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Aphra Behn was one of the best and most successful comic writers in a great age of English comedy. If her plays are less polished than those of George Etherege and William Wycherley, it must be remembered that, unlike them, she had to support herself: she produced eighteen to twenty-one plays, in contrast to Etherege's three and Wycherley's four. Most of them were successful, and two, The Rover and The Emperor of the Moon, held the stage for three quarters of a century. She competed on such equal terms with men that, speaking from the purely literary point of view, one could say her sex was irrelevant to a consideration of her achievement. It is, however, significant that she was the first English woman to make her living as a writer. A highly competent professional, she held her own in the tough world of the Restoration theater. She did not modestly conceal her authorship, and, when attacked as a writer or as a woman, she defended herself with vigorous counterattacks.
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