Software originally designed to catch out students who are plagiarising other people’s work has revealed that the practice has a lengthy pedigree. After analysing a recently discovered text of the anonymous 17th century play The Dutch Lady, experts have found it to be the source of two works by the first successful female playwright, Aphra Behn.
Darren Freebury-Jones, an academic at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, used digital technology on the text of The Dutch Lady and told the Observer he was taken aback to find strong linguistic links to two plays by Behn. He described the playwright (who lived between 1640 and 1689) as a dramatist who “broke down barriers and continues to serve as a literary role model”.
However, he added that his research “firmly establishes” The Dutch Lady, thought to date from the 1670s, as a source for Behn’s plays The Roundheads and The City Heiress of 1681 and 1682 respectively. “It confirms beyond reasonable doubt that Behn had either read or seen this play, and that she recycled many phrases from it,” he added.
The Dutch Lady, set in 1650s London, features a young, beautiful Dutch widow called Fuscara Gabriella who, with the help of her clever servant Violetta, seduces every male character in the play – from an old miser to a foolish young lawyer. The men are as attracted by her “charms” as her rumoured wealth, though she is actually so poor that she is on the verge of having to pawn her clothes.
Freebury-Jones tested all three texts for copied language using software that highlights all word combinations. In The Roundheads, he found “many rare and unique word combinations” shared with The Dutch Lady, often in similar contexts or with similar language. For example, the phrase “resist her charms” appears at the end of a verse line in both plays.
Among comparative examples between The Dutch Lady and The City Heiress, Fuscara complains that “Men are so cunning grown,” that they are difficult to entice; Charlotte similarly laments that “Men are grown so cunning in their / Trade of love.”
Freebury-Jones added that he and colleagues had ensured that the shared phrases were not the result of dependence on a common source such as a play or pamphlet predating their dating limits. They are now working on identifying the author of the original play, The Dutch Lady.
