ABSTRACT
Sir Patient Fancy: A Comedy, Aphra Behn’s first overtly political play, was performed in Dorset Garden on 17 January 1678. In An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, Gerard Langbaine noted that Sir Patient Fancy was based loosely on Moliere’s last play, Le Malade imaginaire, which had been staged in Paris in 1673 and printed in 1675. In Sir Patient Fancy Argan becomes the dissenting citizen, Sir Patient Fancy. Angelique becomes Behn’s Isabella, Cleante Lodwick Knowell, and the blockhead Diafoirus Sir Credulous Easy, another English rustic knight in the line of Blunt from The Rover. The 1678 quarto of Sir Patient Fancy contains a few possible traces of the prompt copy related to the Duke’s Company production at Dorset Garden. The comic duo of Anthony Leigh and James Nokes played the two old City knights; Betterton acted the hero, Wittmore, and Betty Currer made her Behn debut as Lady Fancy, if her possible performance in The Town-Fopp is discounted.
