The Rover

The narrator of the play’s Prologue is anonymized as a “person of quality” (2). This is a phrase that reverberates throughout the play as well as the Restoration era, referring to the quality of being born to a socially respected family. With the prologue, Behn subtly hints that the notion of being a “person of quality” as an intrinsic trait and worthwhile metric for judgement is mere social fiction. Without revealing her identity, the narrator is a “person of quality” if she calls herself one, thereby satirizing the importance placed on “quality” and demonstrating that the title means nothing.

At the beginning of the play, there is no question as to who is—according to the social hierarchy—considered to be a “person of quality.” In the first scene, Florinda and Hellena present the problem that Florinda, a woman from a respected family, is not allowed to marry the man she loves because he has no social and financial value. However, as the play goes on and the masks are worn, it becomes impossible to be sure who is and is not a “person of quality” beneath his/her disguise. At times, the characters use this ambiguity to their advantage, but it also creates dangers when characters of quality are accidentally treated by other characters as they would the lower class, showing that there is not only no essential quality that makes a person “of quality,” but also that a strict class hierarchy makes people brutal to those who they deem lesser.