ABSTRACT
The Town-Fopp: Or Sir Timothy Tawdrey. A Comedy was part adaptation, part imitation of George Wilkins’s tragicomedy, Miseries oflnforst Marriage performed in 1606. Wilkins’s unequal play, which extends over much greater time and space than Aphra Behn’s, begins with the visit of Sir Francis Ilford and his friends to young Scarborow in Yorkshire where Scarborow has returned to marry Clare. Inevitable miseries follow as the deserted Katherine wanders bereft round the country, managing to produce two sons, and Scarborow, gaming, whoring and drinking with Ilford, wastes in a few months his and his wife’s fortunes, as well as those of his two brothers and a sister. Behn renames Wilkins’s characters. Sir Francis Ilford becomes Sir Timothy Tawdrey, Scarborow the hero becomes Bellmour, the abandoned Clare becomes Celinda, and the unwanted wife Katherine becomes Diana. The Town-Fopp was performed early in the Autumn season of 1676 probably in September.
