swords, arrest
Belvile, who has returned at the noise, as the assailant, conveying him
by Antonio's orders to the Viceroy's palace. Antonio, in the course of
conversation, resigns Florinda to his rival, and Belvile, disguised as
Antonio, obtains Florinda from Don Pedro. At this moment Willmore
accosts him, and the Spaniard perceiving his mistake, soon takes his
sister off home. Angelica next comes in hot pursuit of Willmore, but
they are interrupted by Hellena, dressed as a boy, who tells a tale of
the Rover's amour with another dame and so rouses the jealous courtezan
to fury, and the twain promptly part quarrelling. Florinda, meanwhile,
who has escaped from her brother, running into an open house to evade
detection, finds herself in Ned Blunt's apartments. Blunt, who is
sitting half-clad, and in no pleasant mood owing to his having been
tricked of clothes and money and turned into the street by a common
cyprian, greets her roughly enough, but is mollified by the present of a
diamond ring. His friends and Don Pedro, come to laugh at his sorry
case, now force their way into the chamber, and Florinda, whom her
brother finally resigns to Belvile, is discovered. She is straightway
united to her lover by a convenient priest. Willmore is then surprised
by the apparition of Angelica, who, loading him with bitter reproaches
for his infidelity, is about to pistol him, when she is disarmed by
Antonio, and accordingly parts in a fury of jealous rage, to give place
to Hellena who adroitly secures her Rover in the noose of matrimony.

SOURCE.

The entire plan and many details of both parts of _The Rover_ are taken
openly and unreservedly from Tom Killigrew's _Thomaso, or The Wanderer_,
an unacted comedy likewise in two parts, published for the first time in
his collected works by Henry Herringman (folio, 1663-4). It is to be
noticed, however, that whilst Killigrew's work is really one long play
of ten closely consecutive acts, the scene of which is continually laid
in Madrid, without any break in time or action, Mrs. Behn, on the other
hand, admirably contrives that each separate part of _The Rover_ is
complete and possesses perfect unity in itself, the locale being
respectively, and far more suitably, in two several places, Naples and
Madrid, rather than confined to the latter city alone. Mrs. Behn,
moreover, introduces new characters and a new intrigue in her second
part, thus not merely sustaining but even renewing the