Like Father, Like Son (play)

Like Father, Like Son, or The Mistaken Brothers is a lost play written by Aphra Behn, first performed by the Duke's Company in 1682.^[1]

Behn based her play, a comedy, on Thomas Randolph's The Jealous Lovers (which was printed in 1640 and published in 1643).^[2]

Pierre Danchin suggests that the title may allude to a notorious Whig ballad that included the words 'Like father, like son', which was accused of inciting regicide (Behn herself was a royalist).^[2]

Like Father, Like Son proved to be such a failure with audiences that it was the only one of Behn's plays never to be printed.^[3] All that survives are its prologue and epilogue, which were printed in 1682.^[3]

References

1. Depledge, Emma, author. Shakespeare's rise to cultural prominence : politics, print and alteration, 1642-1700. p. 73. ISBN 9781108565509. OCLC 1043206588. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)
2. Todd, Janet (2018). The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume 1: Poetry. Routledge. ISBN 978-1351259460.
3. Pollack, Rhoda-Gale (1990). A sampler of plays by women. p. 46. ISBN 0820411728.