40 Fun Facts About Oroonoko

What does Oroonoko calmly do while his executioners cut him apart at the end of Aphra Behn's story?

He smokes a pipe, holding it steady until his second arm is cut off. Only then does it drop, and he dies without a groan or a reproach.

Before writing Oroonoko, Aphra Behn was sent to Antwerp by King Charles II in which role?

A spy for the Crown in Antwerp, she was paid so poorly that money had to be borrowed to get her home. The debts pushed her to write for the stage.

Why do the plantation slaves in Oroonoko recognise the prince on his first visit to their houses?

He had sold them: most were captives from his wars whom he traded away. Even so, they fall at his feet and hail him as their king.

Which Roman name does Oroonoko's new owner give him when he arrives in the colony as a slave?

Caesar is the name he bears for the rest of the story. The narrator explains that colonists renamed every slave they bought, finding African names hard to pronounce.

How does a trusted English visitor capture Oroonoko and a hundred of his young courtiers?

A dinner on his ship leaves the guests drunk on punch and wine, and the crew claps them all in irons. The captain was an old acquaintance who had hunted and dined at court.

Oroonoko led later readers to regard Aphra Behn as a precursor of which American novelist?

Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin 164 years after Oroonoko. Behn's narrator mourns one royal captive but lodges no protest against slavery itself.

Biographer Janet Todd argues that Aphra Behn drew on which Shakespeare tragedy for Oroonoko?

Othello, another great African soldier among Europeans, was a play Behn deeply admired. On stage, Oroonoko was likewise played by an actor in blackface.

Aphra Behn, the author of Oroonoko, is remembered as one of the first Englishwomen to do what?

To live by her writing, she turned out hit plays through the 1670s and 1680s, when only John Dryden was more productive.

In a 1667 treaty, England gave up the colony in Oroonoko but kept which future American city?

New York, seized from its founders three years earlier, stayed English under the Treaty of Breda. The narrator of Oroonoko says the king should never have parted with his colony so easily.

Why does Oroonoko kill his wife Imoinda, with her consent, before seeking revenge?

To shield her from his foes: he expects to die in the attempt and fears she would be left to the mob. She pleads for death faster than he can propose it.

In which English colony does the enslaved prince of Oroonoko meet the story's narrator?

Surinam, on the coast of South America, was nicknamed Willoughbyland after its founder and had some fifty sugar plantations by 1663.

The aged king who takes Imoinda for himself in Oroonoko is what relation to the prince?

His grandfather is past a hundred and has outlived every son, thirteen of them killed in battle, which leaves Oroonoko as the only heir.

What news about Imoinda makes Oroonoko determined to win freedom and lead a slave revolt?

She is pregnant, and by the colony's rule the baby would belong to their owners. Oroonoko, the last of his line, cannot bear to father a slave.

In Oroonoko, what does the old king send Imoinda as a command to join his women?

The royal veil covers the chosen woman and marks her as the king's. Refusing it meant death, so Imoinda goes, although she is already promised to Oroonoko.

After selling Imoinda into slavery, what lie does the old king send Oroonoko?

She was put to death, he claims, because in their code an honourable death was kinder than slavery. He knew Oroonoko would never pardon the truth.

Which young Cornish gentleman buys Oroonoko, treats him as a friend and promises to send him home?

Trefry, who manages the absent Lord Governor's estate, is so struck by his captive's bearing that he loves him like a brother. The promise is never kept.

Oroonoko owes his European learning partly to a tutor who was banished from which country?

France had exiled the tutor for his heretical notions. At the African court he taught the young prince morals, language and science.

Chained below deck on the voyage in Oroonoko, how do the prince and his men resist their captor?

They refuse all food until the captain, afraid of losing his valuable cargo, swears to set them ashore at the next landfall. He breaks the oath.

After the deputy governor has Oroonoko whipped, what do his tormentors rub into the open wounds?

Indian pepper is rubbed in until he is close to raving, and he is then chained to the ground. The narrator's party later has him bathed to wash it out.

Critics call Oroonoko an early landmark for which literary theme, later linked with Rousseau?

The noble savage, an outsider whose natural virtue shames civilised Europeans, fits the prince and also the natives, whom the narrator likens to Adam and Eve before the Fall.

Aphra Behn died within a year of publishing Oroonoko and lies buried in which London church?

Westminster Abbey holds her grave in the East Cloister, outside Poets' Corner. Her stone declares that wit can never be defence enough against mortality.

Oroonoko is the last heir to the throne of which warlike African country in Behn's story?

Coramantien echoes Fort Cormantin, a real English slave-trading post on the Gold Coast, in what is now Ghana.

In Aphra Behn's story, how does Imoinda's father, the old general who trained Oroonoko, die?

Saving the prince's life, he bows his head into the path of a shot aimed at Oroonoko. The grieving prince calls on the general's daughter and falls in love.

The narrator of Oroonoko laments that England's king let the colony pass to which rival nation?

The Dutch took the colony soon after the events of the story. The narrator claims they killed or scattered everyone who could have told the hero's history better.

How does Oroonoko's friend Aboan win the help of Onahal, the older woman guarding Imoinda?

He becomes her lover, courting her so convincingly that she presses two large pearls on him and lets both men into the women's quarters at midnight.

Under which new name is Imoinda living when Oroonoko finds her on the same plantation?

Clemene is the name her owners gave her, and every man on the estate is in love with her. She faints at the sight of Oroonoko.

During the slave revolt, what does Imoinda do to the colony's deputy governor?

She shoots him with an arrow in the shoulder, and the tip is poisoned. He survives only because his native mistress sucks the venom from the wound.

Urging the slaves to flee, Oroonoko cites which ancient commander who overcame every obstacle?

Hannibal, he reminds them, cut his way through mountains of solid rock. A few shrubs they could burn should not stop men resolved to die or conquer.

Which playwright turned Oroonoko into a stage tragedy that outshone Behn's book through the 1700s?

Thomas Southerne staged his version within a decade of the book and thanked Behn in the printed foreword. Its comic subplot was later cut from performances.

Oroonoko reached print in 1688, the year of which upheaval that drove King James II from England?

The Glorious Revolution replaced James with William of Orange. Scholars read the story's insistence that a king's word is sacred as a royalist comment on the crisis.

Aphra Behn, the author of Oroonoko, published poems and plays under which pastoral pen name?

Astrea stuck so firmly that Alexander Pope used it decades later, in a couplet mocking how loosely she trod the stage.

In Oroonoko, what is the name of the palace where the old king keeps his wives and mistresses?

The Otan is closed to every man but the king, and entering it uninvited means death. That is why the prince's night visit to Imoinda is so dangerous.

In Oroonoko, who is Onahal, the older woman put in charge of Imoinda at court?

A former wife of the king, she is one of the cast-off mistresses who are made guardians of the younger women. The story says envy often makes them harsh.

What does Oroonoko find inside the heart of the sheep-stealing tiger he hunts down in the colony?

Seven lead bullets sat in the heart, sealed over with scars. The beast had lived on with wounds that the colonists swore should have killed it.

In Oroonoko, how do rival native war captains compete to prove their fitness to lead an army?

They cut their own faces, one slicing off his nose and the other answering with a lip or an eye until one gives up. Oroonoko finds the custom too brutal to applaud.

Oroonoko's narrator says she gave a native feather costume to a London theatre for which play?

The Indian Queen, by Sir Robert Howard and John Dryden, was famous for its lavish staging. The narrator says persons of quality greatly admired the feathered dress.

Which enslaved man questions Oroonoko's escape plan, then fights beside him to the revolt's end?

Tuscan warns that wives and children cannot cross the wilds, then stands with Oroonoko and Imoinda when everyone else gives up. He is whipped alongside his leader.

The hit stage version of Oroonoko made which major change to the character of Imoinda?

She became white on stage, the most striking change in a version that also added a comic subplot to the tragic love story.

In the dedication of Oroonoko, how quickly does Aphra Behn claim to have written the story?

In a few hours, she says, never resting her pen a moment for thought. She offers the speed as an excuse for any faults in how the tale hangs together.

Which novelist urged all women to let flowers fall on the tomb of Oroonoko's author Aphra Behn?

Virginia Woolf made the plea in A Room of One's Own, arguing that Behn had earned women the right to speak their minds.