noble Heart” (86). Clearly, Behn’s story is more anti-slave
trade (if that) than anti-slavery; but it does create a perfect framework for
later authors to use in the fulfillment of their own agendas, which eventually
did include abolition.
The first rewrite of Behn’s
Oroonoko was by Thomas Southerne, who transformed the novella into a
play (Oroonoko: A Tragedy) in 1695, six years after Behn’s death. The
most drastic addition to the story is Southerne’s comic subplot, a sexually
charged storyline involving two sisters, Charlott and Lucy Welldon (who are in
Surinam seeking wealthy husbands), and a lusty widow, the Widow Lackitt. After
much cross-dressing and trickery, the three women are happily married by the
end of the play. The raunchy comic additions seem strange when placed side by
side with the tragic tale of Oroonoko and Imoinda, but this style of
tragicomedy was actually popular with the audiences of Restoration theater, and
Oroonoko: A Tragedy “was one of the most frequently performed of all
London dramas in the first half of the eighteenth century” (Munns 176).
Some of Southerne’s
deletions from Behn’s text are just as telling as his addition; among the
themes edited out of his play were the entire continent of Africa, almost all
reference to (and all appearances of) the Surinam Indians, the presence of the
narrator (generally understood to be Behn herself), and Imoinda’s blackness.
There are many theories on the reason for making Imoinda white. One of these
theories is that Southerne eliminated the narrator and made Imoinda white to
combine the characters and play up the sexual tension between the narrator and
Oroonoko in Behn’s version (Spencer 233). While there is not much evidence for
this in the text itself, it does make for an interesting supposition. Another
theory is that “the change in Imoinda’s coloring has as much to do with
theatrical traditions as sexual transgressions or racial anxiety” (Munns 177).
The argument here is that actors would readily wear blackface in order to
portray heroic black men, but since pale skin was seen as the ultimate mark of
womanly beauty at this time, in order for Imoinda to be beautiful she must also
be white (Munns 177).
In all but eliminating the
Surinam Indians (they appear only offstage in the plays), Southerne and all of
his successors also eliminate the complex three-way relationship that existed
between white colonists, black slaves, and native Indians. In Southerne’s
version of the story, Oroonoko proves his loyalty and heroism by rushing to
defend the plantation when the Indians attack. This version “avoids the reality
of dangerous alliances between indigenous inhabitants and imported African
labor. … [The] alteration involves radical simplification and a massive act of
forgetting” (Munns 180). It is also possible that the Indians were simply not
necessary to Southerne’s play; he was not as interested in promoting
colonization in the Americas as he was in box-office results, which were helped
along by his addition of the comic subplot, as noted above.
While it is true that Behn’s
story is not anti-slavery, it does plant the seeds for that reception. Southerne’s
version, on the other hand, moves in the opposite direction, making Oroonoko
defend not just tribal forms of slavery but also European slave trafficking. In
Behn’s novella, after Oroonoko declares that winning a slave in battle is
honorable, he adds, “but we are Bought and Sold like Apes, or Monkeys, to be
the Sport of Women, Fools, and Cowards” (86). In Southerne, Oroonoko’s speech
is quite different: “If we are Slaves, they did not make us Slaves; / But bought
us in an honest way of trade: /… They paid our Price for us, and we are now /
Their Property, a part of their Estate” (3.2.122-127). This complete reversal
is credited to Southerne’s personal life – he was “seeking patronage from … one
of the riches West Indian slave-owners” (Spencer 232) at the time that he wrote
this play.
Southerne’s version of the
tale also plays down Oroonoko’s royal honor and plays up his love of Imoinda –
he is now motivated to rebel only because of his love for her, as any good Restoration
hero might do. After his speech to Aboan on why they should not revolt (see
above), Oroonoko is finally persuaded to anger by the thought of Imoinda being
ravaged by the Governor. Aboan tells him that the Governor “Will know no
bounds, [there is] no law against his Lusts” and Oroonoko at last replies “Ha!
thou hast roused / The Lion in his den … / I’ll undertake / All thou would’st
have me now for liberty” (3.2.221-240). While Behn’s Oroonoko was appalled at
being enslaved and having his son born into slavery, Southerne’s Oroonoko seems
fairly content with his lot until the thought of his lover’s innocence lost
convinces him otherwise. With this, Oroonoko takes his first steps in
Southerne’s play toward a less powerful presence; he is portrayed, in a way, as
“a proper English gentleman who just happens to be black” (Munns 179). At the
end of the play, he does not even possess the uncivilized emotion necessary to
murder Imoinda, who is forced to kill herself and leave Oroonoko to follow
suit.
John Hawkesworth was the
next author to recreate Oroonoko’s tale with his version of the play, Oronooko:
A Tragedy, As it is now Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane, which was
produced in 1759. The only major change from Southerne’s version was his
deletion of the comic subplot. Later reproductions of Oroonoko generally
followed Hawkesworth’s version of Southerne’s play, rather than Behn’s original
storyline: they all cut the comic subplot because of contemporary audience
expectations. The sexual innuendo and broad comedy accepted during the
Restoration period was considered lowbrow and vulgar to the 18th-century
Sentimentalism crowd (Spencer 244-45). In an anonymous Prologue added to
Hawkesworth’s play for its first performance, “Southerne is chastised for
tainting the serious material with the comic: ‘Slave to custom in a laughing
age, / With ribald mirth he stain’d the sacred page’” (qtd. in Trooboff 123).
Another change toward
sentimentalism was the making of Oroonoko into a true tragic hero, deserving of
pity and dying for love. Hawkesworth’s Oroonoko, like Southerne’s, cannot be
encouraged to rebel by his friend Aboan alone, and is only compelled once
Aboan’s urgings are combined with the thought of his unborn child with Imoinda.
He goes further in becoming a victim of circumstances, however, by resolving
not to strike first and by leaving his enemies alive at the end; after finally
agreeing to lead the slave revolt, Oroonoko adds, “The Means that lead us to
our Liberty / Must not be bloody – no – must not be bloody /… And not a Life
shall fall” (3.2.249-260).
The play is not
abolitionist, but it does evoke some of those feelings in its audiences by
“emphasizing the brutality of the planters … creating sympathy for all the
enslaved and not just for the noble prince” (Munns 181). The other slaves are
given more lines and stage directions in this version, and emphasis is placed
on the suffering caused by the entire system of slavery. For example, just
before Oroonoko leads the rebellion, three slaves converse about their
deplorable situation and their hope for Oroonoko to lead them to freedom:
2nd
Slav. … when I look
At him, and hear
him talk, I think I’m free already.
3rd Slav. Why aye, to be sure; such Men as he may
do much.
2nd Slav. Why we were all such Men, ‘till Slav’ry
broke us.
(3.3.4-7)
Sentimentalism is certainly achieved by
portraying all the slaves – not just princes – as human and emotional. This is
a drastic change from Behn’s original novella, wherein the other slaves are
portrayed at best as cowardly automatons.
Oroonoko was recreated again the following year by Francis
Gentleman with his Oroonoko: or the Royal Slave, A Tragedy. Altered from
Southerne. His play is actually altered from Hawkesworth’s version more
than Southerne’s, as there is no comic subplot, and his additions are
restricted to more sentimentalism and two new antagonists. Gentleman’s new characters
are Massingano, a slave in Surinam whom Oroonoko had previously defeated and
sold into slavery, and Zinzo, a newly arrived slave and cohort of Massingano.
In this version, Massingano – with his desire for revenge – tricks Oroonoko
into rebellion against the planters. The kind planter Blandford (first added to
the play by Southerne as “Blanford” and kept in all subsequent versions as
“Blandford”) comes to the rescue and stems the violence on both sides, making
Oroonoko appear not only naive but also somewhat demure. His character takes
another step on his path towards conventional protagonist and away from unique
hero.
Yet another version of the
play was written the same year by an anonymous playwright. Oroonoko, A
Tragedy. Altered from the Original Play of that Name, Written by the late
Thomas Southern, Esq. was published in 1760 but was never acted. The only
major additions are those of new minor characters: Maria, daughter of the Lieutenant
Governor and confidant of (still white) Imoinda, and Heartwell, President of
the Council. The anonymously written version begins tending more toward
anti-slavery, but is mostly simply patriotic (pro-British). Heartwell’s
character, for instance, can be interpreted as the counterpart to the ruthless
Lieutenant Governor, providing the play “with a benevolent representative of
British colonial authority” (Spencer 252). In fact, the play still includes
Oroonoko’s argument for slavery and
the European slave trade. His rebellion seems directed not against slavery in
general, but against the Lieutenant Governor in particular. It has been argued
that this change in subtext was probably due to the era in which it was
produced: the audience would have been “less troubled by Restoration and early
18th-century concerns with anarchy and tyranny than by issues of
order and riot” (Munns 183). The Lieutenant Governor’s actions are seen in this
light as inciting riot and disorder and therefore worthy of the audience’s
disdain.
By 1780s England, the anti-slavery
movement was beginning to appear not just in newspapers and pamphlets, but also
in literature, art, and poetry – and John Ferriar’s version of Oroonoko (entitled
The Prince of Angola), published in 1788, was one of the stories that
was reworked to fit the theme of the times (Spencer 224-58). Ferriar’s title
page to the play even included a note on the usefulness of the arts in the abolitionist
movement: “Drama is a powerful weapon in the war to change minds and redress a
terrible grievance” (qtd. in Trooboff 125). In fact, older versions of the
story were not just being rewritten but actually reinterpreted in their
original forms to fit the perspective of contemporary audiences. In other
words, “Oroonoko was being replaced by the Oroonoko myth” (Spencer 255).
The first plays by Southerne and Hawkesworth were beginning to be perceived as
abolitionist propaganda in and of themselves; therefore, Ferriar’s version was
a logical extension of that trend.
This abolitionist version –
like other contemporary anti-slavery writings, including the narrative of
Olaudah Equiano – seems meant to personalize and individualize the suffering of
slaves in order to more effectively engage the audience’s pity and thereby
rouse them to action. The character of Blandford, for example, gives audiences
a course to follow in Ferriar’s version by changing his own stand on the matter
from benign acceptance of slavery to extreme abolitionist. When Blandford
appears in the opening scene of the play, he speaks to the Lieutenant Governor
not of abolishing slavery, but of treating the slaves in a more benevolent
manner: “Give them proper food and sufficient cloaths; destroy your instruments
of torture; abridge your overseers of the pleasure of the flogging” (1.1.24-26).
After befriending Oroonoko, Blandford begins to see the wrongfulness of slavery
and seems to speak directly to Ferriar’s audience when he cries to Oroonoko,
“Your history / Must redden each European cheek with shame” (2.2.192-193).
Finally, Blandford’s declaration to Stanmore (and the audience) in the last
scene, moments after Oroonoko kills himself, exemplify his total commitment to
the eradication of slavery: “But you who mutely eye this scene of horror, /
Curse not the erring arm – the guilt is ours; / For deeds like these are
slav’ry’s fruit; the chain / And bloody whip bring punishment upon us”
(5.4.170-173).
While Ferriar’s is the first
purposefully abolitionist version of the story, by the time Oroonoko is
fully transformed to an anti-slavery play the character himself has lost his
original powerful presence. Ferriar eliminates many of Oroonoko’s soliloquies,
violent tendencies, and references to his African origins (along with any
plot-complicating references to having owned or dealt with slaves in his own
country), and in so doing, he creates a version of the character that has taken
the final step in becoming an anonymous white stage hero in blackface. Almost
nothing remains of the original Oroonoko’s personality at this point, and
Ferriar’s incarnation of the story is compellingly yet merely a framework on
which to establish his anti-slavery rhetoric.
In fact, Ferriar changes
even the motivation of the other slaves in Surinam, who now give up the
rebellion and turn on Oroonoko not because of their own low rank (and therefore
character), as in Behn’s novella and the successive plays, but because of what
they have been put through by the cruel and ruthless slave owners (as hinted at
in Hawkesworth’s version). Where Behn writes Oroonoko’s scornful speech that
the other slaves “were by Nature Slaves, … Dogs, treacherous and cowardly, fit
for such Masters” (90), Southerne keeps the sentiment (and almost the exact
words) with Oroonoko’s lines that they “were by Nature Slaves; Wretches
design’d / To be their Master’s Dogs, and lick their Feet” (5.2.64-65). This
exchange remains in the later plays, until Ferriar reverses the response and
completely abandons the original speech, making Oroonoko speak first directly
to his fellow slaves, and then address the Lieutenant Governor: “And is it
thus? is this to be a Slave, / To be a man no more in ought but shape? / Now,
Tyrants, I perceive your lashes cut, / Ev’n deeper than I knew; they mark the
soul” (4.1.59-62). The surrendering slaves’ cowardice is portrayed not as their
own fault, but the fault of slavery and those who practice it.
The numerous reproductions
of Oroonoko have created countless changes, some of them major, such as
the presence of the African continent, the race of Imoinda, and even Oroonoko’s
motivation to revolt, and some of them minor, such as the presence of the
narrator, the role of the other slaves, and the presence or absence of minor
characters. Besides these factors of content, however, one could argue that the
grandest changes of all were the transformations in Oroonoko’s subtext: the
underlying reason for the work ebbs from monarchical justification to
abolitionist appeal, while the hero himself morphs from dominant sovereign to
demure slave.
Works
Cited
Anonymous. “Oroonoko, A Tragedy. Altered
from the Original Play of that Name,
Written by the late Thomas Southern, Esq.” Oroonoko:
Adaptations and Offshoots. Ed. Susan B. Iwanisziw. Aldershot: Ashgate,
2006. 185-202.
Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko. Ed. Catherine
Gallagher. Boston: Bedford, 2000.
Ferriar, John. “The Prince of Angola.” Oroonoko:
Adaptations and Offshoots. Ed. Susan
B. Iwanisziw. Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2006. 203-257.
Gentleman, Francis. “Oroonoko: or the Royal
Slave, A Tragedy. Altered from
Southerne.” Oroonoko: Adaptations and Offshoots.
Ed. Susan B. Iwanisziw. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. 163-184.
Hawkesworth, John. “Oroonoko, A Tragedy, As
it is now Acted at the Theatre-Royal in
Drury-Lane.” Oroonoko: Adaptations and Offshoots.
Ed. Susan B. Iwanisziw. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. 104-162.
Munns, Jessica. “Reviving Oroonoko ‘in the scene’: From Thomas
Southerne to ‘Biyi
Bandele.” Troping Oroonoko
from Behn to Bandele. Ed. Susan B. Iwanisziw. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.
174-197.
Southerne, Thomas. “Oroonoko: A Tragedy.” Oroonoko:
Adaptations and Offshoots. Ed.
Susan B. Iwanisziw.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. 1-80.
Spencer, Jane. Aphra Behn’s Afterlife.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.
Trooboff, Rhoda M. “Reproducing Oroonoko: A Case Study in Plagiarism,
Textual
Parallelism, and Creative Borrowing.” Troping Oroonoko from Behn to Bandele. Ed. Susan B. Iwanisziw. Aldershot: Ashgate,
2004. 108-140.
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