Post 2: Notes for Widow Ranter

Prompt 2: Offer a short analysis and interpretation of one of the characters in The Widow Ranter. Tell us how an actor might articulate this character, and how this role helps us understand the trajectory of the play more clearly. You might imagine yourself as a director and provide notes for an actor preparing to play the role, or you might provide a quick description of the character as she or he would appear in a play program. Here again, a primary or secondary source may help you make your argument.

I imagine the Widow Ranter to be an incarnation of Aphra Behn herself. She is low-born, practically penniless, and coarse. However, she find love and money in the colonies, which elevates her status and outlook, giving her character hope. Her crossdressing throughout the play serves to reflect her many ambitions and also serves to make her stand out on stage as “other”, or a “stray” from the herd; she is the center of the play’s attention, at least when she is on stage. The role of the Widow Ranter is to keep the play’s momentum growing, and it signifies to the audience that this is a tragicomedy. The Widow Ranter provides comic relief from it’s more austere characters, as witnessed through the contrast in her dress and her wonton wit. In order to dress the Widow Ranter to best embody her character, I would give her graying, undone, frayed/ frizzy hair, played by younger looking actor, her gaze would be crazed and strained, her mannerism bold and manly, her clothes shabby and masculine (brown, loose trousers, a tan collared shirt with pockets, a gray shawl, gray stockings up to the knee, a small satchel, a cropped green vest, and rope belt. This characterization was based on a secondary source that provided a description of Royalist culture of the time. I used this source and my own cultural knowledge and contextualization to come up with an adequate physical description of the Widow Ranter. I believe her character sets the tone of the play and this should be reflected in the clothing and mannerisms.

Source:

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/53479