SOURCE: Introduction to A Bold Stroke for a Wife, by Susanna Centlivre, edited by Thalia Stathas, University of Nebraska Press, 1968, pp. xi-xxvi.

[In the essay below, Stathas gives full publication and production histories for A Bold Stroke for a Wifeand discusses Centlivre's development and modification of eighteenth-century comic conventions.]

First performed in February, 1718, A Bold Stroke for a Wife, “By the Author of the Busie-Body and the Gamester,” was published that year, probably in the same month, by “W. Mears, J. Browne, and F. Clay.”¹ William Mears was the principal partner in most early editions of Mrs. Centlivre's comedy. Publisher as well for Defoe, Dennis, Philips, and Theobald, he aroused Pope's wrath and appears in The Dunciad (A, III.20; B, III.28). In 1719, he assembled A Collection of Plays By Eminent Hands, including A Bold Stroke for a Wife in Volume III. Mears used pages left over from the first edition, retaining the original preliminaries. Since, at the most, he prefixed a half-title page to them, this printing is better termed a first edition than a new issue.² With Clay he published the second edition in 1724, the year after Mrs. Centlivre's death.³ In 1728, Thomas Astley reissued it in London, replacing the original title page with a new one which bears only his imprint. The year before, a Dublin edition based on the second had appeared, and in 1729, the third London edition followed, again from the presses of Mears and Clay.⁴

Of the early editions, only the first two can claim authority; it is in fact doubtful that Mrs. Centlivre prepared the second. In both of its states, copies of the first edition (D1) are rare. Three have been collated for this edition. The copy-text is a separately bound duodecimo in the Bodleian Library; gathered in sixes, it was probably imposed by half-sheet.⁵ The other copies are in the British Museum and the Harvard College Library. A duodecimo second edition in the library of the University of London (D2) has also been collated.⁶ The British Museum's copy of D1 appears in A Collection of Plays By Eminent Hands; Harvard's is separately bound. The Bodleian's may once have formed part of the Collection, for the recto of a page facing the title page is identical to the half-title probably added in 1719. Harvard's copy lacks this page altogether. It has been trimmed so closely at the top that its headlines are mutilated and the first word (A) is missing from the title page.

Except for these defects, Harvard's copy of D1 corresponds exactly with the Bodleian's, which is perfect. The British Museum's, also perfect, contains three press variants, all in the fifth signed gathering, on [E3v] and [E4]. Only one of them is substantive;⁷ it occurs in IV.iii.91, of the present edition. The British Museum's copy reads, “Fortune reward the faithful Lover's Pain.” The other copies use the third person singular, rewards, rather than the imperative. Spacing of type in these readings suggests that the press was stopped for alteration after the British Museum's copy was printed. Therefore, to indicate the sequence of variant copies here, the siglum D1a has been assigned to the British Museum's and D1b to Harvard's and the Bodleian's. Both readings are equally logical in context. The present edition accepts rewards, as do D2, all other editions through 1729, and that in the first collection of Mrs. Centlivre's dramatic works (W).⁸ Since the compositor did not alter readings elsewhere, it seems unlikely that he would have stopped the press here, had reward not departed from the copy being set. Presumably it bore the dramatist's authority.

D2 follows D1 closely, introducing only occasional substantive variants. Sometimes it corrects an obvious mistake in D1 or clearly errs itself. Significant errors and all substantive variants in both editions have been recorded as they occur, in textual notes, as have significant punctuational variants and emendations of the copy-text. D1 has been emended with caution; whenever it has been altered, D2's reading has been adopted if it is suitable; all other editions through 1729 and W have also been consulted. Save for the exceptions already described, punctuation and spelling have been silently modernized. Contractions lacking phonetic significance in the early eighteenth century have been expanded without mention; for example, shou'd and wou'd have been emended to should and would. All other contractions have been allowed to stand. Although French spelling has been silently modernized, Dutch has not been brought into accord with modern usage; for to so edit it would destroy the author's humorous, phonetically conceived Dutch-English hybrids.

A Bold Stroke for a Wife was first produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields on February 3, 1718.⁹ It was performed six times, almost consecutively, with Christopher Bullock playing Fainwell, the comedy's most demanding part. Despite initial success, it was not performed again until 1724, and then not in London but on Epsom Walks by a company of strolling actors.¹⁰ Lincoln's Inn Fields revived the play, “Not Acted these Ten Years,” on April 23, 1728, with Milward as Fainwell. For the next decade, it was staged in London principally under Henry Giffard's management, at Goodman's Fields and then at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Unlike managers at the other theaters, he favored contemporary and recent works over those of the Restoration;¹¹ he frequently staged A Bold Stroke for a Wife, The Wonder (1714), and The Busy Body (1709), Mrs. Centlivre's most popular comedies. In A Bold Stroke for a Wife, Giffard presented such distinguished comedians as Huddy, Pinkethman, Bullock, Sr., and Norris. Often he produced the comedy with supplementary entertainments, ranging from dancing and singing to operas and other plays.

In the 1730's, A Bold Stroke for a Wife was also staged by Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the new theater in the Haymarket, and the theater at Southwark. On the Kentish circuit, Dymer's company played it at Margate in 1730.¹² In London, Mrs. Clive led the first cast at Drury Lane on January 13, 1739, with Milward as Fainwell and Woodward as Simon Pure. She was the most distinguished actress to take the role of Ann Lovely; at other London theaters, it had most often been played by Mrs. Berriman, Mrs. Hamilton, Mrs. Haughton, and Mrs. Younger. A new part was, apparently, added at Drury Lane, for cast listings regularly include Mrs. “Pickup,” a role also listed by Goodman's Fields for a performance on October 16, 1741.¹³

During 1740 and 1741, Drury Lane continued to produce A Bold Stroke for a Wife, once “By His Majesty's Command” (March 5, 1741). Nevertheless, in the 1740's, the play's stage history is dominated by Goodman's Fields, where it was produced fifteen times between October, 1740, and March, 1747. The management evaded the Licensing Act by presenting it “gratis” during intermissions at concerts or with tumbling and dancing.¹⁴ In this same period, theatrical booths at the fairs produced the comedy as a two-act droll, The Guardians over-reached in their Own Humour: or, the Lover Metamorphos'd.¹⁵ In the provinces, a company visiting Ipswich staged the play in January, 1741, and the Bristol company performed it in 1745.¹⁶

By the middle of the century, A Bold Stroke for a Wife had been staged about eighty times in London theaters. Yet, as with The Wonder, one of Garrick's favorite plays, this comedy's greatest popularity came after 1750. During the season of 1757-1758, Edward Shuter first played Fainwell at Covent Garden; by 1762, he had performed this part almost as often as Garrick had Don Felix, in The Wonder, at Drury Lane. Having earlier diverted audiences as Periwinkle, Shuter decided to attempt Fainwell in a benefit for himself on April 3, 1758. His advertisement of March 8 suggests the reasons for his choice: “Mrs. Centlivre's Comedies have a vein of pleasantry in them that will always be relish'd. She knew the Genius of this nation, and she wrote up to the spirit of it; her Bold Stroke for a Wife, was a masterpiece that much increased her reputation: it establish'd that of Kit Bullock. …”¹⁷ Shuter's choice proved sound; the receipts for his benefit were the largest of the season.¹⁸

In 1762, Henry Woodward returned to London theater after an absence of several seasons. Thereafter, for more than a decade at Covent Garden, he appeared as Fainwell and Shuter as Periwinkle or Prim. During the last part of the century, the play continued to be produced, averaging six performances each year.¹⁹ John Philip Kemble staged it often because of its reliability in pleasing his audiences. The comedy remained popular in the nineteenth century, when Charles Kemble, Charles Mathews, and Robert Elliston appeared in it, enhancing its reputation as an acting play. With these performers the stage history of A Bold Stroke for a Wife came to a close. No major company has produced it during the twentieth century; however, in a performance at Ealing in 1954, Questor's Theatre demonstrated that this comedy is still effective upon the boards.²⁰

One apparently insoluble problem exists regarding the play's authorship. Although in the Dedication Mrs. Centlivre claims complete originality, one of her fullest and most accurate contemporary biographers states that she had a collaborator: “In this Play she was assisted by Mr. Mottley, who wrote one or two entire Scenes of it.”²¹ The anonymous biographer is generally assumed to be John Mottley himself. Unfortunately, no known evidence exists by which to test his statement. The anonymous Prologue announces that the comedy is entirely Mrs. Centlivre's, including neither foreign nor native borrowings. More specifically, the writer states that “not one single title [is] from Molière.” This protestation may be conventional, for eighteenth-century prologues and epilogues often disclaim debts to foreign plays, especially French ones, boasting questionable originality for English authors.²² On the other hand, Mrs. Centlivre's dedicatory remarks cannot be disregarded, particularly since this is the only play for which she claims complete originality. That the comedy is stylistically and thematically consistent from beginning to end tends to support her statement. Presumably, she reworked any contributions that Mottley may have made.

Sources for specific episodes in the comedy have been suggested. Genest says that Mrs. Centlivre imitated Newburgh Hamilton's Petticoat Plotter in creating Simon Pure, the visiting Quaker whom Fainwell impersonates in order to outwit Prim.²³ Like the Colonel, Hamilton's True-love poses as a Quaker, Ananias Scribe, to gain entrance to Thrifty's house in order to court his daughter. As in A Bold Stroke for a Wife, when the real Scribe arrives, he is deemed an impostor and treated rudely. Unlike Prim, however, Thrifty himself discovers the fraud. Mrs. Centlivre's satire on Quakers may also be indebted to Cowley's Guardian (V.vi and xi), especially for the seduction of Tabitha and Mrs. Prim's rationalization of it (II.ii.30-44).²⁴ Reminiscent of The Guardian (V.i), too, is the Colonel's vision predicting his marriage to Mrs. Lovely, a ruse by which he accomplishes his aim (V.i.160-413). Yet, unlike Cowley's Cutter, Fainwell does not even try to dupe his beloved through this trick. To outwit her mother, Tabitha cooperates with Cutter by being well deceived; but Mrs. Lovely aids the Colonel directly in overcoming the Prims. Regarding the general satire on Quakers, Bowyer notes similarities between the Prims and Mrs. Plotwell, a character in Mrs. Centlivre's earlier comedy The Beau's Duel (1702).²⁵ Referring to this resemblance and that which Genest observes, he states that A Bold Stroke for a Wife often draws on earlier comedies. Several other parallels to Restoration plays are, in fact, evident.

Both uses of disguise in the gulling of Periwinkle (III.i and IV.iii) recall Sir Martin Mar-all. In Dryden's and Newcastle's play the landlord attempts to dispose of Sir Martin's rival by impersonating a mail carrier and informing Sir John that his father has died (II.ii). Disguised as a steward, Fainwell uses similar tactics against Periwinkle in their second encounter. But in contrast to Sir Martin Mar-all, he undertakes this stratagem himself, and his opponent is a guardian, not a suitor for Mrs. Lovely. When Sir Martin impersonates a traveler in trying to gull the Swashbuckler of his daughter (V.i), his antics more closely parallel the Colonel's first venture against Periwinkle. This episode in A Bold Stroke for a Wife also recalls the satire on the Royal Society in The Virtuoso. Although Shadwell employs no disguises that anticipate Mrs. Centlivre's, Sir Nicholas Gimcrack is a guardian; like Mrs. Lovely, the virtuoso's two wards lament their fate (I.ii). Still other similarities to earlier plays exist in A Bold Stroke for a Wife. Yet no one work can be termed a major source for this comedy. Even in the episodes just described, Mrs. Centlivre uses materials which had become the common property of contemporary writers: satires on Quakers and virtuosos abound in this period, as does delight in disguise.²⁶ That Mrs. Centlivre reshapes such conventional subjects with freshness surely justifies her protestation of originality.

A Bold Stroke for a Wife draws on contemporary literary traditions in still other ways. All of the guardians and Mrs. Prim resemble character sketches of the period. A true descendant of Shadwell's Gimcrack, Periwinkle also recalls stereotyped characters of virtuosos in The London Spy (Pt. 1), The Tatler (No. 216), and The Spectator (Nos. 21 and 275). Tradelove's sharp practices and manic-depressive reactions to their success and failure find counterparts in Ward's London Terrae-filius (No. 5), his London Spy (Pt. 16), and Defoe's Anatomy of Exchange-Alley (1719). The changebroker's admiration for Dutch management is paralleled by contemporary characters whom Ward entitles “The English Foreigners; or, The Whigs turn'd Dutchmen.”²⁷ With his pocket mirror and French inclinations, Sir Philip Modelove is an even more familiar type, one recurring throughout The Tatler and The Spectator; his dedication to ease and bachelorhood recalls the predilections of “Sir Narcissus Foplin: or, the Self-Admirer” in Hickelty Pickelty: or A Medley Of Characters Adapted to the Age (1708). Prim's hypocrisy, belief in inspired visions, and advocacy of the inner light are reminiscent of Quakerish speakers in a group of pamphlets initiated by Aminadab, or the Quaker's Vision (1710).²⁸ His wife's allusions to Biblical figures in arguing for homespun feminine attire echo The Scourge, a contemporary periodical satirically characterizing Quakers.²⁹

Although Mrs. Centlivre ridicules the guardians and Mrs. Prim, her primary aim is not didactic; unlike Shadwell, she does not even pretend to use humorous characters to laugh men out of their follies. The guardians' eccentricities may be the butt of occasional satire; yet more often these characters serve merely to amuse, and Mrs. Centlivre's attack on them ends amiably. Despite their whimsicalities, we sense that everyone will live happily together after Fainwell succeeds in winning Mrs. Lovely. In any case, the guardians do not receive the lambasting essential to the Jonsonian tradition. Instead, their presence and function recall Sir William Temple's belief that the richness of English comedy derived from native humors types who were to be tolerated.³⁰ Far from being benevolent, the four guardians cannot evoke the affectionate laughter accorded to eccentrics in later eighteenth-century literature. Still, they are not the targets for merciless ridicule that they would have been in most earlier comedy.

To differentiate between late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century comedy can, of course, lead to artificial generalizations which obscure the continuity of a tradition. Probably no single tendency within it can be isolated as an exclusively early or late one. Temple's attitude regarding humors, for example, indicates the relatively early origins of tolerant laughter; and, as Norman N. Holland observes, even the first Restoration comedies contain strains of sentiment from which sentimentality could develop.³¹ Nevertheless, as Clifford Leech demonstrates in a study of Congreve, changes in comic perspective and emphasis had begun to occur within the Restoration tradition by the end of the seventeenth century.³² In the eighteenth century, comedy became more “homespun” and “less marked by the obvious contrivances of wit” than it had been in the Restoration.³³A Bold Stroke for a Wife manifests these changes as well as others associated with the turn of the century.

Mrs. Centlivre's treatment of merchants in this comedy is more ambivalent than her use of humors characters.³⁴ Tradelove is ridiculed, as are merchants' wives and daughters (II.i.116, and II.ii.190); yet Freeman is heroic, and Tradelove's praise of mercantile contributions to English welfare is not intended ironically (II.ii.200-201, V.i.94-95, and V.i.99-105). With few exceptions, earlier comedies consistently ridicule merchants. But before Mrs. Centlivre wrote A Bold Stroke for a Wife, Collier, Steele, Blackmore, and other reformers had effectively criticized dramatists for such derision.³⁵ In arousing laughter at the mercantile class, Mrs. Centlivre may recall Restoration attitudes; however, as a friend of Steele's, she also echoes his patriotic defense of merchants in The Englishman of 1713 (Nos. 3 and 4).

As a more significant result of the reform movement, her comedy is freer of profanity and sexual innuendo than are most earlier plays.³⁶ Dispensing with a love chase, the hero and heroine have decided upon matrimony before the action opens. Like their Restoration predecessors, Fainwell and Mrs. Lovely find love without money impractical, but unlike the gay couples of earlier comedy, they engage in no verbal sparring.³⁷ Bold as Fainwell may be, he is not a rake; nor is he referred to as a reformed rake. Saucy as Mrs. Lovely is, her prayer for his success (I.ii.66-70) is tinged with sentimentality. In their most pensive moods, a Millamant or Harriet would be reluctant to utter this plea or Mrs. Lovely's subsequent avowal to Fainwell, “Thou best of men, Heaven meant to bless me sure, when first I saw thee” (V.i.226-227).

The intrigue of the outwitting games which form the comedy's plot precludes frequent intrusions of such sentimentality. It also obscures the sentimentality of the situation which gives rise to the action. Like the heroines of popular romances, Mrs. Lovely is a damsel in distress whom a hero must rescue. This situation contrasts markedly with anti-heroic and harshly realistic attitudes about the sexes predominating in earlier Restoration comedy. Mrs. Lovely's plight is, in fact, reminiscent of fairy tales: her father hated posterity and therefore arranged to have his daughter permanently confined. Freeman terms this conduct “unnatural” (I.i.81), and Sackbut describes Lovely as “the most whimsical, out-of-the-way tempered man I ever heard of” (I.i.72-73). He was, apparently, even more eccentric than the guardians whom he appointed to govern his daughter. Just as their behavior causes more amusement than ridicule, so, too, do the events which originate in his last will and testament.

According to Dryden, a situation arising from such behavior is bound to create farce rather than comedy. In the Preface to An Evening's Love; or the Mock Astrologer (1671), he defines the difference between these genres with reference to natural and unnatural behavior: “Comedy consists, though of low persons, yet of natural actions and characters; I mean such humours, adventures, and designs, as are to be found and met with in the world. Farce, on the other side, consists of forced humours, and unnatural events. Comedy presents us with the imperfections of human nature: Farce entertains us with what is monstrous and chimerical.”³⁸ Restoration comic theory and practice are too intricate to permit simple differentiation between comedy and farce; nevertheless, Dryden's comments are provocative in respect to A Bold Stroke for a Wife. Although the play is by no means pure farce, it abounds in farcical situations generated by Lovely's unnatural will.

In III.i, for example, we laugh not at the gulling of Periwinkle but at Fainwell's forced inventions and the operations of a trapdoor. Throughout the play, we are amused by the unlikeness of the Colonel's disguises, as they interact with the guardians' unnatural capers. We do not laugh at a realistic Restoration outwitting match between the sexes or between young lovers and their parents. Here we are amused by a preposterous contest of incongruities, created and perpetuated by eccentrics. Yet once we accept the initial fiction of the humorous father and guardians, all else follows logically. The play's success emanates from this artistic consistency and from the sense of realism that it establishes within a basically unrealistic situation. 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. Since the Colonel must impersonate a Quaker to gain Prim's consent to marry her, she must cooperate with his efforts. Mrs. Lovely's world is, after all, based on unnatural behavior.

If A Bold Stroke for a Wife is tolerantly humorous and often farcical, it is also witty; however, Mrs. Centlivre's wit is seldom rhetorical or fanciful.³⁹ She infrequently achieves the brilliantly racy repartee of earlier Restoration comedy with its witty similitudes and balanced parallelisms.⁴⁰ Rather, hers is the kind of wit that Corbyn Morris was to describe later in the century as “gay allusion.”⁴¹ In her dialogue, sound judgment does not create “What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.” Instead, it seeks out topical allusions that comment implicitly and aptly on the situation at hand. For this reason, Mrs. Centlivre's abundant references to social and political events require glossing to an extent that Congreve's witty comparisons do not.

The full humor and wit of Fainwell's first contest with Periwinkle (III.i) can unfold only if we know that his allusions to science and his smattering of Greek comment on projects of the Royal Society. His reference to “a learned physiognomist in Grand Cairo” (III.i.208) and Periwinkle's acceptance of this authority mock the Society for occasionally recognizing such charlatans as experimental scientists.⁴² In IV.i, Tradelove's miscalculating efforts to manipulate the stock market allude wittily to contemporary scandals in which overreached sharpers had to flee the town when they could not make good their wagers (see too IV.ii.102-116).⁴³ Sir Philip's and the Colonel's allusions to Heidegger's entertainments (II.i.109-111) suggest, without specifying, reports about the license associated with masquerades.⁴⁴ As these examples may imply, range of allusion, rather than development of particular references, characterizes Mrs. Centlivre's wit. If her facility of allusion is an intellectual limitation, nonetheless, it creates as much pleasure as does her evident ease in manipulating the play's plot.

Although witty repartee is not Mrs. Centlivre's forte, her use of language in this play is workmanlike and lively. So realistic is her scene at Jonathan's Coffee House (IV.i) that a mid-eighteenth-century commentator on the stock market commends the accuracy and vividness of her dialogue.⁴⁵ More significant is Mrs. Centlivre's use of expressive neologisms. The compound simon-pure, meaning genuine, entered the language through her creation of a character in this play.⁴⁶ Her use of put in reference to stockjobbing (IV.i.22) is the first recorded occurrence of this term cited by the OED. More interesting is her yet unacknowledged use of the substantive poluflosboio (III.i.141), a Greek loan meaning loud roaring. Under the adjectival form of this word (polyphloisboian or poluphloisboian) the OED enters a noun, polyphloisboioism, crediting Blackwood's Magazine (1823) with its first appearance in English; the adjective is said to occur first in 1824. That Mrs. Centlivre employs this esoteric borrowing with wit and accuracy again suggests her deftness in manipulating language.

Significant as they may be, neither this kind of linguistic skill nor topical wit can explain the continuing success of A Bold Stroke for a Wife over two centuries. By the nineteenth century or even earlier, many of its topical allusions had become meaningless to audiences and readers. And a play is seldom if ever read by the general public or staged for its philological interest. More specifically dramatic achievements account for this comedy's popularity. In part, it must be attributed to cleverly wrought stage business, plot intrigue, and amusing male roles. However, structural unity and concentrated action contribute at least as much to the comedy's dramatic success. As Bowyer notes, all the play's incidents center on the protagonist, Fainwell, and a single concern which he announces as the comedy opens: his intention to win Mrs. Lovely.⁴⁷ Like tightly developed variations on a theme, the action employs varied devices to convey a repeating motif, without monotony or extraneous complications. It presents a cycle of repetitive episodes and settings, modifying and embellishing them with new details.

Five times Fainwell attempts to overreach the guardians. Although each opponent presents a unique challenge, each challenge is directed to the same end: obtaining written consent for Fainwell to marry Mrs. Lovely. Determinedly individual as the guardians are, they are also unified, by their common ward and their fundamental eccentricity. Like a chameleon, the Colonel adapts himself to each man's foible, feigning friendship and kindred spirit toward the opponent at hand. In frequent tavern interludes, we preview all five disguises from a different perspective, as the real Fainwell and his real friend, Freeman, plan them. 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. His games bear on the main action, enabling the Colonel to complete his contests with these guardians. As the play draws to a close, the real world of tavern plots merges with that of deceptive appearances. To signal the merger, Freeman arrives at Prim's house with all the other guardians. In their presence, Fainwell assumes his true identity, after rapidly recapitulating all five contests.

To prevent monotony, Mrs. Centlivre varies the tempo of the outwitting games. The first, against Sir Philip, takes place in one uninterrupted episode, concluding successfully. The second, against Periwinkle, is also a single episode; however, it ends unsuccessfully, as chance intervenes and Periwinkle discovers the Colonel's real identity. Halfway through the play, this contest marks a turning point in Fainwell's fortunes, slowing down the action. Although the ensuing game against Tradelove is successful, it observes the retarded pace, going through three phases before reaching completion (IV.i, ii, and iv). As an added complication, it brings Freeman's outwitting match against Tradelove into action. Fainwell's third game is further complicated by being interwoven with the second against Periwinkle (IV.iii). Freeman initiates the latter before the third game commences, and the Colonel wins his second contest with Periwinkle while that with Tradelove is in progress. Through such contrapuntal treatment Mrs. Centlivre thickens the plot's texture, creating good-natured suspense.

Though a single episode, the Colonel's second match against Periwinkle introduces a significant variation on the basic pattern of outwitting games. In this venture, unlike any of the others, Fainwell disguises the marriage contract, presenting it as a lease in order to defeat his most troublesome opponent. Once he has brought Periwinkle to bay through this device, the action is again unimpeded; the match against Tradelove now moves rapidly to completion. As the action speeds forward, the gulling of the last guardian, Prim, takes place like that of the first, in one continuous episode which terminates successfully (V.i). As in the first game against Periwinkle, an outside party threatens to expose the Colonel's identity. But this time chance favors Fainwell, and he obtains the Quaker's signature before Simon Pure returns to disabuse Prim.

Despite their thematic repetitiveness, the outwitting contests create an impression of linear movement through space, as they take Fainwell to such varied settings as the Park and Exchange Alley. Nevertheless, two pivotal points exist to which the action always returns and on which it always turns, suggesting the motion of a cycle. They are the settings of the first act: the tavern, where Fainwell plots, and Prim's house, where Mrs. Lovely awaits him. Before Fainwell can claim his bride, he must successfully invade the Quaker's house. Twice he gains entry, and twice Mrs. Lovely almost upsets his plans because she fails to recognize him. Fainwell first arrives at Prim's after obtaining Sir Philip's consent (II.ii), and next when he returns as Simon Pure to gain the Quaker'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 impression is further strengthened because only in II.ii and V.i do all four guardians assemble. Three times they meet, always at Prim's house to discuss suitors for Mrs. Lovely. During Fainwell's first visit, their dissension quickly leads to his dismissal. Early in V.i, as if to blight his impending arrival, they reconvene to disagree, as in their first meeting. But by the end of Fainwell's second visit, when they last appear, he has resourcefully overcome their discord.

Fainwell's final triumph over the eccentrics marks the victory of concerted disguise. In V.i, Mrs. Lovely unwittingly dons her first deceptive costume and joins him in the game against Prim. Ironically, throughout the play she has scorned as hypocritical the Quaker garb that finally brings her liberation. Whenever we see her at Prim's house, she is as preoccupied by scorn for deceptive dress as Fainwell, in the tavern, is by plans for disguise. Before the guardians can be completely overreached, this difference in the hero's and heroine's attitudes must be reconciled. Like Fainwell, Mrs. Lovely must realize that disguise is not necessarily a mark of affectation or hyprocrisy. When she first appears on stage, she debates whether or not to put on the Quaker habit she detests (I.ii). After her next entrance (II.ii), she berates Mrs. Prim's hypocritical dress, having resolved not to wear it herself; by contrast, Fainwell now arrives, disguised as a beau, a breed he abhors as much as Mrs. Lovely does Quakers. Guided by necessity and realistic aims, he in no way shares Sir Philip's affectation. At the opening of the last act, just before his next arrival, Mrs. Lovely and Mrs. Prim echo their earlier conversation about clothing, but a significant change has occurred: for practical reasons, Mrs. Lovely has dressed as a Quaker. By altering her appearance, she hopes to silence Mrs. Prim's rebukes. During Fainwell's first visit, he has remarked, “How charming she appears” (II.ii.111-112). In his second visit to the Prims', he, too, echoes his earlier words, adding significantly to them: “How charming she appears, even in that disguise” (V.i.158-159). Once Mrs. Lovely discovers the full advantage of her dress, together she and Fainwell can play the final outwitting game to bring the action to a close.

Complication by disguise is a salient characteristic of Restoration comedy. It compliments the polite world's penchant for conducting intrigues and pranks in costumes and for attending masquerades. Accordingly, Holland interprets Wycherley's, Etherege's, and Congreve's use of this device as a mirror of court life.⁴⁸ 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.⁴⁹ In A Bold Stroke for a Wife disguise lacks this serious intellectual function. It simply fosters delight and a tightly developed plot. In a world of eccentrics where things are too much what they seem, only disguise can invert the orders of appearance and reality. And only disguise can place real people on an equal footing with humorous aberrations. That cleverly masked reality triumphs over unrealistic eccentricity is to be expected in the Augustan world to which this play belongs. In sentimental moments, Fainwell and Mrs. Lovely may feel that love conquers all things. But as intelligent people of fashion, they know that the god of love helps those who help themselves.

Notes

1. An advertisement in The Daily Courant for February 28, 1718, announces the publication of the comedy.

2. As the discussion of the first edition will also suggest, it is questionable whether the half-title appeared in 1718 or was added in 1719. Insofar as I have been able to determine, it is not conjugate with any other page in the first edition. In the copies of the half-title examined, the water mark is missing. The stock appears to be similar, but not identical, to that of the preliminaries and text.

3. Biographical problems and information regarding Mrs. Centlivre are discussed in the following works: James R. Sutherland, “The Progress of Error: Mrs. Centlivre and the Biographers,” Review of English Studies, XVIII (1942), 167-182; John Wilson Bowyer, The Celebrated Mrs. Centlivre (Durham, N.C., 1952); and John H. MacKenzie, “Susan Centlivre,” Notes and Queries, CXCVIII (1953), 386-390.

4. Bowyer has examined seventeen eighteenth-century printings and editions of A Bold Stroke for a Wife and eighteen nineteenth-century ones (p. 217). The play has not previously been printed in the twentieth century.

5. Allardyce Nicoll describes the first edition as an octavo, dated 1718; he refers to a duodecimo of 1719, making no mention of a 1718 duodecimo (A History of English Drama: 1660-1900 [Cambridge, England, 1952], II, 305). The first edition cited by The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature is that of 1718, appearing in Mears's Collection (II, 433). Although unable to trace an octavo first edition, Miss J. E. Norton questions whether the 1718 edition by Mears, Browne, and Clay is the first because it appears to start “part way through a gathering” (“Some Uncollected Authors XIV: Susanna Centlivre,” Book Collector, VI [1957], 177): [-]², A-F⁶, G². In fact, the preliminaries have undoubtedly been printed on the same sheet with G², for both of these gatherings have vertical chain lines; those in A-F⁶ are horizontal. Probably for economy or because of a shortage of stock, an odd-sized partial sheet was used to print the preliminaries and G², after the rest of the text had been printed.

6. This copy is bound in The English Theatre. Part II (London, 1731), VI.

7. [E3v] and [E4] belong to the same forme; once the press had been stopped for the substantive change, one punctuational and one typographical change were also made. SCENE was changed to SCENE; and a semicolon was substituted for a comma after Body in what is IV.iii.77, of the present edition.

8. The Works of the Celebrated Mrs. Centlivre. … With a New Account of her Life (London, 1760, 1761), 3 vols.; A Bold Stroke for a Wife appears in Volume III.

9. Unless otherwise noted, information regarding the play's stage history is based on Parts II, III, and IV of The London Stage: 1660-1800, ed. Emmett L. Avery, et al. (Carbondale, Ill., 1960-).

10. Bowyer, p. 215.

11. See Arthur H. Scouten, The London Stage: 1660-1800, Part Three: 1729-1747 (Carbondale, Ill., 1961), I, lxxxii.

12. Sybil Rosenfeld, Strolling Players and Drama in the Provinces, 1660-1765 (Cambridge, England, 1939), p. 221.

13. I have not been able to determine the nature of this role or whether a printed text including it exists.

14. See The London Stage: 1660-1800, Part Three: 1729-1747, II, the entry for Goodman's Fields, April 16, 1745.

15. Bowyer, p. 216. This version of the play is included in The Stroller's Pacquet Open'd (London, 1742); the title page of the droll is dated 1741.

16. Rosenfeld, pp. 99, 207.

17. The Public Advertiser; quoted in The London Stage: 1660-1800, Part Four: 1747-1776, ed. George Winchester Stone, Jr. (Carbondale, Ill., 1962), II, the entry for April 3, 1758.

18. Ibid.; the receipts totalled £325 9s. 6d.

19. Bowyer, p. 217. For a detailed account of the play's late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stage history, see Bowyer, pp. 217-218, on which my discussion is based.

20. Norton, “Susanna Centlivre,” p. 178.

21. A Compleat List of all the English Dramatic Poets, and of all Plays ever printed in the English Language to the present Year 1747, appended to Thomas Whincop's Scanderbeg: or, Love and Liberty (London, 1747), p. 191.

22. Mary E. Knapp, Prologues and Epilogues of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, 1961), pp. 221-229, especially pp. 225-226; in discussing conventional protestations of originality, Miss Knapp refers to this Prologue, though she erroneously terms it the Epilogue.

23. Some Account of the English Stage (Bath, 1832), II, 498-499.

24. Professor James Sutherland has kindly called this possibility to my attention.

25. Bowyer, p. 215.

26. Regarding the period's preoccupation with disguise, especially in reference to comedy, see Norman N. Holland, chapter 6, “Disguise, Comic and Cosmic,” The First Modern Comedies: The Significance of Etherege, Wycherley and Congreve (Cambridge, Mass., 1959). I discuss his thesis briefly below.

27. The Poetical Entertainer (1712), No. 3; see also No. 2.

28. The pamphlets prompted by this one also appeared in 1710: A Reply to Aminadab: or an Answer to the Quaker's Vision; Aminadab's Declaration delivered at a General Meeting holden upon the first day of the Pentecost; and Azarias, a Sermon held forth in a Quaker's Meeting immediately after Aminadab's Vision.

29. See No. 4, February 25, 1717.

30. Of Poetry (1690). For a discussion of the changing attitudes towards humors types, see Stuart M. Tave, The Amiable Humorist: A Study in the Comic Theory and Criticism of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Chicago, 1960), especially chapters 4 and 5.

31. Holland, pp. 85, 113, 160.

32. “Congreve and the Century's End,” Philological Quarterly, XLI (1962), 275-293.

33. Ibid., p. 284.

34. Regarding changing attitudes towards the mercantile class in Restoration comedy, see John Loftis, Comedy and Society from Congreve to Fielding (Stanford, Calif., 1959), especially pp. 33-35.

35. See Loftis, pp. 30-35.

36. Regarding these aspects of the reform movement, see Loftis, pp. 24-33.

37. John Harrington Smith traces changing attitudes towards love and marriage in Restoration comedy: The Gay Couple in Restoration Comedy (Cambridge, Mass., 1948).

38. Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1900), I, 135-136.

39. For a discussion of the wit characteristic of early Restoration comedy, see Thomas H. Fujimura, The Restoration Comedy of Wit (Princeton, 1952), chapter 2.

40. Dale Underwood analyzes the nature of comic language and its relationship to wit in Restoration comedy: chapter 6, “The Comic Language,” Etherege and the Seventeenth-Century Comedy of Manners (New Haven, 1957); see especially pp. 106-110.

41. An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire, and Ridicule (London, 1744), p. 14.

42. See R. F. Jones, “The Background of the Attack on Science in the Age of Pope,” Pope and his Contemporaries: Essays presented to George Sherburn, ed. James L. Clifford and Louis A. Landa (Oxford, 1949), pp. 111-112.

43. See John Francis, Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange (London, 1849), pp. 58-65, especially pp. 61-62; see too [Daniel Defoe], The Anatomy of Exchange-Alley: or, a System of Stock-Jobbing (London, 1719), reprinted as an appendix by Francis, pp. 359-383.

44. See Freeholder, No. 44, Guardian, No. 154, and an advertisement in Spectator, No. 22.

45. [Thomas Mortimer], Every Man his own Broker: or, a Guide to Exchange-Alley, 2d ed. (London, 1761), p. 133.

46. Glosses for words and linguistic information in this edition are based on the Oxford English Dictionary, unless otherwise noted.

47. Bowyer, p. 212.

48. Holland, pp. 47-50.

49. Holland, pp. 54-58.

List of Abbreviations

arch.: archaic

Bowyer: John Wilson Bowyer. The Celebrated Mrs. Centlivre. Durham, N.C., 1952.

D1: First edition, 12mo., 1718.

D1a: First edition, British Museum copy.

D1b: First edition, Bodleian and Harvard copies.

D2: “Second Edition,” 12mo., 1724.

fig.: figurative

ME: Middle English

obs.: obsolete

OED: Oxford English Dictionary

S.D.: stage direction

S.P.: speech prefix