'REALITY, AND MATTER OF FACT': TEXT AND CONTEXT IN APHRA BEHN'S "THE FAIR JILT"

The background and historical context of Aphra Behn's The Fair Jilt (1688), a narrative set in Antwerp, has occasioned a fair amount of critical interest. Janet Todd in her 1996 biography of Behn was the first to establish the author's indebtedness to a sensational criminal case involving one François Louis Tarquini, his wife Maria Theresia Van Mechelen, and her sister Anna Louisa. Assembling and interpreting a number of unexplored legal documents preserved in the Antwerp City Archives and the State Archives in Brussels, we aim to provide a much fuller and more accurate account of the events which inspired the composition of The Fair Jilt. Behn may have derived some of this information from two printed sources which have so far escaped scholarly notice: the Hollandsche Mercurius, a Dutch yearbook which reported on the Tarquini court case, and an extensive, apologetic pamphlet authored or commissioned by Maria Theresia van Mechelen, and published in 1663. While primarily focused on the background and contexts, this article also seeks to explain Behn's major adaptations of the historical facts, including her treatment of the protagonist Prince Tarquin, whom she appears to have fashioned in accordance with her beliefs in the spiritual and moral superiority of the Stuart line.