Virginian Culture and Experimental Genre in Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter

Abstract

As one of the first plays to be set in British colonial America, and the first travel play to have been written not only by a woman, but by a playwright who had actually travelled to the Americas, Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter occupies a unique place in the sub-genre of early modern voyage drama, bringing an altogether unprecedented perspective on American life to its English audience.1 With a probable composition date of 1687-8 – 80 years after the English settlement at Jamestown was founded, and over a century after the first English circumnavigations of the globe – Behn’s American play was written late enough for the adventuring spirit of Renaissance travel plays to have subsided and been..