Isabella turns to this last resort out of love and resistance to her childhood betrothal to Sir Charles: I own I have gone beyond my Sex and Quality, she confesses, but it was to purchase Liberty, and break a forc'd Contract with that perfidious Man who paid his Vows to [Lucinda] (66). The scene shows him at his best and worst. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994. Steele's point is not very convincing. Men and women of sense would not think of marrying for money or of making love without feeling it regardless of the stakes, though they admit that riches are the common Chance of Knaves and Fools and Fortune is rarely favourable to a Man of Sense. Clarinda and Emilia hesitate to don breeches as a means of showing up Sir William, for they fear that this masquerade will not be reputable for Women of nice Honour, but they do it as a means of securing justice for themselves. Pointing out John Loftis's false opposition in calling Centlivre thoroughly professional, much concerned with the money to be made from her plays. Similarly, in The Busie Body, Mirandabecause of the way she orchestrates the action of the play through languagecan be read as a stand-in for the writer. Through this intervention, Angellica insists that Valere cannot both have her and commodify her, for once he uses her picture as capitalin the way that he has been using their impending marriage as capital by borrowing against ithe no longer possesses proof of their constant love. The cast of Love's Contrivance was strong enough to please the dramatist herself. She uses her mastery of masculine language to pursue and attain her goal. Gale Cengage Lady Wealthy, Angellica's rich sister, declares the profligate Valere unsuited to Angellica's small fortune, but thinks he would make a good match for her and the vast estate her dead husband left her. Pearson, Prostituted Muse, 214-15; the sixth is an ex-mistress, who, as a result, cannot be placed in any particular social category. Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. 9 Shuter's choice proved sound; the receipts for his benefit were the largest of the season.10, In 1762, Henry Woodward returned to London theater after an absence of several seasons. A more central position in the play's economy is given her by F. P. Lock, who counterpoints gambling and education, observing that the educated either see nothing attractive in the card game, or if they do play they know when to stop (54).12 Detached though she may seem, however, she is still part of the game. Her Whig sympathies, anti-Catholic beliefs, and commercial success also made Centlivre a target for the era's keenest satirist, Alexander Pope. The Prostitute and the Playwright in the Comedies of Aphra Behn. Women's Studies 15 (1988): 23-42. Word Count: 6493. Miranda and Sir Jealous are, after Marplot, the most notable characters in the play. Accordingly, Holland interprets Wycherley's, Etherege's, and Congreve's use of this device as a mirror of court life.40 He also believes disguise has more profound comic significance for these writers: it reflects the discrepancy between appearance and nature which the new science had disclosed.41 In A Bold Stroke for a Wife disguise lacks this serious intellectual function. There can be little doubt that the character of Marplot was the chief reason for The Busy Body's popular success. Then the propaganda for improvement in the status of women increased, some even believing that Queen Anne could be persuaded to found a college for women. 106-110. The first pair is Sir George Airy and Miranda. Richard Bevis, in The Laughing Tradition (1980), claims that the period was not dominated by sentiment, and concludes that earlier critics were mistaken in their conclusion because they did not have access to the full repertory of plays.18 Hume in The Rakish Stage (1983) asserts that the sentimental was never dominant in eighteenth-century comedy and says that Goldsmith's lamentation about the disappearance of humor from the stage is plainly nonsense.19. 7-24. There he contracted an admiration for Spanish customs, especially their treatment of women. Mrs. Centlivre has characterized him in the list of the dramatis personae as A sort of a silly Fellow, Cowardly, but very Inquisitive to know every Body's Business, generally spoils all he undertakes, yet without Design; but that is both an understatement and unfair. While he does not, like Southerne, rewrite the plot to disinherit his female precursorin fact, he barely rewrites it at all8his neglect witnesses a lack of obligation even to dispute borders. It will be the aim of the following chapter to pay particular attention to Centlivre's inconsistencies in respect to women who are, or are going to be, wives. Bateson also remarks on Centlivre's skillful use of disguise and mistaken identity in comic plots.]. Subsequent references are to this edition and will be given in the text. Quoted in Cheryl Turner, Living by the Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1992), 44. That cleverly masked reality triumphs over unrealistic eccentricity is to be expected in the Augustan world to which this play belongs. A fine example of the gambler's economy is given by Sir James when fending off Lady Lucy's tirade against gambling. La femme du banquier, dore et triomphante, coupe orgueilleusement la duchesse indigente. During this act, the Colonel also finds a means to trick the Prims. 2005 eNotes.com Word Count: 4072. Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, 1698; reprinted from the 3rd ed. Giving these ideas a patriotic twist, which Centlivre was later to use in her plays, Rowe in a 1696 work establishes a clear geographical distinction: here's a plain and open design to render us meer Slaves, perfect TURKISH WIVES, without Properties, or Sense, or Souls; and are forc'd to Protest against it, and appeal to all the World, whether these are not notorious Violations on the Liberties of Free-born English Women?7 In distinguishing between a notoriously unfree country and proverbial English liberty, and by tying these differences to the question of a woman's status, Rowe gives her reader no choice but to answer her provocative question with a decisive yes, which, at least linguistically, implies that women in England are Free-born and enjoy Liberties., Another writer, the anonymous author of The Hardships of the English Laws in relation to Wives (1735), puts the case in less polemic and patriotic but in more jurisprudential terms when she (or is it he?) Freeman enters the action against the eccentrics in miniature outwitting games, gulling Periwinkle (III.i) and Tradelove (IV.i and iv) in acts of feigned friendship. Sir George keeps him out with the point of his sword while the parson finishes the ceremony. Interference of all kinds, including that of Marplot, the well-intentioned but inept busybody of the title, is shown to be powerless to divert the course of true love. Twice he gains entry, and twice Mrs. Lovely almost upsets his plans because she fails to recognize him. 116-21. But it is impossible to remain angry with him for long, as Sir George and Charles find at the end of the play: The amusing but inoffensive Marplot, as Jess Byrd calls him, is obviously designed not for reform but for laughter.14. Sir George's friend is Charles Gripe, Sir Francis's son. The standard account is Richard Southern, Changeable Scenery (London, 1952). Frushell's evidence offers some suggestive leads from which to begin a revaluation of Centlivre's work according to a different perspective. At the extremes are the views, on the one hand, that the ascription of literary worth is the most important task for literary analysis and that this is based on aesthetic qualities intrinsic to the text; and on the other, that all value is produced by culturally-determined criteria extrinsic to the work, recognition of which renders evaluation pointless. But by the end of Fainwell's second visit, when they last appear, he has resourcefully overcome their discord. It is the middle-class ethic in operationwork hard, be smart, and success in matters of love and money cannot be too far away, an ethic clearly in operation in Centlivre's A Bold Stroke for a Wife. A. M. Sheridan Smith [New York: Pantheon Books, 1972], pp. There are many examples of such transient success amongst Centlivre's contemporaries, including all the writers of the comedy of sensibility, and most of the satirists and poets of the time. In a world of eccentrics where things are too much what they seem, only disguise can invert the orders of appearance and reality. date the date you are citing the material. At one point Mrs. Centlivre changed May's As if 'twere writ in Gallobelgicus to as if they had been Spectators of his End. Disregarding dates, Strube suggests that here Mrs. Centlivre is punning on the title of Addison and Steele's Spectator. SOURCE: Rosenthal, Laura J. As Diamond says about The Rover, As a woman writer in need of money, Behn was vulnerable to accusations of immodesty; to write meant to expose herself, to put herself into circulation; like Angellica, to sell her wares. The man she really loves, Charles Gripe, disguises himself as Babinetto, and the marriage goes ahead, with Sir Jealous's oblivious paternal consent. It is my contention that only with the reemergence of the chance to portray women of sense and to make them visible even in the public domain, did female writers return to prominence in the history of drama. Prince and Mrs. Porter, the distinguished tragic actress. To differentiate between late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century comedy can, of course, lead to artificial generalizations which obscure the continuity of a tradition. James Kinsley (Oxford, 1958), I, 461. The asides and the interruptions prevent the scene from becoming monotonous without dissipating the rising tension. Keeping in mind Centlivre's need to earn her living, and her awareness of the need to please the Town, let us turn to a second aspect of the social context within which she wrote: the changing attitude toward women playwrights. British Museum, Additional MS 5145 C, fol. Their comments, again, turn to the theme of the poverty of the fashionable world. The Ministry soon entered into negotiations with the enemy which, after long delays, terminated in 1713 in the Treaty of Utrecht. During this same discourse, Lady Reveller sarcastically suggests that Valeria should, bestow your fortune in founding a college for the study of philosophy, where none but women should be admitted (251-2). The reforms in The Basset Table are similarly pragmatic. Sandwiched between the second and third parts of the Tradelove affair is the second part of the Periwinkle plot, in which the Colonel uses the bait-and-switch maneuver to get Periwinkle to sign a marriage consent instead of a property lease. "Susanna Centlivre - Introduction" Drama Criticism Here is the plot. Rogers, Katharine M. Feminism in Eighteenth-Century England. Comparing the play to similar works by male playwrights, the authors highlight Centlivre's unique take on the empowering possibilities offered to women at the gaming table.]. Opening up the canon by giving a voice to writers who had been on the receiving end of summary justice, women writers prominent amongst them, was one of the book's endeavours, but this entails a very difficult methodological challenge. In the next section, I will suggest that the Whiggish thinking of this Oxford school presents some difficulties, and I will try to clarify the central terms of the debate about politics and cultural politics in this era: the focus is now on the word Whig.8 Finally, homing in on Centlivre, I will deploy her playwriting career as a test case for the positions taken in the earlier sections. The last date is today's Although not identical, his two visits and Mrs. Lovely's responses to them reinforce the sense of repeating action observed in the gulling of Sir Philip and Prim. This displays the intellectual capabilities of women, demonstrating that they can think with their heads and not give in to the irrationalities of the heart. In The Gamester, Centlivre's Valere places himself in sexual danger by his gamblingnot exactly in the same way as do women in so many representations, but enough to invite comparison. A similar device appears in The Female Vertuoso's, but in Wright's play a servant undertakes this risk on behalf of her lady. Colley Cibber grew rich, famous, and powerful as a flamboyant hack, a position made possible by both his gender and the gender anxieties he provoked. But Marplot has a final plot to mar. Because they wrote plays in a period that undervalued their abilities and their contributions, both of these dramatists attempted to create a positive space wherein the woman playwright could exist. Steele's praise probably contributed to the play's success: The plot and incidents of the play are laid with that subtlety of spirit which is peculiar to females of wit, and is very seldom well performed by those of the other sex, in whom craft in love is an act of invention, and not, as with women, the effect of nature and instinct.5 Steele seems to mean that in The Busy Body the incidents and intrigues appear natural, not forced. My Lady Umbray's Coach there. Hey! Her satire on beaux and fops is freshly handled, though the use of cowards who will not fight is not new, as readers of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Congreve know. Ten pounds was a common but minimum fee for drama manuscripts at the time. Entertainments of Singing by Mr. Leveridge and others, and Entertainments of Dancing by the Famous du Ruell and others, as express'd in the Bills at large. It was also repeated on June 18 and 22, on the second occasion for the benefit of Mrs. Campion and for the entertainment of the Envoy Extraordinary from the King of Denmark and several other foreign ministers and ladies of quality. Although the Whigs do not believe in democracy (that would be chaos), they believe that the individual has the right to resist tyranny, to resist any government official or function that would deprive him or her of any of these rights. Drury Lane, 16 May 1776. It is clear that Centlivre agreed to remain anonymous because of her need to earn her living. When the women in these two plays reform, the results of their reformation are even more ambivalent. The second is the date of John Loftis, The Politics of Drama in Augustan England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 154-61; Lock, Susanna Centlivre, 93-107. This departure from dramatic tradition is remarkable since the tone of English literature around the turn of the century is intensely urbanemore so, perhaps, than during any other period: this was the time of the literary importance of the coffee houses, when Dryden held forth at Will's and Addison at Button's; and this was the time when the Kit-Cats (Whig poets and politicians) dined at Christopher Cat's, and when the Scriblerus Club met in Dr. Arbuthnot's apartment in St. James's Palace. When it finally became possible to see and to hear women engage in rational as well as emotional discourse and to participate in social and political as well as private affairs, the female playwrights of the twentieth century began once more to play an important part in the theater. This was another successful comedy played regularly in Londons theatres until the end of the century. Jacqueline Pearson is self-consciously bolder: Her best comedies are the most brilliant of the century: I would not myself exclude even Goldsmith or Sheridan from this. Accessed 6 Apr. beginning again in Heroics!Sir George, don't you remember how little Fruit your last prodigal Oration produc'd? While he continues in the same vein, Miranda insists on a sensible, matter-of-fact approach: Prithee no more of these Flights; for our Time's but short, and we must fall to Business: Do you think we can agree on that same terrible Bugbear, Matrimony, without heartily repenting on both Sides! (2:108). Donald F. Bond, 3 vols. The Gamester and The Basset-Table, though primarily experiments in the fashionable sentimentalism, had shown that Mrs. Centlivre's real talent lay rather in a lively reproduction of the manners and atmosphere of contemporary society. At the end of the play she agrees to marry Lovewell and promises to banish from my House that senseless Train of Fop Admirers, which I only kept to feed my Vanity (1:186). This impression is further strengthened because only in II.ii and V.i do all four guardians assemble. 1715; first performed 1724, The Cruel Gift: or The Royal Resentment 1716, The Masquerade. You have tortur'd me enough, take Pity now dear Tyrant, and let my Sufferings end (3.375-6). Along this straight line, however, the place The Basset Table finds is only apparently a comfortable one. Like the man of sense, the sensible woman is generous, courageous, judicious, and constant in love. She was married twice before 1700, but neither marriage lasted much longer than a year and neither provided her with any financial security. When, for example, Mrs. Lovely feigns a Quaker conversion (V.i), her antics are farcical; however, the plot justifies this pose and its comic mode and thus makes both credible. Vol. 161-234. There is a similar character in Wycherley's The Gentleman Dancing Master (1672), in which James Formal renames himself Don Diego and prides himself on being as grave, grum, and jealous, as any Spaniard breathing.8 This is Sir Jealous's character in a nutshell. Pope's Essay on Criticism is compared unfavourably to this fustian because it can be read as rejecting the Whig manifesto embodied in Blackmore's lines. They were also, as I noted above, extremely popular plays, so popular in fact that their writers subsequently penned sequels to them: The Rover, Part II (1681) and Mar-Plot (1710). Centlivre commonly distinguishes her own works as more original and thus her own; Wou'd-be, however, trails around after gentlemen of fashion and literally takes notes on their clothes in order to have his tailor reproduce them. Even this individuality, however, often becomes compromised in some way by the end of the play. From a gender-specific point of view, her dramatic work might be called a borderline case that displays a broader variety of speaking positions for both men and women, while at the same time fighting a rearguard action against inevitable changes and limitations within and beyond the world of drama. J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 115. To prevent monotony, Mrs. Centlivre varies the tempo of the outwitting games. 113-4). Another word on patriarchal authority as represented by fathers is necessary here. Science is Valeria's stake, her own form of investment (Where Fortune in my Power, she says, she would be ready to bestow her capital to found a college where women could study Philosophy) towards sexual self-ownership and inalienable individuality. It must be the Lady's fault, if she does not wear the unfashionable Name of Wife easie, when nothing but Complaisance and good Humour is requisite on either side to make them happy (p. 58). William Taverner's The Female Advocates; Or, The Frantic Stock-Jobbers, first acted in 1713 though it was altered from an earlier, unacted play of 1705,16 has a more fully developed though not much more subtle intrigue: a young couple in love scheme to frustrate the plan of the young woman's guardian to marry her to an old but rich citizen, so that they can themselves be married. Instead of fighting each other, they both question Willmore's intentions and character. No longer did the Tory land-owner dominate the profession. It is significant that Bowyer should assert that Centlivre was eternally indebted to Steele for disempowering her and allaying audiences' fears of an unnatural success by reducing her writing to the effect of nature and instinct. I'll raise the World in my defence (5.84-85), rather than keep quiet and cover up her loss under the appearance of virtue. John Loftis, The London Theaters in Early-Eighteenth-Century Politics, Huntington Library Quarterly, XVIII (1955), 365-93. Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men: Collected from Conversation, ed. In forced marriageslike the one Florinda is destined for at the beginning of the playwomen usually lose this struggle. They have, it must be admitted, no intellectual or literary significance; the writing is never distinguished and the characterization, with the single exception of Marplot in The Busie Body, is conventional and superficial. In the following pages I look at these two plays in relation to the question of the accuracy of the label sentimental comedy, a label that has not been applied to Centlivre's other plays. The Prostituted Muse. The sentimental woman owes her construction, I would propose, to the gender norms being established by the beginning of the eighteenth century. The presentation of Henry Fielding's The Mock Doctor, a rather close adaptation of Le Mdecin malgr lui, in 1732, ended any further usefulness it may have had for the stage. It may, however, have received some support in the characters and records of the few professional authoresses the period possessed. Bowyer, Celebrated Mrs. Centivre, 177-83. 6 Apr. In her younger days she appears to have been something of an adventuress. Critical opinion of Centlivre as a minor dramatist restricted the study of her works to The Busie Body, The Wonder, and A Bold Stroke for a Wife well into the twentieth century, but modern reassessments of her talent and importance have begun to increase the standard Centlivre canon. In 1776, after Woodward performed his famous Marplot for the last time, the printed editions43 change markedly; one might speculate that they are changed to show or suggest his alterations to the text, now that they had ceased to be a trade secret of his. Natural philosophy a whimsy! See her chapter, Marketing the Provinces: Elizabeth Singer Rowe and the Non-Metropolitan Context in Female Authorship in Early Eighteenth-century England (forthcoming). The process of the elevation of plays into literature is part of a hegemonic move upon the theatre. Lady Wealthy escapes commodification as well, for her admirer Lovewell falsely and gallantly claims that he had, out of jealousy, spread a spurious rumor that the lady had given money to Valere, compromising his own reputation to save hers. Centlivre, Susanna, 1667?-1723. SOURCE: Kreis-Schinck, Annette. Irus, really Eugenio himself in disguise, informs Gravello that Eugenio is alive, and then, suspecting the secrecy which his father enjoins upon him, gives the information also to Pirro, who employs him in writing to poison Eugenio. Persuaderethe art of rhetoric is of no avail to a female character. Charles arrives at the street outside Sir Jealous's house. Written by Mrs Susanna Centlivre. Unwittingly or not, he staked more than his money. Perhaps this was why Wilks flung his Part into the Pitt; only in the dumb scene does Sir George have a dominant role. Centlivre's plays stand out in this period for their positive representation of friendship between women. Dryden had used the same antithesis as Steele in his ode on Anne Killigrew: Steele's praise may have gratified Centlivre as a woman: it can hardly have pleased her as a writer. Perhaps Centlivre's plays are best described as good fun, but her Whiggish assumptions resonate through the laughter. The Prostitute and the Playwright in the Comedies of Aphra Behn, Behn creates the possibility of a woman's version of sexual conquest [in this prologue]. A true descendant of Shadwell's Gimcrack, Periwinkle also recalls stereotyped characters of virtuosos in The London Spy (Pt. Centlivre, in her dedication to The Platonick Lady (1707), expands upon this analysis when she chastises. This may have given Mrs. Centlivre the idea for the scene in which Martin enters Selfwill's house as a vendor of oranges, the cheapness of which attracts Sir Toby. Violante, in The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret, fights such a twin battle. It signals that there is a dimension of her successits long durationthat cannot be accounted for as merely shrewdness and observation of her market; he is content to ignore the challenge this presents to his account, and dub her unwittingly prescient. Lucinda, however, derides Mrs. Prim's hypocrisy, not her learning itself. Nevertheless, the Tories, around 1708, began to oppose the war with France, arguing that the Whigs and the Duke of Marlborough, general of the English army, had already beaten the French and were pursuing the war only for personal advantage. She does not regret her decision, she says, because a woman who is separated from her husband has no social life: Some Neighbours' Wives have but too lately shewn, / When Spouse had left 'em, all their Friends were flown (1:258). Her luck did not change with Love's Contrivance: or, Le Medecin Malgre Lui, which was first acted anonymously at Drury Lane on Friday, June 4, 1703. 25. Mrs Centlivre's comedies occupy the position in the literature of the eighteenth century that is now filled by the detective story. 2023 , Last Updated on June 8, 2022, by eNotes Editorial. It is, however, better written than The Wonder and the plot is easier to follow. Locke's treatises may represent women as outside the position of ownership, but as Pocock points out, a case might be made for the view that women could expect more mobility, and even active agency, from a commercially conceived society than from the alternative model of the masculine and self-contained classical patriots.25 A gender ideology representing the alienability of women's sexuality, as opposed to the inalienability of male sexuality, commonly emerges to offset this potential for equality. Of Fainwell 's second visit, when they last appear, he staked more than his money point Centlivre. Conversation, ed appears to have been something of an adventuress a year and provided... The position in the Treaty of Utrecht Florinda is destined for at the time in two! Miranda and Sir Jealous are, after Marplot, the place the Basset Table are similarly pragmatic Spectators. Comedies of Aphra Behn rhetoric is of no avail to a different perspective to recognize him remain anonymous of... 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