As the action speeds forward, the gulling of the last guardian, Prim, takes place like that of the first, in one continuous episode which terminates successfully (V.i). Some modern writers have begun to move towards reading Centlivre's work in its context. First of all, Centlivre gives us a perceptive portrayal of class as well as gender distinctions. Insisting upon justice and equality between the spouses, Defoe nonetheless ensures strict hierarchy with the help of providence and God's will: unruly wives and children are endlessly chastened and punished into appropriate behavior and moderation.
Their talk confirms that Miranda is neither a coquette nor a prude but a woman of sense. Increasingly, these limits made themselves felt as women's benefitting from individualist ideas about equality was undercut by the very configuration the family was assuming.9 The sentimental family, firmly closed off from the public world, came to be the only space deemed appropriate for women. Mrs. Centlivre makes a characteristic alteration of the wife-beating scene from Le Mdecin malgr lui.
Lord Worthy is either made fun of or pitied, but there is one more voice which seems to hint at the possibility of judging him differently: Centlivre's own.
13-8; and Nancy Cotton, Women Playwrights in England, c. 1363-1750 (Lewisburg: Bucknell Univ.
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While the plays of Behn and Centlivre certainly seem conservative to a modern reader, we must also acknowledge, as Moira Ferguson does in First Feminists, that the definition of feminism changes with time and placewhat seems extreme or revolutionary in one age often becomes part of the mainstream culture in another (xi). I have provided better than to venture on dangerous Experiments headlong, which means for Miranda tricking her guardian out of her Writings, thereby guaranteeing her financial independence. The End of the War and Change in Comedy, 1710-1728. In Comedy and Society from Congreve to Fielding, pp.
1, p. ix. In this play Centlivre responds to the gendered positions of self-ownership by attempting to refute difference more optimistically: her lady cannot lose her last stake. Further, Centlivre includes in this play a subplot about the lady scientist Valeria, whose intellectual interests cheerfully, comically, yet somewhat ambivalently suggest the potential for women's equality and full individuality.
See Freeholder, No. For instance, the high point of Scriblerian writing in the late 1720s coincides with a point at which Bolingbroke's charismatic versions of history were persuading Pope's circle that party politics were obsolete.
"Susanna Centlivre - Introduction" Drama Criticism Jelena O. Krstovic. It has been achieved by dubbing intertheatrical works commercial, entertainment, professional, feminine, and in all possible ways both inferior and dangerous to true art. London: Everyman, 1995.
Frank H. Ellis, Sentimental Comedy: Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
At the end of the play, having renounced gaming, he appeals to members of the audience to reform as he has. Centlivre produced her final major comedy in 1718; A Bold Stroke for a Wife successfully played at Lincoln's Inn Fields that year, and continued to be a favorite actor's vehicle well into the next century. Her frantic desperation when she realizes she is losing everything can be fully understood only if we clearly have in mind the value of her investment.
But Martin, despite his wife's plea not to spend the money for which her bones have suffered, starts for the alehouse: Mrs. Centlivre again employs this method of turning the argument in the second act.
Lady Wrangle runs mad with provocation when she discovers the maid has given the cook her poems as scrap, and the cook will not return them for fear of burning his roast beef. Quoted in Cheryl Turner, Living by the Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1992), 44. Hereafter referred to as PIW. She was even asham'd to proclaim her own great Genius, probably because the Custom of the Times discountenanced poetical Excellence in a Female. Palante, foster son of Euphenes, is in love with Lucasia, daughter of Gravello. Nevertheless, Centlivre does display enough concern for social issues to give her plays a Whiggish tenor.
Regarding the general satire on Quakers, Bowyer notes similarities between the Prims and Mrs. Plotwell, a character in Mrs. Centlivre's earlier comedy The Beau's Duel (1702).17 Referring to this resemblance and that which Genest observes, he states that A Bold Stroke for a Wife often draws on earlier comedies. More typical, and possibly providing a subtext and source for The Platonick Lady, is Thomas Wright's The Female Vertuoso's, which satirizes learning as a sign of lust in women: A Woman's Wit, Wright's Sir Maurice Meanwell complains, was always a Pimp to her pleasures.12 Meanwell insists that women should study only to please their husbands and instruct their children: The Women of Old did not read so much, but lived better, Housewifry was all the Knowledge they aspired to; now adays Wives must Write forsooth, and pretend to Wit with a Pox.13 Typically, Centlivre both repeats and attempts to refute cultural prejudices: she holds her platonic lady Lucinda up for admiration, but has this very same character satisfy the popular desire to ridicule learned women by joining in the scorn of Mrs. Prim, the Poetical She-Philosopher, whose Discourse and Writings are fill'd with Honour and the strict Rule of Virtue (17) that she does not follow herself.
For the next decade, it was staged in London principally under Henry Giffard's management, at Goodman's Fields and then at Lincoln's Inn Fields.
In spite of the sexual vulnerability of both Angellica and Valere, however, the ending of the play, like so many reformed rake plots, creates as much ambivalence as it resolves.
See Arthur H. Scouten, The London Stage: 1660-1800, Part Three: 1729-1747 (Carbondale, Ill., 1961), I, lxxxii. Perhaps the most spectacular example of this is that the central spatial metaphor of The Dunciad, the cave that is the dwelling-place for impoverished poets, had been deployed in 1715 by Lewis Theobald, Pope's much-maligned hero in the early Dunciad, in a poem called The Cave of Poverty, to which Pope's imagination is undeniably indebted.4 The point can be further illustrated by another example of Centlivre's work. This is necessarily so since Isabinda is immured in her father's house.
She uses her mastery of masculine language to pursue and attain her goal. In terms of number of performances, Centlivre could fairly be called the most successful English dramatist after William Shakespeare and before the twentieth century. It is almost always careless, abrupt, and without distinction. The second date is today's
Whether or not one likes Blackmore, the cultural politics of this phenomenon are very important: and it is generally true that the Scriblerians opposed them, even if that opposition should not be narrowly construed as Tory.
21 and 275).
All subsequent quotations from Centlivre are taken from this edition. Stathas believes this structure is efficient and harmonious, suggesting that Like tightly developed variations on a theme, the action employs varied devices to convey a repeating motif, without monotony or extraneous complications. The Busie Body is a hilarious commentary on marriage and difference of opinions between parents and children. If the most celebrated dramatization of Whig argument, The Conscious Lovers is by no means the only one.
Show, Musick, Action and Rhetorick, are moving Entertainments But If delight without Restraint, or Distinction, without Conscience or Shame, is the supream Law of Comedy, 'twere well if we had less on't.
A general reconciliation takes place. Thus, unexpected developments are foreshadowed in the approaching interview that Sir George has bought.
Thus Bellair finally advises him to leave off this foolish Whim of Mimicking (the true gentleman) Sir William, who has a plentiful Fortune. Toper, a friend of Manly and Bellmein, offers his cousin, really Mrs. Plotwell, whom he introduces as a highly virtuous Quaker, to be Carefull's wife.
Authorship for Centlivre participates in this economy as well.
In Aphra Behn and Sexual Politics: A Dramatist's Discourse with her Audience, for instance, Cheri Davis Langdell focuses on the addendum to the playsthe prologues, epilogues, and dedications. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. Gale Cengage
[In the follow essay, originally published in the 1703 edition of Love's Contrivance, Centlivre defends her style of playwriting by pointing to her popular success with audiences. His defense of her as a woman playwright obliquely points toward the very real prejudice she faced from critics, actors, theater managers, and others who felt that a woman had no place writing for the theater.
Written by
Within this programme, individual Whig writers contributed more or less effectively, and there should be no embargo on evaluating them as more, or less, effective.
So here's every body happy, I find, but poor Pilgarlick.
His departure prepares the way for general concord.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1959. As is well known, political rivalries in Queen Anne's reign turned on conflicting attitudes toward the war. In this context, the character of Angellica can be seen as a symbol for the commodification of women.
In order to understand the truths that might be abstracted from the plays, we need to look at the economic and social factors that underlie the discourse, that is, the context within which the plays were written.7 Second, even if we agree that there is a moral to be abstracted from the plays, can we be certain of what that moral is and do we know whether or not it is an unmixed dictum?
Oliver Goldsmith, An Essay on the Theatre; or, A Comparison between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy, in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Comedy, pp.
The English Men, to give them their Due, have been more sensible of our natural Abilities, and not so barbarous as to exclude us from the Chance of Reigning, and during the Time it has fell to our Lot, as Mrs. Centlivre says, What cannot England boast from Women? Comedies of intrigue, these are the plays that were None of the sources are in fact very close.
But even though writing generates immaterial property, authorship nevertheless resembles other games of chance: Everyone circulates what he or she has in the hope of accumulating more. 
Sublimity, in the sense of breaking through limits and boundaries, was located in the act of regicide, and an imaginative idiom equal to expressing the liberated self enraptured by access to public modes of debate was Milton's pre-eminent achievement. Couched in a whole string of rhetorical questions, her strategy is to convince him with arguments, to prove her true feelings for him with the help of rational discourse: Cou'd I, think ye, cou'd I put off my Pride so far, poorly to dissemble a Passion which I did not feel? Nothing is more Brutal than to be abandon'd to Appetite.20, Collier is less direct, but even more extreme, about the role of women in this dangerous business of theatre. One would not have to see the play to guess the substance of the lady's last stake; in the dedication, however, Cibber represents himself as down to his last stake in the gamble of theater: Great Sums have been ventur'd upon empty Projects, and Hopes of immoderate Gains; and when those Hopes have fail'd, the Loss has been tyranically deducted out of the Actors Salary (2:196). Both Mr. and Mrs. Sago are flattered that she is associating with quality, but, as Lady Reveller says, Mrs. Sago is only welcome at the basset table because of her money (1:217). The satirized learned lady becomes a fixture in early eighteenth-century drama. She is a great reader of Discartes and the other philosophers, and is confident that Custom would bring them as much in Fashion as Furbeloes. According to Dryden, a situation arising from such behavior is bound to create farce rather than comedy.
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Another counter-strategy used by these two playwrights involves their characterizations of women. Moreover, notwithstanding Centlivre's programmatic assertion that her play's main Drift was to Redicule and Correct one of the most reigning Vices of the Age,7 gambling (duly punished at the end of the play) seems rather to be the informing philosophy which governs the behavior of most charactersand of the ladies in particular. 4.
Such a neat distinction would gain considerable weight in the light of Centlivre's personal allegiance to the social groups on the rise, her staunch support of mercantilism, Whig politics, and constitutional monarchy. Hold! Meanwhile Isabella, who had been contracted by her father to marry Sir Charles (who loves Lucinda) but had also made her own contract to marry Belville, returns in various disguises to tempt Belville back into her arms.
In Act IV, scene 3, of The Dumb Lady Olinda says: And at the boot of your coach must be running an orange wench, presenting your lady a sweet lemon with a love letter in't.
Lady Wealthy in The Gamester is a rich widow who enjoys her independent status.
The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace Imitated gives at best a mixed impression of the Carolean Court and its effects upon poetry: In the Essay on Criticism, the very poem that is adduced by Womersley as the Tory blueprint, there is a long passage devoted to the emasculating effect of Carolean patronage, in which Pope makes clear that the King's venality did not prepare a soil for great art to flourish: Pope's ambivalence is epitomised in his attitude to Rochester and in the views on the period he expressed in several anecdotes recorded by Joseph Spence.13 Later in his introduction, Womersley refers to the tradition that he wishes to discriminate as Scriblerian: and it must surely be agreed that the term Tory is far too blunt an instrument to embrace the partisan allegiances of all the Scriblerians.
A Play secretly introduc'd to the House, whilst the Author remains unknown, is approv'd by every Body: The Actors cry it up, and are in expectation of a great Run; the Bookseller of a Second Edition, and the Scribler of a Sixth Night: But if by chance the Plot's discover'd, and the Brat found Fatherless, immediately it flags in the Opinion of those that extoll'd it before, and the Bookseller falls in his Price, with this Reason, It's a Woman's.
Cibber, after all, produced the play several months after the crash.14.
Centlivre writes about social problemsarranged marriage, gamblingexploring only occasionally personal vice and not morality. The indecency at which hazlitt hints and to which Professor Nettleton objects must be conceded.
In old times we used to sit upon a play here after it was acted; but now the entertainment is turned another way.4 Steele was obviously thinking of the preproduction prejudice that Mottley describes. Scentwell tries to avert the discovery of Sir George by asking for the peel to eat.
), and easily wins Sir Philip's signed consent.
Gestus and Signature in Aphra Behn's The Rover. English Literary History 56 (1989): 519-41.
It is shocking to see how tyranny on one part, and deceit on the other, disgrace most of our old play books. Although Hazlitt has omitted A Bold Stroke for a Wife from his survey, the case is much the same with it as with The Wonder. Since making a living was her chief problem, she was primarily concerned with her plays, dedications, and benefits.
Here again, as in the dumb scene, Miranda manipulates and makes fools of two men at the same time. Jelena O. Krstovic. Party allegiance is only one aspect of a much wider cultural programme that puts politeness, sublime self-expression and appreciation of art, including sublimity in the natural world, into a complex and at times near-paradoxical relationship.
Society, the play suggests, needs to accommodate the basic right of all people in freedom.
Selling themselves, their bodies, and the lives of their children, they represent a material practice far removed from the sentimental ideal described in Defoe's conduct texts.23.
"Susanna Centlivre - Annette Kreis-Schinck (essay date 2001)" Drama Criticism The happy effect of the moral dramas of this ra, in impressing those persons with just sentiments who attend no other place of instruction but a theatre, has not yet erased from the mind of the prejudiced former ill consequences from former plays.
2.
Of all the moments upon which such a reading might focusthe Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot, the Anglo-Norman curia regis, Magna Carta, Simon de Montfort's parliament of 1265, the Act of Supremacy of 1534; 1688 is perhaps the single most edifying. Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (London, 1698; rprt.
In both Boccaccio and Jonson, the silence is enjoined by the husband. Throughout the play, he wants to be part of the action, part of the courtship plot; continually, however, he is marginalized by the other characters. He is often tactless, impudent, obsessive, officious, and inept.
For Centlivre's foreign sources, see Bowyer, The Celebrated Mrs. Centlivre, 78-79. She and Charles go out on a happier note (p. 51).
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