text: Critic Susan Carlson argues that despite much of Behn's work facing harsh criticism, The Rover was "perhaps the least tarnished by critical contention over the originality of her work".
  The play was later adapted by Mr. John Phillip Kemble in 1790 in a production called Love in Many Masks. Kemble's version featured three acts instead of the normal five. This was not the only abbreviation applied to Behn's original work. The final cut of Kemble's piece saw most of the plot that was pertaining to sex, removed. Hellena's speech on rape and unwanted marriage was left out, and the part of the plot relating to the near rape of Florinda by Willmore is only implied. Even though this version of Aphra Behn's The Rover was much more polite and politically correct, it still received criticism that "the ideas are constantly indelicate, and the language frequently gross." This resembled the reception that Behn's Rover received as well, and resulted in The Rover disappearing from the stage until the late 1970s.
  Literary criticism
  Behn has been credited with an improvement in Killigrew's "indulgent and inert" dialogue in the third act of the play.
  Derek Hughes and Janet Todd critiqued the play in The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn.