SOURCE: “Writing to Please the Town,” in Susanna Centlivre, Twayne Publishers, 1979, pp. 31-45.

[In this excerpt, Lock examines Centlivre's first four plays, The Perjured Husband, The Beau's Duel, The Stolen Heiress, and Love's Contrivance.The critic judges these works “experiments” which show “an inexperienced dramatist gradually working toward the kind of play that would satisfy both her artistic conscience and her desire for popular success.”]

Centlivre was a pragmatic dramatist: not for her Ben Jonson's defiant “By—'tis good, and if you lik't, you may.”¹ Instead, she would have agreed with Samuel Johnson that “The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, / For we that live to please, must please to live.”² In the Preface to Love's Contrivance, Centlivre recognized that “Writing is a kind of Lottery in this fickle Age, and Dependence on the Stage as precarious as the Cast of a Die; the Chance may turn up, and a Man may write to please the Town, but 'tis uncertain, since we see our best Authors sometimes fail.” The public capriciousness is expressed more graphically in the Prologue to the same play: “Poets like Mushrooms rise and fall of late.” The audiences of Centlivre's day were less homogeneous than they had been, and it was increasingly difficult to predict what would be popular.

Centlivre's first four plays were her apprenticeship in this uncertain art of writing to please the town. She experimented with tragedy, “genteel” comedy, romantic comedy, and farce. Only the last of the four, Love's Contrivance, was a success. In the search for the elusive formula that would hit the public taste, Centlivre also experimented with mixed genres. The Prologue to Love's Contrivance describes the play as “A hodge podge Dish serv'd up in China Ware,” the dramatic equivalent of the “fam'd Ragoust” and “new invented Salate” that were currently in vogue at the most fashionable eating houses. But mixing genres can create new problems. A recurrent failure in these early plays is Centlivre's inability to forge the separate elements into a coherent whole. This problem recurs throughout Centlivre's dramatic career. Her last play is even more of a “hodge podge Dish” than her first. Some of her plays do achieve a satisfying unity, but in others she seems not to have considered it an important effect. She preferred variety and contrast, even at the cost of incongruity.

These four early plays must be judged as the experiments they were. They show us an inexperienced dramatist gradually working toward the kind of play that would satisfy both her artistic conscience and her desire for popular success. A second round of experiments would be needed before she achieved this aim with The Busy Body in 1709.

I THE PERJURED HUSBAND (1700)

Centlivre's first play, The Perjured Husband: or, the Adventures of Venice, was completed by March 1700. In a letter of that month, Abel Boyer wrote her that “Mr. B—has perus'd your Play, and thinks the Catastrophe too abrupt.”³ It was produced at Drury Lane in the fall. The date of the first performance is not known, but it was published on October 22. According to the Preface, it “went off with general Applause” and only the lack of “good Actors and a full Town” prevented it reaching a sixth night. But this general approval had not been unanimous. Some critics had been “pleas'd to carp at one or two Expressions” used in the subplot. Centlivre makes a spirited defense of these “Expressions” as being suitable to the characters who spoke them. She insists that the stage only reflects life and suggests that the reformers should turn their attention to the manners and morals of the town itself. When the town itself is reformed, the stage will follow its example.

The Perjured Husband is technically original but morally derivative. The main plot is in the tradition of the “love and honor” tragedy, and the subplot is a variant on the cuckolding intrigue characteristic of restoration comedy. The play is set in Venice at carnival time: the season when women enjoy greater license than during the rest of the year. This setting is important only in the subplot, where the carnival atmosphere is reminiscent of that in Aphra Behn's The Rover (1677). During the carnival, intrigue is endemic, and disguise and deception—convenient for the comic dramatist—are the order of the day. The tragic plot is only nominally localized: it could take place anywhere.

The tragic action is a story of entangled love. Bassino has come to Venice on a diplomatic mission from his native Turin, where he has left his wife Placentia. In Venice, however, he has fallen in love with Aurelia. She returns his love, despite her previous betrothal to Alonzo. Bassino conceals the fact that he is already married and plans a bigamous marriage with Aurelia. Bassino has a faithful friend, Armando, who tries to persuade him to give up Aurelia and return to Placentia. Thus the dramatic situation is similar to Dryden's All for Love (1677), although it is worked out on a smaller social and emotional scale. Bassino, like Antony, is torn between love (Aurelia, his Cleopatra) and honor (Placentia, his Octavia). The faithful friend (Armando, his Ventidius) urges the claims of honor. But the parallel between the two plays does not extend beyond this skeleton of situation. Centlivre has none of Dryden's emotional or rhetorical powers. Her characters conduct low key arguments about the rival claims of love and duty. The characterization is too weak and colorless for us to take much interest in their decisions; and the rivals are not sufficiently contrasted. The confrontation between Aurelia and Placentia is a mere whisper in comparison with the great battles of words in All for Love and in Nathaniel Lee's The Rival Queens (also 1677).⁴ Yet it seems likely that Centlivre was inspired to write tragedy by her great predecessor Dryden: in a letter written shortly after his death in 1700 she says how much she admired his works.⁵ It would be natural for such admiration to be translated into imitation, before she discovered that her own dramatic gifts lay in quite another direction.

The catastrophe of the tragic plot is brought about—too abruptly, as the acute “Mr. B—” noticed—when Placentia, having failed to persuade Aurelia to renounce Bassino, stabs and kills her. Bassino enters at the very instant, and stabs Placentia before realizing who she is. Alonzo enters and revenges himself for the loss of his love by stabbing Bassino. These mistakes are cleared up, and the enemies forgive each other before they die. Alonzo and Armando are left to mourn the dead. The effectiveness of the scene—and it is the climax of the play—is impaired by the excessive length to which the business of dying is prolonged. The scene is a thick sandwich of talk with a thin filling of action in the middle, where the stabbings occur. Having brought on the catastrophe too suddenly, Centlivre prolongs it unskillfully. A better modulation of pace and tension would have made the ending more acceptable: as it is, it is difficult not to laugh. Lessing recognized this defect when he adapted part of the play for his Miss Sara Sampson (1755). He replaced the dagger with poison and put the incident in the penultimate act.⁶

The tragic parts of The Perjured Husband are written in a blank verse that is loose in metre but stiff in style. Sometimes it is only the lineation that reminds us that we are reading verse. Much more successful is the vigorously colloquial prose of the subplot. A notable example is the brief scene (p. 20) in which Ludovico reviews his schedule of intrigues. In a few lines, Ludovico is endowed with a vitality which the tragic characters never acquire.

The vigor of the subplot extends beyond its language. It centers on the Pizalto household, which comprises an old but lecherous husband (Pizalto), his young and amorous wife (Lady Pizalta), and her resourceful maid (Lucy). The Pizaltos are tired of each other. Ludovico is a Frenchman visiting Venice. Lady Pizalta sees him at a masquerade, is attracted, and employs Lucy to make a series of assignations that culminates in the cuckolding of her husband. If Pizalto is wronged, he is himself unfaithful. He intrigues with Lucy, but she outwits him. She first puts a very high price on her favor and then contrives to get Pizalto's money without granting it. Ludovico gains access to Lady Pizalta disguised as Lucy, but he is unluckily discovered by Pizalto on his way out. Pizalto's amorous designs soon result in the detection of the imposture. Ludovico's narrow escape leads him to resolved to “leave the wenching trade” and take a wife. Lucy offers herself at the opportune moment, armed with the fortune that she has just extorted from Pizalto. But Ludovico, although he admires her wit and relished her money, refuses to consider marrying a chambermaid.

This subplot contains the embryo of future Centlivre comedies. The scene in which Ludovico is discovered by Pizalto (p. 31) is the prototype of a whole series of similar incidents. In future, though, the young man will generally be courting the woman he wants to marry, not engaged on a cuckolding intrigue. Lucy is the forerunner of a whole line of resourceful and mercenary chambermaids.

It may seem incongruous that Centlivre should combine two such different plots in one play, but it was in accord with contemporary practice. When Charles Johnson's tragicomedy The Force of Love (1710) was unsuccessful, he separated the serious and comic plots and presented them as two plays.⁷ The two actions in The Perjured Husband are so distinct that Centlivre could well have done the same. There are two scenes—the masquerade scenes at the beginning of Acts I and V—where characters from both plots are on stage at the same time, although they do not speak to each other. Apart from these occasions, the two plots are kept entirely apart. Such was the common practice, but it did not always meet with critical approval. Neoclassical critics objected to tragicomedy as a hybrid form, and any kind of subplot offended against the rule of unity of action. This point of view is voiced by Lisideius in Dryden's critical dialogue Of Dramatic Poesy (1668): “many scenes of our tragi-comedies carry on a design that is nothing of kin to the main plot … we see two distinct webs in a play, like those in ill wrought stuffs; and two actions, that is, two plays, carried on together, to the confounding of the audience; who, before they are warm in their concernments for one part, are diverted to another; and by that means espouse the interest of neither.”⁸

Dryden himself did not accept this view. Through the character of Neander, he contrasts “the barrenness of the French plots” with “the variety and copiousness of the English.” Neander defends the subplot through a suggestive metaphor. English plays, he says, “besides the main design, have under-plots or by-concernments of less considerable persons and intrigues, which are carried on with the motion of the main plot; just as they say the orb of the fixed stars, and those of the planets, though they have motions of their own, are whirled about by the motion of the primum mobile in which they are contained.” This is a good image for The Perjured Husband. Although there is no causal link between the two plots, there is a strong thematic connection that acts like Dryden's primum mobile. This is the theme of fidelity and responsibility in love. In the main plot this theme is treated in heroic style, while in the subplot the same problem is examined from a comic viewpoint. Bassino and Ludovico both want sexual variety and gratification without responsibility. Ludovico's frank avowal of libertinism serves as an ironic comment on Bassino's high flown attempts to justify deserting his wife and deceiving his mistress. Ludovico punctures Bassino's posturings.

Unfortunately, the play fails to develop this potentially interesting contrast into serious social criticism. It fails because the main plot is disembodied and peopled with unreal characters. Where the subplot is exploratory and critical, with an appropriately open ending that leaves the problems unresolved, the tragic plot seems merely the working out of a lifeless formula. Centlivre's failure to resolve the subplot—Ludovico simply walks off stage after rejecting Lucy's offer—is an honest refusal to manufacture an answer to a difficult problem. By contrast, the multiple deaths and last minute repentances of the tragic plot strike an artificial note. Evidently Centlivre realized this herself, for subsequently she turned away from tragic modes. The experience of The Perjured Husband taught her that she could write comedy better and that it gave her greater opportunity to express what she wanted to say and to explore real social problems.

II THE BEAU'S DUEL (1702)

If The Perjured Husband looks back to the restoration for its models and inspiration, The Beau's Duel: or, A Soldier for the Ladies is more obviously a product of its own time. Produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in the late spring of 1702, it is set in contemporary London and reflects the mood of national optimism that greeted the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession. England had declared war on France and Spain in May, and at least one scene in The Beau's Duel was probably a late addition intended to capitalize on the new enthusiasm for the military. This is the recruiting scene.⁹ But as the subtitle “A Soldier for the Ladies” indicates, the whole play reinforces the theme that “None but the Brave deserves the Fair.” The Prologue promises the soldiers, “Let but your Arms abroad Successful prove, / The Fair at home shall Crown your Toyles with Love.”

The play centers on a lively quartet of lovers. Colonel Manly is in love with Clarinda, and his friend Captain Bellmein is in love with her cousin Emilia. There is no “love chase” in the play, but there are several obstacles that have to be overcome before the happy pairs can be united in marriage. The first is a misunderstanding that arises from mistaken identities. The two men think they are in love with the same perfidious woman; and the two women suppose they are in love with the same double-dealing man. This mistake is rapidly cleared up. A more serious obstacle is Careful, Clarinda's father who wants her to marry the rich fop Sir William Mode. A third, less formidable, pretender to Clarinda is Ogle. Much of the play is taken up with exposing the folly and cowardice of Sir William and Ogle. The most important scenes are the mock-duels that give the play its name. In a tavern, Sir William and Ogle are tricked into fighting each other, rather in the way Olivia and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are in Twelfth Night. The two reluctant adversaries retire to Hyde Park, where—armed only with harmless foils—they pretend to fight it out. But this ruse is discovered by Clarinda and Emilia, who have disguised themselves as men. The humiliation of Sir William and Ogle is completed when they are insulted and kicked by the two women. The cowardice of the pretenders is strongly contrasted with the unquestioned courage of Manly and Bellmein.

But the exposure of Sir William as a coward is not in itself enough to overcome Careful's opposition to Manly. For this a more complicated plot is needed. Careful is tricked into a mock-marriage with Mrs. Plotwell, a former mistress of Bellmein's. Careful marries her under the impression that she is a Quaker and will make a frugal wife. In order to spite the disobedient Clarinda, he settles his estate on Mrs. Plotwell. After the ceremony, she drops her Quaker disguise and assumes a new role—that of a shrew. Careful is astonished and readily promises to restore Clarinda and Manly to favor if they can rid him of this wife. The deception is revealed. Careful forgives the trick, the four lovers are made happy, and even Sir William is philosophical about the loss of Clarinda. Only the despicable Ogle is excluded from the general reconciliation. The play is original, except for Mrs. Plotwell and the mock-marriage trick, which are taken from Jasper Mayne's The City Match (1639).

The four lovers in The Beau's Duel comprise a serious pair (Manly and Clarinda) and a lighter pair (Bellmein and Emilia). The contrast between the two pairs is effectively established in the first act, in separate scenes between the two men (pp. 2-5) and the two women (pp. 9-11). Such a pattern was more common after 1700 than it had been before. An early and influential example is Sir Richard Steele's The Funeral (1701).¹⁰ The improved moral tone of The Beau's Duel—compared to the subplot of The Perjured Husband—is also indicative of the change that was taking place in comedy. In the opening scene, Bellmein's libertinism is contrasted with Manly's constancy in love. Mrs. Plotwell is actually one of Bellmein's cast-off mistresses. In Act IV he reflects, “If I had but got a Maidenhead, or made a Cuckold, it would not have vext me” (p. 38). But for all this, Bellmein has not overstepped the narrower liberties allowed to libertines in post-Collier comedy. Mrs. Plotwell assures us that “the awful Lustre of Virtue has always met with due respect” from him (p. 19). The seduction of an innocent woman would have excluded Bellmein from the reward of marriage to one of the heroines. Another example of the newer moral tone is that Clarinda and Emilia have scruples about the propriety of disguising themselves as men. Heroes and heroines are now more narrowly confined than their restoration counterparts; Smith has described what he calls the “disciplining” of the gay hero and heroine.¹¹ The typical protagonists are now men and women of sense, honesty, and discretion.

There are two groups of subsidiary characters in The Beau's Duel: the allies of the lovers (Mrs. Plotwell and Toper) and their adversaries (Careful, Sir William, and Ogle). Our response to them is controlled by the degree of sympathy with which Centlivre presents them. The most contemptible is Ogle, a former apprentice who has inherited money and independence. His humor is imagining that every woman—even if he has never exchanged a word with her—is in love with him. He conducts an “intrigue” with Clarinda on this basis: Clarinda's maid keeps the letters and presents that he sends, and Clarinda herself remains unaware of his existence. Sir William Mode, a beau, is treated more mildly than Ogle. He is drawn after Sir Novelty Fashion in Cibber's Love's Last Shift (1696). The inventiveness of his oaths—“blister me,” “burn me,” “impair my vigour”—is amusing, but he is otherwise a pale imitation of Sir Novelty. Both he and Ogle function primarily as foils to the military heroes. Careful is nothing more than a conventional stage father who would rather his daughter married a man of wealth than a man of sense.

Toper's humor is suggested by his name: he prefers the pleasures of drinking to all others. The part was taken by George Powell, notorious for his love of the bottle in real life. Toper is a functional character: he is a useful extra in the duel scene and in the management of the intrigue with Mrs. Plotwell. But his part has the additional interest of preserving evidence of a change in the author's intentions. Toper's name was originally Roarwell. The evidence occurs in signature E (pp. 25-32) of the first edition. At the end of Act II, three speeches which obviously belong to Toper are assigned to “Roarwell,” and the tag at the end of the act puns on this name: “For though we Roar …” (p. 25). At the beginning of Act III (p. 26), Careful refers to Toper as “Roarwell.” Neither name occurs in the remainder of signature E; Roarwell appears nowhere else in the text. His survival at all is probably due to careless proofreading.¹² The evidence suggests that Toper was originally to have been a bully instead of a drinker. Perhaps Centlivre after the outbreak of the war made the change in order not to blur the contrast between fop and soldier.

The part of Mrs. Plotwell, although borrowed from Jasper Mayne's The City Match, is transformed by its new context in The Beau's Duel. In The City Match the mock-marriage is part of a citizen-gulling intrigue that reflects the antagonism between court and city that is one of Mayne's major themes. This antagonism has no place in The Beau's Duel: Careful, the victim of the trick, is not a merchant. In this play, Centlivre is certainly not hostile to the city. Ogle boasts—absurdly, since he is himself a former apprentice—of receiving a letter “from a Merchants Wife, a City Animal, that pretends to a nearer Taste than those of her Levell, and wou'd fain have a Child with the Air of a Gentleman, but I beg'd her Pardon, I left her to the Brutes of her own Corporation, for I will have nothing to do with the Body Politick” (p. 16). The satire here cuts both ways: against the social pretensions of the city wife, but also against Ogle himself.

In one respect, the part of Mrs. Plotwell is decidedly ambiguous. In The City Match she was the wife of Young Plotwell. In The Beau's Duel she is Bellmein's former mistress. But a seasonable legacy has enabled her to regain her respectability: “Reputation is never lost but in an empty Pocket” (p. 20), as Bellmein comments. In the light of Mrs. Plotwell's dubious past, it seems a calculated equivocation when Centlivre gives her the final speech of the play: an encomium on “Virtue thou shining Jewel of my Sex” (p. 55). Whether this sentiment was taken seriously or not would be up to the audience. Those who wanted comedy to endorse morality could take it seriously; the more sceptical could remember Mrs. Plotwell's past and smile.

Altogether, The Beau's Duel is a very distinct advance on The Perjured Husband. Centlivre's social concerns, although not fully worked out, are given greater prominence. Comedy is brought to the center of the stage and made to reflect contemporary issues. Two scenes in particular are well handled: the double mistaken identity (pp. 36-38) and the scene after Careful has “married” Mrs. Plotwell (pp. 46-48). There are some loose ends: examples are the parts of Ogle and Toper and the recruiting scene. But for all this, The Beau's Duel can still be regarded as the first characteristic expression of Centlivre's art.

III THE STOLEN HEIRESS (1702)

Centlivre's third play, The Stolen Heiress: or, The Salamanca Doctor Outplotted, was produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields on December 31, 1702. The original title was The Heiress: it was changed to The Stolen Heiress in the printed text, published on January 19, 1703. The change was evidently a late thought: the new title appears on the title page, the old one at the head of the text. Centlivre's—or rather Carroll's—authorship of her first two plays had been acknowledged. But with The Stolen Heiress, an attempt was made to conceal the author's name and sex. The Prologue begins “Our Author fearing his success to day, / Sends me to bribe your Spleen against his Play.” The play was then published anonymously, and the use of pronouns in the dedication is studiously ambiguous. The idea of combatting prejudice against women as authors was not new. Mary Pix's The Beau Defeated (1700) appeared as a man's work. The Prologue speaks of the author as “He” and the Dedication to the Duchess of Bolton is written in a strain of gallantry that was also intended to suggest male authorship. It is difficult to say how widespread such prejudice against women was, but it certainly existed. An extreme example is Critick in A Comparison between the Two Stages (1702): “What a Pox have the Women to do with the Muses? I grant you the Poets call the Nine Muses by the Names of Women, but why so? not because the Sex had any thing to do with Poetry, but because in that Sex they're much fitter for prostitution. … I hate these Petticoat-Authors.”¹³

The Stolen Heiress is a tragicomedy set in Palermo, in a Sicily conceived of as remote and romantic rather than belonging to any particular period. It is a play about paternal tyranny, as socially disembodied as The Perjured Husband was. Gravello wants his daughter Lucasia to marry Count Pirro. Lucasia is in love with Palante, but Gravello prefers Pirro on account of his wealth. The rub is that Pirro is indifferent to beauty and attracted only by wealth. Gravello therefore gives out that his son Eugenio has died while on his travels. Lucasia thus becomes an heiress. Pirro swallows the bait and begins to negotiate with Gravello for Lucasia. In order to avoid the hated match, Lucasia runs away with Palante, and they are secretly married. Unfortunately, the treachery of Lucasia's maid leads Gravello to apprehend the lovers. He invokes the harsh Sicilian law that provides the death penalty for the theft of an heiress. Palante and his friend and accomplice Clerimont prepare to die heroically.

The situation is saved by Eugenio, who had returned to Palermo unexpectedly at the beginning of the play. Hearing the news of his own death, he prudently assumes an incognito. When he discovers his father's plan, he determines to thwart it. Still incognito, he reveals to Pirro that Eugenio is still alive. Pirro agrees to pay Eugenio for removing the inconvenient son and signs an agreement to that effect. Palante and Clarimont go on trial. At the critical moment, after pleas for mercy for them have failed, Eugenio drops his disguise and produces the incriminating agreement with Pirro. Palante and Clerimont are freed for Lucasia is no longer an heiress. The general rejoicing is augmented by the sudden and unexpected arrival from exile of Euphanes, a noble and wealthy lord. He reveals that Palante is not a foundling—as had been supposed—but his son. Gravello now cheerfully accepts him as a suitable son-in-law.

The main plot is thus serious in tone and potentially tragic. The subplot is a comic treatment of the same theme of parental tyranny. Larich is determined to marry his daughter Lavinia to a scholar. His choice has fallen on a foolish pedant, Sancho, the “Salamanca Doctor” of the subtitle. But Lavinia is in love with the more sensible and engaging Francisco. Together they outplot Larich and Sancho. The seasonable death of a rich uncle provides Francisco with a fortune. Larich is thereby reconciled to the match, and Sancho is resigned to the loss of Lavinia.

The Stolen Heiress was published with a Latin tag on the title page: “Nihil dictum quod non ante dictum.” This is a rough paraphrase of a line from the Prologue to Terence's Eunuch. Just as Terence's play was an adaptation of Menander, The Stolen Heiress is a reworking of an earlier play: Thomas May's The Heir (1620). The Heir is a romantic comedy with strong affinities with Shakespeare and Fletcher. The Stolen Heiress is an interesting but imperfect attempt to reshape The Heir to suit the taste of 1701. Centlivre's revision was most successful in the subplot, which she makes into a vigorous comedy of intrigue. But this very success creates an incongruity between main plot and subplot. Romantic motifs such as the harsh law against lovers, the long-lost son, and Eugenio's incognito seem less at home than they were in The Heir. On the credit side, Centlivre made some sound structural and other improvements.

Centlivre connected the two actions of the play by making Gravello (May's Polimetes) and Larich (Franklin) brothers. The Heir is entirely in verse: Centlivre turned the subplot and the less emotional scenes of the main plot into prose. She is more flexible about the use of prose and verse than she had been in The Perjured Husband. Lucasia and Palante can drop into prose if appropriate, and the verse is thus reserved for serious or emotional scenes. The two plots are now neatly contrapuntal. Gravello's prejudice in favor of wealth appears no less absurd than Larich's superstitious reverence for pedantry. In The Heir, Franklin was simply a tyrannical father, and Shallow—his prospective son-in-law—what his name implies. Centlivre made them two humor characters. The subplot in The Stolen Heiress is consequently broader and more farcical than in The Heir. This is good in itself—but it makes the main plot appear lifeless by comparison. As in The Perjured Husband, the realistic treatment of the subplot makes us impatient with the artificial main plot.

Centlivre also speeded up the action of the play by omitting several of May's set piece scenes. A good example is the long satiric scene in Act IV in which May pillories the Catholic practice of selling absolution and exposes the quibbling habits of the legal profession.¹⁴ Centlivre also omitted three scenes in which May was obviously imitating Shakespeare: the “love at first sight” episode that recalls Romeo and Juliet; the scene with the blundering watch that reminds us of Dogberry and Verges; and the offer of a pardon for a brother in exchange for his sister's chastity, which recalls Measure for Measure.¹⁵ Centlivre omitted the “love at first sight” scene because she preferred intrigue to romance. As in most of her plays, she works with men and women who are already in love. The blundering watch was rejected in favor of a more complicated stratagem to reveal Pirro's plot—the signed bargain with Eugenio. Both omissions reflect Centlivre's dominant interest in the comedy of intrigue. The third omission, the scene that recalls Angelo, was probably left out in compliance with contemporary notions of propriety.

Centlivre's concern for decorum can also be seen in a minor but significant change she made to the plot. Luce in The Heir (Centlivre's Lavinia) appears on stage as if pregnant.¹⁶ Throughout the play we naturally assume that she is; but in Act V May reveals that the supposed pregnancy was only a trick intended to alienate Shallow.¹⁷ Centlivre suppresses the pregnancy. Only as a last and desperate stratagem to delay the match with Sancho does Lavinia pretend to be pregnant. We are told in an aside that this is a trick. Comtemporary audiences were sensitive to such matters. In Farquhar's The Twin Rivals (1702), the plot includes a character (Clelia) who is pregnant as a result of having been seduced: but she is not allowed to appear. When the play was published, Farquhar replied to critics who had objected to an important character remaining offstage. He explained in the Preface that he “had rather they should find this Fault, than I forfeit my Regard to the Fair, by showing a Lady of Figure under a Misfortune.”¹⁸

IV LOVE'S CONTRIVANCE (1703)

Love's Contrivance: or, Le Médecin malgré lui was produced at Drury Lane on June 4, 1703. Its initial run of three nights was modest enough: but a truer measure of its popular appeal is that it enjoyed occasional revivals until 1726. The anonymity that began with The Stolen Heiress was continued. When the play was published on June 14, the Dedication was signed with the initials “R. M.” On June 16, an advertisement was inserted in the Daily Courant denying that these were the author's real initials and promising shortly to reveal the “true name.” No subsequent announcement has been traced, but Centlivre acknowledged her authorship of the play in the Dedication to The Platonic Lady (1706). There she tells us that “passing for a Man's,” Love's Contrivance enjoyed great success. The Preface to Love's Contrivance is one of Centlivre's most important critical statements. It expresses her belief that the primary function of comedy is to entertain.

As the subtitle indicates, Love's Contrivance is partly based on Molière. Centlivre used not only Le Médecin malgré lui (1666) but also Le Mariage forcé (1664) and Sganarelle (1660). In her Preface, she claimed that the borrowed scenes had “not suffer'd in the Translation.” It is impossible to agree with this complacent verdict, but it must be remembered that Centlivre was writing for a coarser audience than Molière's. Centlivre recognized this in the Preface when she wrote that the “French have that light Airiness in their Temper, that the least Glimps of Wit sets them a laughing, when 'twou'd not make us so much as smile.”

Perhaps because she was using three plays instead of one, Centlivre was more successful in imposing her own stamp on Love's Contrivance than she had been with The Stolen Heiress. A good indication of this success is that, for all her debt to Molière, there are closer similarities—in plot, character, and comic formula—between Love's Contrivance and her own The Beau's Duel. She borrowed particular scenes from Molière, but fitted them into her own comic framework. Both plays center on the outwitting of a tyrannous father. In Love's Contrivance, Selfwill (who corresponds to Careful in The Beau's Duel) has a daughter Lucinda (Clarinda) and her cousin Belliza (Emilia) living with him. Selfwill had previously agreed to a match between Lucinda and Bellmie (Manly); but mercenary considerations have induced him to reject Bellmie in favor of Sir Toby Doubtful (Sir William Mode). Bellmie is assisted in his intrigue by his friend Octavio (Bellmein). Octavio is a rakish contrast to the serious Bellmie; he pairs off with Belliza. There are naturally differences between the two plays. Instead of a beau (Sir William Mode), Centlivre uses an old city knight (Sir Toby Doubtful) as a comic butt. Instead of the mock-duels of the earlier play, broad farce is provided by scenes borrowed from Molière.

An unusual feature of Love's Contrivance that distinguishes it from The Beau's Duel and indeed from most of Centlivre's plays is the “love chase” between Octavio and Belliza. The couple meet for the first time in Act II, and she does not agree to marry him until the very end of the play. The scene in which they meet is an extended duel of wit quite untypical of Centlivre; it is one of the play's best scenes.¹⁹ Unfortunately, Centlivre chose not to develop this “gay couple” antagonism in the rest of the play. Attention is focused instead on the deception of Selfwill and Sir Toby and on Martin and his tricks. These are the parts of the play that she borrowed from Molière.

Centlivre tells us in the Preface that she originally planned a farce in three acts and that on the advice of friends she turned the play into a five act comedy. The skeleton of the original three act structure can still be discerned in the sequence of the three major farcical episodes: Martin's wife beating and Octavio's unwelcome interruption of it (pp. 10-13); Martin himself being beaten into admitting that he is a doctor (pp. 37-41); and the two fortunetelling scenes (pp. 53-58, 61-64). All these are based on Molière. The first two come from Le Médecin malgré lui (I, i-ii and iv), and the fortunetelling scenes from Le Mariage forcé (Scenes iv and v). Thus the original design of the play was evidently closer to Molière than the final version. As she revised, Centlivre added more of her own kind of comedy.

The character that is most Centlivre's own is Sir Toby Doubtful. His role corresponds to that of Sganarelle in Le Mariage forcé; but Molière's character is not a “city” figure at all. Sir Toby—old, lecherous, and miserly—seems at first to be a variant of the restoration stereotype of the merchant fit only to be cuckolded. But John Loftis points out that “there is no suggestion of social rivalry between merchant and gentleman” and that Sir Toby is rejected “because of his personal qualifications and his age rather than his social status.”²⁰ In one scene, Sir Toby is actually a mouthpiece for the author's own sentiments. One of Lucinda's stratagems to dissuade Sir Toby from wanting to marry her is to make a series of extravagant demands that she hopes will horrify his city frugality. Dorimène makes extravagant demands in Le Mariage forcé (Scene ii). But Centlivre converts Dorimène's single long speech into a variant of the familiar “proviso scene” in which demands are made and answered item by item. Lucinda asks for a house in the fashionable district near St. James's; a new laced livery for her servants; a French coach and six horses to pull it; and she makes other demands calculated to shock not only Sir Toby's parsimony but his patriotism. The French coach is his particular aversion: “egad I wou'd not have a Nail about my Coach that's French, for the Wealth of the East-India Company. French Chariot! say ye, Zouns, Madam, do ye take me for a Jacobite?” (p. 48). This is a skillfully contrived scene. Because Lucinda is only pretending to make these demands, we do not suspect her of really being either frivolous or a Jacobite. At the same time, Sir Toby's impeccable Whig reaction counts in his favor against his amorous folly in wanting to marry a young wife. Centlivre herself is able to express her favorite anti-French sentiments without stopping or even slowing the play in the process.

The other characters in Love's Contrivance correspond more closely than Sir Toby to their counterparts in The Beau's Duel. Bellmie is a serious and faithful lover like Manly. He is even shocked when Octavio assumes that he keeps a mistress (p. 22). Octavio takes after the more libertine Bellmein. He settles down to the idea of marriage to Belliza, but not without some pangs for the loss of his liberty (p. 25). There is a parallel contrast between the steady Lucinda and the flighty Belliza. There is with these two plays almost a sense of the dramatist “working it out like a sum on the blackboard,” as F. W. Bateson puts it.²¹

Reviewing the four plays discussed in this chapter, one finds it natural to dismiss The Perjured Husband and The Stolen Heiress as false starts in genres not congenial to Centlivre's artistic bent. The Beau's Duel and Love's Contrivance are the plays that show the direction she was to take. But if Love's Contrivance marked the end of Centlivre's apprenticeship, she remained willing to experiment with new modes and genres. Her next play—The Gamester (1705)—was to be a complete break with the practice of Love's Contrivance and with the critical ideas expressed in its Preface.

Notes

1. Ben Jonson, Epilogue to Cynthia's Revels (1601), Works, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, IV (Oxford, 1932), 183.

2. Samuel Johnson, “Prologue Spoken at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury-Lane, 1747,” Poems, ed. E. L. McAdam, Jr. (New Haven, 1964), p. 89.

3. Letters of Wit, Politicks, and Morality (1701), Letter 38, Mr. B[oye]r to Astraea; reprinted in George Farquhar, Complete Works, ed. Charles Stonehill (Bloomsbury, 1930), II, 258-59.

4. The Perjured Husband (London, 1700), pp. 35-37. Subsequent references are to this edition and will be given in the text.

5. “I am extremely concern'd for the loss of Apollo, for such I always thought Mr. Dryden. I have read his Works with Admiration; 'tis they that first inspir'd my feeble Genius, and fill'd my pleas'd fancy with Poetick Gingles.” From Astraea's answer, Letter 39 in Letters of Wit, Politicks and Morality, reprinted in Farquhar, II, 260.

6. For Lessing's use of Centlivre, see Paul P. Kies, “The Sources and Basic Model of Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson,” Modern Philology, 24 (1926), 65-90.

7. E. N. Hooker, “Charles Johnson's The Force of Friendship and Love in a Chest: A Note on Tragicomedy and Licensing in 1710,” Studies in Philology, 34 (1937), 407-11.

8. John Dryden, Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Essays, ed. George Watson (London, 1962), I, 45. The subsequent quotations from Neander are on p. 59.

9. The Beau's Duel (London, 1702), pp. 40-42. Subsequent references are to this edition and will be given in the text.

10. John Harrington Smith, The Gay Couple in Restoration Comedy (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), pp. 198-203.

11. For these new proprieties, see Smith, pp. 199-201. The whole of Smith's Chapter 7 is also relevant to Centlivre and the change in comedy.

12. An insistance of irregular spacing on p. 40 (F4^v) could be the result of a press correction of Roarwell to Toper. It occurs in the fifth line at “to him, Toper is.” There is excess space both before and after the comma. Roarwell is eliminated in the “Corrected” edition (London, 1715).

13. A Comparison between the Two Stages, ed. S. B. Wells (Princeton, 1942), p. 17. The Comparison, published anonymously, is sometimes attributed to Charles Gildon.

14. Thomas May, The Heir, reprinted in Robert Dodsley, Select Collection of Old English Plays, rev. ed. by W. Carew Hazlitt, XI (London, 1875). Jasper Mayne's The City Match is reprinted in the same collection, Vol. XIII.

15. May, pp. 527-28, 569-71, 561-63.

16. May, p. 521

17. May, p. 575.

18. Farquhar, I, 286.

19. Love's Contrivance (London, 1703), pp. 17-21. Subsequent references are to this edition and will be given in the text.

20. John Loftis, Comedy and Society from Congreve to Fielding, p. 66. Loftis's whole discussion of Centlivre's treatment of the merchant (pp. 64-68) is illuminating.

21. F. W. Bateson, English Comic Drama 1700-1750 (1929; reprinted New York, 1963) p. 72. Bateson made the comment on Centlivre's later plays.