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Oroonoko made his way down to the seashore, and was there allured, under false pretenses of hospitality, on board an English ship. He was carried to the West Indies, and sold to a planter of Surinam, the colony in which Mrs. Behn was living, and where by a remarkable chance Imoinda had already been sold.
When I demanded of him the particular names of the various nations of his sort of people, he could only answer me in general that they were called Carrabee. Hence it was I considered that these must be the Carribees, so much taken notice of by our maps to be on that part of America, which reaches from the mouth of the river Oroonoko to Guiana, and so on to St. Martha.
In renouncing the intermixture of comic scenes when they no longer understood their ironical aim, they did perfectly right: Southern still attempted them in his Oroonoko, but in his hands they exhibit a wretched appearance.
Here has little Harrison been to complain, that the printer I recommended to him for his Tatler is a coxcomb; and yet to see how things will happen; for this very printer is my cousin, his name is Dryden Leach; did you never hear of Dryden Leach, he that prints the Postman? He acted Oroonoko, he's in love with Miss Cross.
In Defoe, where the record of imaginary fact was carried on with so much ingenuity and knowledge, the qualities we have just mentioned are notably absent; nor can it be said that we find them in any prose-writer of fiction earlier than Richardson, except in some very slight and imperfect degree in Aphra Behn, especially in her Rousseauish novel of Oroonoko.
He thought the hazard was too great, and embraced the advantage of commencing his noviciate in acting with a company of players then ready to set out for Ipswich, under the direction of Mr. William Gifford and Mr. Dunstall, in the summer of 1741. The first effort of his theatrical talents was exerted as Aboan, in the play of "Oroonoko," a part in which his features could not be easily discerned.
When Oroonoko is induced to board the English slaver, it is in no common style, but "the Captain in his Boat richly adorned with Carpets and velvet Cushions went to the Shore to receive the Prince, with another Long Boat where was placed all his Music and Trumpets." Mrs.
"Oroonoko" is the only one of Mrs Behn's stories which has a didactic aim or a special interest of any kind. Her other works of fiction are short tales, usually founded on fact, which describe in unrestrained language the passion and adventures of a pair of very ardent lovers. They show the prevailing inclination in narrative fiction toward characters and scenes taken from actual life.
He wrote ten plays, of which two were long acted and are still remembered, The Fatal Marriage and Oroonoko , in the latter of which he appeals passionately against the slave-trade. Unlike most preceding dramatists he was a practical man, succeeded in his theatrical management, and retired on a fortune.
When in 1696 Thomas Southerne adapted Oroonoko from the novel of Mrs. Aphra Behn and presented in London the story of the African prince who was stolen from his native Angola, no one saw any reason why the Negro should not be a subject for serious treatment on the stage, and the play was a great success, lasting for decades.
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