The Empress of the Moon: Aphra Behn in Teatro Due’s Project

Probably a spy in service of the king of England, a political propagandist, a translator of scientific works, and a fluent and a forthright writer—a young widow who never remarried and a libertine lover—Aphra Behn was a spy in the service of the king of England who, according to biographer Janet Todd, first adopted the name Astrea as her code name during espionage and later retained it as her literary pseudonym. Behn was above all the first professional woman writer in English literature, with a corpus of over forty works, including comedies, tragedies, novels, and poems written between 1671 and 1689, which place her among the most celebrated authors of her time.In March 2025, the Teatro Due in Parma focused substantially on Behn, with a project called L’imperatrice della luna (The Empress of the Moon), starting from the new production of The Rover. This was directed by Giacomo Giuntini and with the actresses and actors of Due.It is precisely from Behn’s tumultuous biography that the international conference “Aphra Behn: Between Page and Stage” took its cue. Organized by Teatro Due and the University of Parma,1 the conference took place on March 20–21, 2025, at Teatro Due with strong local support. Like the broader project L’imperatrice della luna, the conference aimed to promote Behn’s work and historical significance by bringing together scholars and theatre audiences, academia, and the city of Parma.These two days of events included a performance of The Rover and staged readings from Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave (1688) and The History of the Nun (1689), offering a literary, theatrical, social, and political contextualization of Behn’s work. The event became not only a site of scholarly engagement but a shared space of historical reflection and interdisciplinary exchange, accessible and open to the public as an introduction to Behn’s world.The mornings and afternoons of the conference were opened by two prominent Behn scholars: Janet Todd and Elaine Hobby. Professor Todd gave a Zoom presentation at the conference—and Elaine Hobby, who also could not attend the conference in person, prepared a detailed video presentation. Their contributions introduced Behn’s oeuvre not only through critical analysis but also through personal scholarly testimony, making the conference itself a metaconference—a meditation on the complexities and passions of conducting original research in a field where fact and legend frequently intermingle. Fittingly, Todd’s presentation was titled “Living with Aphra Behn,” echoing her current work Living with Jane Austen. Todd described both her reconstruction of the historical context in which Behn operated—politically, socially, artistically, and in terms of gender—and the challenges of dialoguing, across centuries, with a figure who has come to symbolize female agency, courage, and rootedness.Elaine Hobby, in turn, led the audience into the heart of Behn’s texts, analyzing their engagement with contemporaneous European literary traditions and placing her dramaturgical and prose writings in dialogue. This theme was also explored by Professor Ros Ballaster, who focused on Behn’s narrative works.Teatro Due contributed further to the rediscovery of Behn’s prose through public readings—declaimed by renowned actress Paola De Crescenzo. These included two of Behn’s most mature works: Oroonoko, presented from Maria Antonietta Saracino’s 1998 Italian translation for Einaudi (a text long out of print and arguably in need of a less cautious, more syntactically faithful new translation); and The History of the Nun, offered in its first and only Italian translation by Aldo Setaioli (2023).Diego Saglia, professor of English literature at the University of Parma and director of the Interuniversity Center for the Study of Romanticism, offered a lucid presentation titled “The Divertissements of a Carnival: Southern and Mediterranean Horizons in Women’s Theatre between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” His intervention contextualized Behn’s work within the stylistic and scenic conventions of Restoration theatre and underscored its connection—highlighted also by Elaine Hobby in her study of Behn’s relation to Boccaccio—to the Mediterranean world, particularly the exoticized Naples that provides the setting of The Rover (see fig. 1).Liliana Rampello, literary critic and essayist, was tasked with recounting the afterlife of Aphra Behn. The author was rediscovered in the twentieth century in a world now openly feminist. In particular, by Vita Sackville-West, the first to attempt a reconstruction of Behn’s biography in 1927, and by Virginia Woolf, who dedicates to Behn a chapter in A Room of One’s Own. Both focus on Behn’s life and her role as the first-professional woman writer, while neglecting an analysis of her works, which Sackville-West relegates to the status of texts of little literary interest. Maria Chiara Barbieri, researcher and lecturer in Theatre History and Performing Arts (at the University of Florence and Bologna) then undertook an in-depth study of the chronology of events that first allowed women to conquer the English stage—events that opened the theatre to new dramaturgical forms, new characters, and new professional figures.The theme of women and feminism ran through all the conference contributions, though without overshadowing the historical and literary dimension. Firstly, Behn herself was examined, focusing on her troubled path to affirmation and recognition in a profoundly male world, as well as her moral and economic independence in an English society marked by political upheaval. These elements in the long term provide fertile ground for the emergence of feminist critique and activism.Secondly, her female characters in both prose and drama were discussed. Behn chooses women—and, to some extent, a complex universe of female solidarity—as the absolute protagonists of the plot, propelling them into a stubborn and subversive attempt to claim the same freedoms granted to men. These characters were shown to be devoted above all to their own pleasure and desire, whether in the pursuit of libertine sexual pleasure or of marriage for love. Behn’s text clearly illustrates the female attempt to break free from paternal and male will more broadly, yet also the difficulty of such detachment and the deceptive nature of male/female relational dynamics.The desire to rediscover and promote the figure and work of the English author is symbolized by the bronze statue dedicated to her in February 2025 by the Canterbury Commemoration Society in the heart of what is currently considered her native city, created by the sculptor Christine Charlesworth. The work and its creation were described in the presentation by Francesca Saggini, (University of Tuscia, Lucy Cavendish College), who, unfortunately, was unable to attend the conference.Masolino D’Amico (Roma Tre University, Suor Orsola Benincasa University) turned his attention to the “men of Behn,” with a focus on the poet John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, part of the group of noblemen loyal to King Charles II. According to D’Amico’s reconstruction, Rochester was a notorious libertine and unfaithful husband to the young Elizabeth Malet—whom he kidnapped and “raped” in an attempt to render her “unfit” for arranged marriage with other suitors. Rochester spent what little remained of his thirty-three years thanks to her wealth, indulging in the writing of obscene and satirical poetry, as well as in comedies and tragedies, competing with his fellow courtiers.D’Amico’s presentation did not fully acknowledge the importance of Behn’s professional status as a writer who pursued her craft as a career and main source of income, instead evaluating her works solely on stylistic grounds and ultimately he dismissed them as commercial and derivative. Yet, perhaps even against the speaker’s own intentions, it brought us back—finally and fully—into the substance and content of Astrea’s work. Indeed, the portrait of the Earl of Rochester aligns perfectly with that of The Rover, the adventurer who gives his name to Behn’s eponymous play. A libertine devoted to seduction and pleasure, a so-called heartbreaker, a collector of conquests—he is a rather predictable Don Giovanni whom, however, Behn chooses not to punish, or rather, whom she chooses not to have punished by the female protagonists of the play. Instead, the adventurer seems to obtain precisely what he desires, in a game of roles where the male component inevitably prevails. Yet D’Amico’s contribution also had the merit of shedding light on the unbridgeable gap between the male privilege of writing and poetry, and the female necessity to turn writing into a means of economic independence and entrepreneurship. It also, unfortunately, continues to demonstrate the disparity that cuts across literary studies, where much of women’s literature still struggles for recognition and must necessarily rely on the biographical—alongside the literary—to legitimize itself.The text of The Rover, probably the most accomplished and celebrated of Behn’s plays, was examined in detail by Giacomo Giuntini and Luca Scarlini through a new translation published by Cue Press on the occasion of the project. This translation aims, on the one hand, to remain faithful to the original text (including, for example, the division of verse and prose across character roles), allowing a syntax rich in metaphorical complexity to express itself freely; on the other, it seeks to cleanse the play of the ‘sedimentation’—a term used by the director to describe the layers left by previous translations that had obscured the original’s complex metaphorical world, including euphemisms, Elizabethan theatrical influences, and character-specific linguistic nuances.These initiatives emerge not only from declared intentions but also the directorial interpretation offered by Giacomo Giuntini, who elevates Behn to a “good travel companion” in our historical moment when even those achievements we considered secure in terms of equity and equality are being radically called into question—by both rhetoric and numbers.In staging the play, Giuntini opts for a structure based on the simultaneity of scenes and actions and the multiplicity of narrative planes, reintroducing verticality through a bridge reminiscent of the Elizabethan balcony. In a reimagined theatrical space where the audience occupies the four corners of the room, a close-knit ensemble of eighteen actors inhabit the scene continuously. There is no surrender to hierarchical stage roles; even minor parts are allowed to emerge in their full complexity. The actors’ constant motion enlivens the text with pursuits, escapes, and interjections. The four seating areas observe the action from perspectives that are close yet distinct, and their attention is often drawn by direct interaction with the actors as well as by peripheral scenes, where movement alone evokes the setting in the near-total absence of scenic elements or props.The Neapolitan and carnivalesque setting of the play finds full expression in the splendid costumes designed by Andrea Sorrentino, which merge historical fidelity with an abstract, geometric use of color. These costumes reinforce the overall project’s aim: to be at once philological and directed toward reestablishing a dialogue between Behn and the contemporary gaze. The costumes also become the primary dramaturgical device guiding, masking, and confusing the relationships and roles among the characters, in a constant game of exchanges and misunderstandings. Relationships are, without a doubt, the central focus of the direction, leading us through a tangled web of love, passion, and miscommunication, relying on meticulous actor direction, precise role casting, and the musicality inherent in Behn’s text (see fig. 2).The result is a dense production, a relentless play of movement and performance, a carnival of powerful contrasts and passions in which the mask cancels social roles and reveals the alluring face of pleasure and the longing for pleasure—as well as for love. And yet the ending, to contemporary eyes, inevitably jars. Marriage intervenes, as per the most typical and archetypal happy ending, to repair the damage, restore order, and relocate mischief, fantasy, and escapades within the normative confines of the family. Is this matrimonial bond truly the goal that young Helena aspires to, as she rebels against the will of her father and brother—who would have her become a nun—and pursues, even disguised in male attire, the freedom of her own desires? Will the object gained—be it marriage or yet another lover—be enough to replace the pleasure of pursuit and desire itself, the pleasure of freedom itself?Aphra Behn seems to offer a response with the offstage death of Helena in The Rover Part II, though the nature and meaning of this fate remain ambiguous. Giacomo Giuntini chooses to close the piece with a brief scene that foreshadows this tragic destiny—maybe the price of her surrender to marriage? Helena is shown left alone while the others are already celebrating elsewhere; a Helena who now sees herself once again—or perhaps for the first time—in the cumbersome, often uncomfortable and constraining garments of a lady, leaving us, now as then, to ask whether this truly is the only possible ending.