SOURCE: "The Poet," in Aphra Behn, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1968, pp. 102-15.

An American educator specializing in English literature, Link has published editions of works by Behn, John Dryden, Hannah Cowley, and Walter Scott. In the following excerpt, he provides an overview of Behn's poetry.

Most of Mrs. Behn's poetry is occasional—the work of a professional dramatist with a considerable lyric talent and a constant need for money. For her plays she wrote prologues and epilogues, only occasionally obtaining them from a fellow writer; these works constitute a clearly defined group. A second grouping is more miscellaneous: some forty songs written to be sung within the plays, several sets of commendatory verses, a number of topical pieces, and several translations. Elegies and panegyrics, often written in the loosely organized irregular stanza popularized by Abraham Cowley a generation earlier, make up a final group. A brief study of some...