[In the following excerpt, Wilson surveys the possible sources of one of Centlivre's most artistically successful plays, The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret, and outlines the performance history of the comedy, which highlights the development of her reputation as a legitimate author.]

The Wonder is an excellent light comedy. After [actor David] Garrick had contributed his interpretation of the character of Don Felix, it was often regarded as Mrs. Centlivre's masterpiece. The action is laid in Lisbon. Don Felix, in hiding after wounding Don Antonio in a duel because he would not marry Antonio's sister, secretly visits Donna Violante, with whom he is deeply in love. Violante is allowed a degree of freedom by her father, Don Pedro, because she seemingly accepts his arrangement for her to enter a nunnery the following week. After keeping Isabella's secret as long as necessary, though she meanwhile suffers tortures from Felix's jealousy, she and Felix are married.

In the minor plot, Don Lopez intends on the morrow to marry his daughter, Donna Isabella, to Don Guzman, a wealthy but stupid Spanish grandee, and locks her in her room to secure her until then. She jumps out of a window, but lands in the arms of Colonel Britton, a Scot in Portugal on his way home from Spain following the English peace. He takes her in haste to another house, which proves to be Violante's, and asks that she be cared for. Violante recognizes her as Don Felix's sister and agrees to keep the secret of her presence. Without revealing herself as the lady of the preceding night's adventure, Isabella, veiled, meets Colonel Britton on the Terreiro de passa and decides that if Violante approves she will marry him. Violante tries him out and learns that he really loves his incognita of the night before and no one else. He and Isabella then meet again on the Terreiro de passa and are married.

Much of the action takes place in Violante's house, where she must conceal Don Felix from her father, hide Isabella from her brother, who might try to return her to her father as a matter of family honor, and keep Don Felix and Colonel Britton apart.

There are a great many plays in French, Spanish, Italian, and English dealing with the same subject as The Wonder, but Mrs. Centlivre's chief and perhaps her only definite source was Edward Ravenscroft's The Wrangling Lovers: or, The Invisible Mistress (1677).¹ Even the language owes something to Ravenscroft, but in general she has improved what she borrowed. In The Wonder Don Felix is an outlaw. Dramatically this complication, recalled possibly from the initial situation in Thomas Corneille's Le Galant doublé, is an excellent addition, for it heightens the suspense and contributes atmosphere. The possibility of execution if he is apprehended continues to hang over Felix until it is reported in the fifth act that Antonio is out of danger. Mrs. Centlivre gains unity by reducing the “invisible mistress” plot to a subsidiary position: it is important less for itself than for providing Violante with the secret which she is to keep and for producing the situations of jealous quarreling between her and Felix. Also in The Wrangling Lovers Violante's prototype has two suitors, whom Mrs. Centlivre makes into one, the brother of Isabella. The result is that what in both Corneille and Ravenscroft is an ill-jointed combination of two plays becomes in The Wonder a carefully conceived and unified whole. In The Wrangling Lovers the last act is a concentrated grouping of closet maneuvers. Mrs. Centlivre distributes some of these throughout her play, and, in order to avoid the absurdities for which she apologizes in the Preface to The Perplex'd Lovers, eliminates the rest. At the same time she develops the servants. Lissardo and Flora are well done. Gibby, the Scots valet of the colonel, is almost equally good; and Inis is a fit opposite for Flora. The third scene of Act III, in which Inis tries to wheedle a diamond ring from Lissardo, who gives her a kiss instead and in turn receives from Flora a box on the ear, and in which Inis and Flora quarrel over Lissardo, Flora accusing Inis of crooked legs, is comparable to the best servant scenes in Molière.

Gerald Langbaine² states that Ravenscroft's play was “founded upon a Spanish Romance in 8°, translated and called Deceptio visûs, or Seeing and Believing are two things,” but he adds that Thomas Corneille has a play on the same subject, Les Engagemens du hazard. The Biographia Dramatica mentions the Deceptio Visus but adds that “as Corneille has taken the same romance for the groundwork of his Engagemens du Hazard, and Molière for that of his Dépit amoureux, it is probable that Mr. Ravenscroft might rather set these great dramatic writers before him in forming the model of this piece, than the author of the novel.” The Deceptio Visus, it is true, tells essentially the same story as The Wrangling Lovers, but it was printed after the play and may have been made from it. In any case it is obvious that Ravenscroft did not use it. Even a cursory examination of The Wrangling Lovers reveals that Ravenscroft really combined the same two plays which Corneille made into Les Engagemens du hazard. Corneille names his sources as Calderon's Los empeños de un acaso and Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar; he particularly defends himself from the charge that he has used L'Inconnue of Boisrobert, itself adapted from Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar. Ravenscroft probably knew Spanish and may have resorted directly to Calderon, but it is certain that he knew Les Engagemens du hazard and had it before him while writing.

As for Molière's Le Dépit amoureux, the main story, having to do with Ascagne, supposedly a man but really a woman secretly married to Valère, who believes her to be Lucile, is taken, according to Eugène Despois,³ from an Italian piece. In the second story, corresponding to that of Don Felix and Violante in The Wonder, he finds no direct evidence of borrowing, and concludes with Voltaire that the idea of lovers falling out and then making up is a commonplace for which no specific source is necessary. He notes the resemblance of all such pieces to the charming ode of Horace, Donec gratus eram tibi. The third scene of Le Dépit amoureux includes the famous lovers' quarrel and reconcilation, but it differs from the corresponding scene in Ravenscroft and Mrs. Centlivre in the significant fact that Éraste and Lucile return their gifts. H. van Laun⁴ believes that Ravenscroft was influenced by Molière, but he seems not to have known that The Wrangling Lovers is even closer to Les Engagemens du hazard and that the ultimate sources of Ravenscroft and Corneille were the Spanish plays of Calderon. Closer to Ravenscroft and Mrs. Centlivre than Le Dépit amoureux is Molière's Dom Garcie de Navarre ou Le Prince jaloux, which includes a similar study of jealousy. Despois notes that the commentators have spoken of a Spanish original for Dom Garcie, but he, although assisted by several scholars in Spain, has not been able to find it. He takes the play from the Italian. The parts of The Wonder which resemble Dom Garcie Mrs. Centlivre could have got from The Wrangling Lovers.

The Biographia Dramatica thinks that “there are some circumstances in the concealment of Isabella, Violante's fidelity to her trust, and the perplexities which arise therefrom, that seem to bear a resemblance to one part of the plot of a play of Lord Digby's, called Elvira; or, The Worst not always true” (1667). Don Pedro is the father of Elvira, a woman who keeps a secret, as Don Pedro is of Violante in The Wonder; also a Violante is mentioned in Elvira as the mistress of Don Julio, the brother of Blanca, for whom the secret is kept, but she never appears on the stage. Yet, except that a woman keeps a secret and that people enter constantly at the wrong time while others escape by special doors and balconies or go into closets, the plot differs noticeably from that of The Wonder. Even the similarity between the servants of Elvira and The Wonder is no greater than that between those of Le Dépit amoureux and The Wonder.⁵

John Hewitt's A Tutor for the Beaus, or Love in a Labyrinth (1737) resembles both The Wrangling Lovers and The Wonder, but Hewitt himself accounts for the similarity. He explains in his Preface that he took the plan for the second plot, Love in a Labyrinth, from Calderon's Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar.⁶

Mrs. Centlivre was probably familiar with Thomas Corneille's comedy. It is possible, but unlikely, that she was familiar with Calderon's plays in the original Spanish. A basis for all the disguises and misconceptions in her play can be found in Ravenscroft's, though she alters most of them in some fashion.⁷ Her play also contains frequent reminiscences of Ravenscroft's language. For example, part of Act V of The Wrangling Lovers becomes almost word for word Act IV, scene 1, of The Wonder. Though this scene of the lovers' quarrel does not stand out unduly in style, it is one of the best scenes in the play. In it Garrick attained special distinction. An engraving frequently met with in editions of the drama shows him seated on a chair slightly behind Violante and beseeching her to give him her hand at parting.

The Wonder was first produced at Drury Lane on April 27, 1714, with Wilks as the jealous Don Felix and Mrs. Oldfield as Violante. The parts of Colonel Britton and Isabella were taken by Mills and Miss Santlow. Gibby, the Scots servant, and Lissardo were played by Bullock and Pack.⁸ Mrs. Cox and Mrs. Saunders rivaled each other, at least in the affections of Lissardo, as the two maids, Inis and Flora. The other roles were taken by Norris, Bickerstaff, and Bullock, Jr. Mills spoke the prologue written by Thomas Burnet, and Miss Santlow, the epilogue by Ambrose Philips. The comedy ran at first for six performances, and the next season it was repeated by command of the Prince of Wales on December 16 “for the Entertainment of the Prince and Princess.”

To do justice to the actors Mrs. Centlivre wrote a preface complimenting them:

I freely acknowledge my self oblig'd to the Actors in general, and to Mr. Wilks, and Mrs. Oldfield in particular; and I owe them this Justice to say, that their inimitable Action cou'd only support a Play at such a Season, and among so many Benefits. …

I must again repeat that which I meet with everywhere, I mean the just Admiration of the Performance of Mr. Wilks, and Mrs. Oldfield, and own that they much outdid in Action the strongest of my Conceptions; for tho' Nature was my Aim in the last Act of this Comedy, yet Nature herself were she to paint a Love Quarrel, wou'd only Copy them.

According to the life in her complete works, she enjoyed a “great intimacy” with Wilks and Mrs. Oldfield, who frequently acted in her plays and often honored her by speaking prologues and epilogues.

The Wonder is mentioned by “Joseph Gay” in A Compleat Key to the Non-Juror (1718), where Colley Cibber is accused of using it along with Tartuffe, The Rape of the Lock, and other works as the basis of his comedy. Another pamphlet of the same year entitled The Theatre-Royal Turn'd into a Mountebank Stage denies Gay's identifications of persons mentioned in the play and perhaps means also to deny the sources suggested. Certainly there is no close resemblance between The Non-Juror and The Wonder.

The Wonder was not produced again until 1733. In November of that year it was revived at Goodman's Fields, and was acted eleven times running, Giffard and Mrs. Giffard taking the roles of Felix and Violante. It was produced ten times during the next season, and in 1734-35 was acted at the same theater six times and twice at Covent Garden. When the Giffards moved to other theaters, they took their parts with them, acting the play at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1736-37 and again at Goodman's Fields in 1740-41, “Gratis, by Persons for their Diversion.” It was advertised for Drury Lane, “Never acted there before,” on January 12, 1744, and, after a lapse of “Twelve Years,” for Covent Garden on April 15, 1748.

The Wonder was presented in London more than fifty times before 1750, two-thirds of the time by the Giffards. Between 1750 and 1800 it was given nearly two hundred performances. Garrick became the outstanding Felix, acting the part more than sixty-five times between 1756 and 1776. Even after his retirement only John Philip Kemble seems to have come near him as an interpreter of the role.

Garrick first acted Felix on November 6, 1756. Miss Macklin took the part of Violante; Woodward, who had acted Frederick at Goodman's Fields for some years beginning on December 4, 1735, was Lissardo; and Mrs. Clive acted Flora. On the following Monday the play was repeated by royal command. It was produced nineteen times during the season. The London Chronicle for February 1-3, 1757, reviews a performance on February 2. It repeats the story of Mrs. Centlivre's endangering her life by dedicating the play to the Duke of Cambridge and mentions that the comedy is supposed to have come from the Spanish. The critic rightly notices the author's talent for stage business (“she has contrived to keep the Attention of her Audience alive by a very quick Succession of Scenes”) but thinks that the dialogue is “very paltry in general” and that the characters are unmarked by any “separating peculiarities, unless the Jealousy of Don Felix may be accounted such.” The acting he regards as excellent:

Don Felix is admirably performed by Mr. Garrick. His Situation in the last Act is diverting; and the whole Scene between him and Miss Macklin has many Touches in the Execution, very good on the Side of that promising Actress, and exquisite on the Part of our admired Comedian. Mr. Woodward and Mrs. Clive are, according to Custom, highly pleasant: And upon the whole, this Play is a Proof that what the Players call Business will succeed without Writing, when it is in the Hands of such excellent Performers.

Percy Fitzgerald⁹ thinks that Garrick as Kitely in Every Man in His Humour and as Don Felix in the “gay Wonder” was able to convey the nice distinction between the way jealousy would affect “the plain, sober mind of a merchant” and the way it would affect the mind of “a gayer Spanish nobleman.” He adds that there was always a country dance in The Wonder and that Garrick danced it “with infinite grace and agility to the end.” Arthur Murphy¹⁰ calls The Wonder the best of Mrs. Centlivre's comedies, the fable being developed with “great dramatic skill” and suspense growing with the “intelligible perplexity.” He praises Garrick's acting in it, noting that he “almost excelled himself” in the scene where he comes to take his final leave of Violante.

According to Murphy, Garrick made some suitable alterations in the comedy before producing it, but if the acting editions are to be trusted, his changes were almost negligible. A few expressions were toned down or cut out, but the alterations seem to have served chiefly for advertising purposes, since some apology was needed for acting any play by a person with Mrs. Centlivre's reputation. She had already been thrust back into the Restoration by the critics, who had a knack for forgetting dates. Horace Walpole is representative of the attitude taken: “Wycherley, Dryden, Mrs. Centlivre, &c., wrote as if they had only lived in the ‘Rose Tavern’; but then the Court lived in Drury-lane, too, and Lady Dorchester and Nell Gwyn were equally good company.”¹¹ Somewhat later the Quarterly Review¹² expresses the same idea: “Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear were little calculated to please a profligate court that delighted in the declamatory nonsense of Dryden, and the despicable ribaldry of Centlivre.”

When Garrick began to act The Wonder, the critics were inclined to object to everything except the acting, but their view changed as they became more familiar with the play itself. Taking its cue from a production at Drury Lane on October 7, the London Chronicle for October 7-10, 1758, can find very little to compliment either in Mrs. Centlivre or in her drama:

Mrs. Centlivre, the honest woman who thought proper to scribble this comedy, was, as we may learn from the notes on Pope's Dunciad, (in which poem she procured herself a station by some dirty rhymes that she squirted at the author and his friends) the wife of one of his Majesty's yeomen of the mouth, or table-deckers. …

And first, as to “what it is,” that, I think, is easily answered by saying, that it is an indifferent play inimitably acted. However, I can by no means agree to its being so very wretched a performance, as some people are pleased to represent it: and for this reason: a good plot is on all hands allowed to be the principal ingredient towards a good comedy; now that of the Wonder is not only entertaining, but in some respects exquisitely beautiful. But … the language is contemptible to the last degree; and the first act in particular so lame and ungraceful, that it is hardly to be borne.

But when the critic comes to the next performance, on November 10, he decides that it is “but an ungrateful office to attempt to put the town out of humor with a representation by which they have been so often delighted.” Garrick, he adds, “perhaps never performed any character in which he charmed an audience more than in that of Don Felix, whether we regard him in his tender or jealous fits.” Miss Macklin, as Violante, “which is prettily imagined and well supported, gives a sensible delight; and in the scenes with Felix, in which by the way the dialogue is far from being amiss, she contrasts his jealousy so agreeably, that we are sorry at every reconciliation for fear they should not fall out again.”

Joseph Knight¹³ notes that Felix was “what has been thought [Garrick's] greatest comic part.” Dibdin,¹⁴ who regards this as certainly Mrs. Centlivre's best drama, remarks that jealousy is perhaps better depicted in this comedy than in any other but that probably only Garrick has represented jealousy in Don Felix to perfection.

Several distinguished actresses played Violante at Drury Lane during the twenty years that Felix was Garrick's role. When Miss Macklin went to Covent Garden in the fall of 1760, Mrs. Cibber succeeded to the part and acted it on several occasions beginning with March 23, 1761. Mrs. Yates was Violante for the first time at Yates's benefit on March 23, 1762, and then it became her role in 1763-64. Miss Pope, Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Barry, and Miss Younge had the part from 1765 until Mrs. Yates resumed it on January 18, 1775. It was one of Mrs. Yates's great roles. After sixty years William Godwin still remembered her acting it with Garrick:

What I seem best to remember her [Mrs. Yates] in is Violante, in “The Wonder”; and though it is sixty years since I saw Garrick and her in that play, I remember a great deal of it, as if it had occurred yesterday. It is an admirable acting play, and the two principal performers seemed to leave nothing to be desired. What I recollect best of Mrs. Yates is the scene in which Garrick, having offended her by a jealousy, not altogether without an apparent cause, the lady, conscious of her entire innocence, at length expresses a serious resentment. Felix had till then indulged his angry feelings; but finding at last that he had gone too far, applies himself with all a lover's arts to soothe her. She turns her back to him, and draws away her chair; he follows her, and draws his chair nearer; she draws away further; at length by his whining, entreating, and cajoling, she is gradually induced to melt, and finally makes it up with him. Her condescension in every stage, from its commencement to its conclusion, was admirable. Her dignity was great and lofty, and the effect highly enhanced by her beauty; and when by degrees she laid aside her frown—when her lips began to relax towards a smile, while one cloud vanished after another, the spectator thought he had never seen anything so lovely and irresistible, and the effect was greatly owing to her queen-like majesty. The conclusion, in a graceful and wayward beauty, would have been comparatively nothing; with Mrs. Yates's figure and demeanour, it laid the whole audience, as well as the lover, at her feet.¹⁵

The technique which Garrick used to get his effects in the famous reconciliation scene required great assurance. According to Victor,¹⁶ he raised “Laughter and Delight in his Auditors from his pointed Pauses,” always exercising his judgment to direct him to the second when to resume his speech. In The Wonder, “in that entertaining Scene between Don Felix and Violante, … the Pause is near four Minutes; but then, the Marking Eye, and every corresponding Limb, supplies the Want of Words so effectually, as to create repeated Laughs, from the Looks and Actions of that judicious Actor.”

When Garrick resumed the character of Felix in 1768-69 after an absence of four years from it, The Wonder was called for six times. One of the most notable occasions was the production on April 24, 1769, when Kitty Clive retired from the stage in the part of Flora. Mrs. Clive, a comic genius, had been one of Garrick's favorite performers, especially in the role of chambermaid.

By this time The Wonder is consistently treated with respect by the critics. A reviewer of a performance at Drury Lane on December 31, 1771, remarks:

This is one of the best of Mrs. Centlivre's Pieces, for besides, that the Plot is pleasingly intricate, the Conduct and Catastrophe is managed with considerable ingenuity, and the Language is more chaste and correct than in any of her other Comic Pieces. To which we may add, that most of the Characters are justly drawn, and finished with a considerable degree of judgement; which proves her to have been perfectly acquainted with life, and thoroughly intimate with the minds and manners of mankind.¹⁷

The critics did not always feel that the audiences recognized great acting. For example, the General Evening Post, for May 9-12, 1772, points out that the audience on the preceding Saturday had applauded Garrick more loudly when, after dressing up in a woman's riding hood, he hobbled off the stage like an old woman than in those scenes in which his acting was “indeed prodigious.” The same paper for December 12-15, 1772, reflects on the nature of dramatic ability. Genius and erudition, it says, did not enable Pope, Fielding, or Dr. Johnson (whose tragedy Irene “was stillborn”) to produce a living play, whereas Mrs. Centlivre, “with little genius and less education, will be remembered while we have a stage, and gain universal applause from a modest adherence to nature and probability.”

The most significant honor that befell The Wonder was Garrick's choice of it to close his theatrical career on June 10, 1776. Some have been disposed to criticize him adversely for ending his career in the part of Don Felix, but he chose it over Richard III, in which he had started out, because he desired to be left with the energy to deliver a final word of appreciation to the audience. After giving the prologue which he had written, he went through the part “with great good humour and well-dissembled vivacity.”¹⁸ Then, with the actors crowding about the stage and in the wings, he spoke a few heartfelt words, which were heralded in the newspapers and repeated in the magazines of the time. The occasion afforded “one last glimpse of true comedy, the like of which it may be suspected no one has seen since,”¹⁹ and the crowded, magnificent, and responsive audience may be regarded as unique in the history of the English stage.

Following Garrick's retirement The Wonder continued to be given, though not so frequently as before. Covent Garden seems never to have found a pair for the two main roles who could challenge the memory of Garrick and Miss Macklin or Garrick and Mrs. Yates. The Public Advertiser for January 11, 1783, notes the attendance of a “numerous audience” at Drury Lane the night before to see the comedy, but adds on May 10 that “in these latter Days, the Wonder does not move us much.” On December 4, 1784, it explains part of the difficulty—the lack of a satisfactory Felix. Mr. Holman, it says, was not “happy” in the role.

So far as I know, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who succeeded Garrick as manager of Drury Lane, never acted in The Wonder, but he may have drawn upon it for his comic opera, The Duenna, first presented at Covent Garden on November 21, 1775. According to the Biographia Dramatica he took his plot from “Il Filosofo di Campagna, from Molière's Sicilien, and from The Wonder of Mrs. Centlivre.” Don Ferdinand and Clara correspond to Don Felix and Violante of The Wonder, and Don Antonio and Louisa to Colonel Britton and Isabella. Louisa is the sister of Ferdinand, and Louisa and Clara are friends, as are Isabella and Violante. Ferdinand and Antonio are also friends, but Ferdinand is jealous of Antonio as is Felix of Colonel Britton. There can be little doubt that Sheridan had The Wonder in mind, though the language is entirely his own.

Next to Garrick, John Philip Kemble was probably the most satisfactory performer of Felix. He and Miss Farren, as Violante, made an excellent team in the play. This highly complimentary notice of their acting is characteristic:

Perhaps there is no play represented on the English stage which affords a greater scope for fine acting; Kemble and Miss Farren are inimitable throughout; it is worth the whole of the admission money to see them only. The passions of love and jealousy are pourtrayed in their strongest colouring; and we, who well remember Garrick, think the acting of Kemble very little inferiour to him.²⁰

Kemble gave the play rather frequently while he was manager. If anything went wrong with the rest of his repertory, he could be sure that The Wonder would always draw at least a partial house. One of his chief difficulties was the illness, real or assumed, of Mrs. Dora Jordan. In his Memoranda for January 1, 1789, he notes that “Mrs. Jordan pretends to be ill again.”²¹ This time the audience paid £88 7s. 6d. to see Kemble and Miss Farren in The Wonder. On February 2, Dodd, Bensley, and Mrs. Jordan are marked ill, and The Wonder was repeated, this time producing £138 1s.

It is interesting that The Wonder, written in an age of prose and reason, continued to be popular in an age of increasing romanticism. Such popularity was partly due to the fact that the characters do not hide their feelings and that the situations spring from their emotions. Undoubtedly there had been a change in the attitude of the audience, Mrs. Centlivre's own times desiring especially manners and clever intrigue and the late eighteenth century desiring love and romance, but by shifting the emphasis the actors were able to please the audiences of both periods. As a play of jealousy in high life, The Wonder was regarded as supreme during the second half of the century:

The Wonder is clearly the most entertaining play built upon the domestic Caution and irrational Jealousy, which so long marked the Spanish Character. The character of Don Felix is in the highest degree natural and pleasing—His quick succession of doubts and tenderness—His angry departure, merely to return more enslaved—His ready sensibility and impatience of affront—are not peculiarly national and local; they are the feelings of most men in situations any way similar.

The lower Characters of the Play are natural, and constructed with much knowledge of stage effect.—The Theatre has, perhaps, few pieces which so completely can be considered as freeholds of Dramatic forms.²²

I have made no attempt to count the number of performances of The Wonder in England and America after 1800. It continued, however, to be regarded as a sterling acting comedy, and the number of editions would indicate that it was often read as well. I have examined eighteen separate editions or printings before 1800 (including one translation into French, Le Prodige [1785]) and twenty-four after 1800 (including one translation into Polish, Kobieta dotrzymuiaca sekretu [1817]).

From its first production The Wonder enjoyed a reputation for natural scenes of love, jealousy, quarrels, repentance, and forgiveness. The love scenes, in fact, are as natural and kindly as those of Tom Robertson which set the fashion for the second half of the nineteenth century. Mrs. Centlivre apparently thought that she was writing another comedy of intrigue, but more than any other playwright of her age she gave her characters natural human emotions, so that later ages could forget the intrigue pattern after a few of the looser expressions had been excised.

Perhaps because Garrick had been so outstanding as Felix, in the eighteenth century the part of Violante was considered of minor importance, but during the following century the relative importance of Felix and Violante was frequently reversed. In the early part of the century Dora Jordan, despite her frequent illness, was one of the great Violantes. Leigh Hunt liked her very much:

… her laughter is the happiest and most natural on the stage; … her laughter intermingles itself with her words, as fresh ideas afford her fresh merriment; … it increases, it lessens with her fancy, … This is the laughter of the feelings; and it is this predominance of heart in all she says and does that renders her the most delightful actress in the Donna Violante of the Wonder, the Clara of Matrimony, and in twenty other characters, which ought to be more ladylike than she can make them, and which acquire a better gentility with others.²³

William Macready also praised Mrs. Jordan as Violante:

The moving picture, the very life of the scene was perfect in her mind, and she transferred it in all its earnestness to every movement of the stage.

… I have seen many Violantes since, but where was there one, who could, like her, excite the bursts of rapture in an audience, when she recovered from the deadly agony into which her fears and discovery had thrown her, and prepared herself for her triumph over her jealous lover?²⁴

The Wonder is included in the British Theatre (1808), prefaced with biographical and critical remarks by Mrs. Inchbald, whose career is sometimes compared to that of Mrs. Centlivre. Mrs. Inchbald regards Mrs. Centlivre as an excellent practical playwright:

Mrs. Centlivre … ranks in the first class of our comic dramatists: for though she does not possess the repartee of Congreve or Wycherley, and her dialogue, in general, is not equal even to Farquhar's, yet she discovers such happy invention in her plots, incidents, and characters; such skill in conducting the intrigues of a comedy; such art in exciting the curiosity, the anxiety, or the mirth of her auditors, that she foils both the scholar and the wit when the comparison is limited to dramatic effect. …

Most comic writers of the present time accomplish the tedious labour of a five act drama by having recourse, alternately, to sentiment and drollery: here a long play is sustained without excursions to either; …

Among the most interesting criticisms of The Wonder are two by William Hazlitt. In the Examiner for Monday, September 16, 1816, he reviews a performance at Covent Garden on the preceding Saturday:

The Wonder is one of our good old English Comedies, which holds a happy medium between grossness and refinement. The plot is rich in intrigue, and the dialogue in double entendre, which however is so light and careless, as only to occasion a succession of agreeable alarms to the ears of delicacy. This genuine comedy, which is quite as pleasant to read as to see (for we have made the experiment within these few days, to our entire satisfaction) was written by an Englishwoman, before the sentimental, Ultra-Jacobinical German School … had spoiled us with their mawkish Platonics and maudlin metaphysics. The soul is here with extreme simplicity considered as a mere accessary to the senses in love, and the conversation of bodies preferred to that of minds as much more entertaining. We do not subscribe our names to this opinion, but it is Mrs. CENTLIVRE'S, and we do not chuse to contradict a Lady. The plot is admirably calculated for stage-effect, and kept up with prodigious ingenuity and vivacity to the end. … The time for the entrance of each person on the stage is the moment when they are least wanted, and when their arrival makes either themselves or some body else look as foolish as possible.

Hazlitt does not overlook the fact that The Wonder teaches a moral in the rare example of a woman's keeping a secret and being rewarded in the end by the triumph of her friendship and love. Miss Boyle, he adds, as Violante was wrong in her tendency to sentimentalize a purely comic part, for the dialogue in genteel comedy should not come “laboring up all the way from the heart.” Charles Kemble was guilty of the same error, playing Felix in much the same style that he might have been expected to use for Macduff.

The second criticism is found in the Times for October 9, 1819. In this review Hazlitt reports that Miss Brunton was mediocre as Violante in a performance at Covent Garden the night before, since she failed to unite the “extreme spirit” with the “extreme delicacy” that together make the character. But he now regards Charles Kemble's Don Felix as one of his best parts.

The British Drama (1817) includes The Wonder with a criticism by R. Cumberland. Cumberland says that the woman dramatist of Mrs. Centlivre's period was prevented by her education and the habits of her sex from seeing life at first hand in those diversified scenes open to the male dramatists, so that her love scenes are merely copied from those written by the other sex. The result, he concludes, is that her lovers become libertines and her “ladies mistake easy virtue for easy manners.” Nevertheless, he praises the play immoderately:

A more interesting situation can hardly be imagined, nor scenes more ingeniously devised to display the persevering fidelity of Violante, the impassioned character of Felix, and at the same time be contrived to furnish such apologies for his jealousy, as serve to keep the audience in perfect good-humor with him. …

… few plays of its date have been so frequently before the public; and very few, I believe, who have been present at its representation, ever departed from the theatre dissatisfied with the writer of it.

Wallack was the Felix at Drury Lane in 1826 and 1827. The performances of the play seem to have been well received, but Wallack was generally disapproved, not the least objection to his Felix being his failure to act the part as a gentleman. Ellen Tree made her debut on the London boards as Violante at Drury Lane on the first day of the 1826-27 season.²⁵ Macready performed Felix at Covent Garden on January 27, 1838. He thought he acted the part “with spirit and self-possession,” but he had not had the time to prepare a finished representation of it.²⁶

The Wonder was a favorite play with the Hanoverians, as indeed it should have been. George II patronized it both as Prince of Wales and as King, and George III commanded it on at least five occasions. Even Queen Victoria called for a performance at Covent Garden on March 24, 1840. She and her beloved Albert received an ovation. Though sixty-four years old, Charles Kemble is said to have taken the role of Felix admirably.

The comedy continued to attract attention. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean (the former Ellen Tree) acted Felix and Violante in a three-act version at Drury Lane on March 22, 1862. One of the last revivals of the play was made in 1897 at Daly's Theater in New York, with Ada Rehan as Violante. It was a spirited production, evoking plenty of laughter and applause. By this time it was regarded distinctly as a woman's play. The audiences seem not to have regarded The Wonder as great literature, but they did enjoy Violante's “innocent fooling of her impulsive lover.”

Notes

1. Genest, II, 526.

2. An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford, 1691). Nicoll (A History of Restoration Drama [Cambridge, 1923], p. 242) gives the traditional origin of The Wrangling Lovers: “Langbaine traces its source to a novel of that country [Spain], the same to which Mrs. Centlivre was indebted for The Wonder. A Woman keeps a Secret.”

3. Oeuvres de Molière (Paris, 1873), I, 381.

4. “Les Plagiaries de Molière,” Le Moliériste, Jan., 1881, pp. 304-05.

5. Elvira is really an adaptation of Calderon's No siempre lo peor es cierto. The same story was reworked by Christopher Bullock in Woman Is a Riddle (1717) and by Richard Savage in Love in a Veil (1719). Both plays suggest The Wonder at times, but it is not possible to demonstrate that either Bullock or Savage was imitating Mrs. Centlivre's play or using a common source with it.

6. He says that he took the hint for the main plot, A Tutor for the Beaus, from Boissy's Le François a Londres, a short piece first acted in Paris on July 19, 1727.

7. Violante's attempt to persuade Felix that she has not hidden a man in her bedchamber seems to go back ultimately to Boccaccio, especially to the story (Day VII, Novel 5) in which a wife dupes her husband, who has taken her confession in the habit of a priest.

8. According to the advertisement in the Daily Courant, Pinkethman was to have a part in the play, perhaps that of Gibby, assigned to Bullock in the cast shown in the printed copy.

9. Life of David Garrick (1868), II, 97.

10. Life of David Garrick (Dublin, 1801), pp. 201 ff.

11. The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Peter Cunningham (1866), IX, 96.

12. XII (Oct., 1814), 133.

13. David Garrick (1894), p. 159.

14. A Complete History of the Stage (n.d.), V, 10.

15. W. Clark Russell, Representative Actors [1875], pp. 175-76.

16. The History of the Theatres of London (1771), I, 247.

17. The Theatrical Review; or, New Companion to the Playhouse, by a Society of Gentlemen (1772), I, 335; also London Chronicle, Jan. 7-9, 1772.

18. Murphy, Life of David Garrick, pp. 336 ff.

19. Fitzgerald, Life of David Garrick, II, 394 ff.

20. Clipping in a Haymarket scrapbook, Theatre Collection, Harvard College Library.

21. Memoranda of J. P. Kemble, British Museum, Additional MSS, 31, 972.

22. The Wonder, 1792 edition, later bound up in Bell's British Theatre, XXI; reprinted also in Jones's British Theatre (Dublin, 1795), and in the New York edition (1812).

23. Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres, by the Author of the Theatrical Criticisms in the News (1807), pp. 165-66.

24. Macready's Reminiscences, ed. Sir Frederick Pollock (1875), I, 63-64.

25. She had achieved considerable distinction at Bath and had appeared once before in London, for the benefit of her sister, Miss M. Tree, better known as Mrs. Bradshaw. A third sister appeared with Ellen for the first time on Sept. 23.

26. Macready's Reminiscences, I, 63-65.