The Town-Fop, or, Sir Timothy Tawdrey

by Aphra Behn

From the Country Squire, who yet had never knownThe long-expected Joy of being in Town;Whose careful Parents scarce permitted HeirTo ride from home, unless to neighbouring Fair;At last by happy Chance is hither led,To purchase Clap with loss of Maidenhead;Turns wondrous gay, bedizen'd to Excess;Till he is all Burlesque in Mode and to talk loud in Pit, grows wily too,That is to say, makes mighty Noise and Show.So a young Poet, who had never beenDabling beyond the Height of Ballading;Who, in his brisk Essays, durst ne'er excelThe lucky Flight of rhyming Doggerel,Sets up with this sufficient Stock on Stage,And has, perchance, the luck to please the Age.He draws you in, like cozening Citizen;Cares not how bad the Ware, so Shop be fine.As tawdry Gown and Petticoat gain more(Tho on a dull diseas'd ill-favour'd Whore)Than prettier Frugal, tho on Holy-day, When every City-Spark has leave to play, —Damn her, she must be sound, she is so gay; So let the Scenes be fine, you'll ne'er enquireFor Sense, but lofty Flights in nimble Wire.—What we present to Day is none of these,But we cou'd wish it were, for we wou'd please,And that you'll swear we hardly meant to here's no Sense; Pox on't, but here's no Show;But a plain Story, that will give a TasteOf what your Grandsires lov'd i'th' Age that's past.

Genres: Plays

194 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1676

About the author

Aphra Behn, or Ayfara Behn, of the first professional women authors in English on Britain wrote plays, poetry, and her best known work, the prose fiction Oroonoko (1688).

Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the Restoration and was one of the female. Her contributed to the amatory genre of literature. People sometimes refer to Delarivier Manley, Eliza Haywood, and her as part of "the fair triumvirate of wit."

In reckoning of Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf, more important total career of Behn produced any particular work. Woolf wrote, "All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn … for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." Victoria Mary Sackville-West called Behn "an inhabitant of Grub Street with the best of them, … a phenomenon never seen and … furiously resented." Felix Shelling called her "a very gifted woman, compelled to write for bread in an age in which literature … catered habitually to the lowest and most depraved of human inclinations. Her success depended upon her ability to write like a man." Edmund Gosse remarked that "the George Sand of the Restoration" lived the bohemian life in London in the 17th century as Paris two centuries later.