[In the following essay, first published in an 1806 edition of The Busie Body, Inchbald offers a brief biography of Centlivre, emphasizing the need for unmarried or widowed women and mothers to earn a living and defending authorship as a legitimate profession for women. Critiquing The Busie Body, Inchbald contends that the character of Marplot, especially in the hand of an able comedian, made possible the long life of an otherwise mediocre play.]

When a man follows the occupation of a woman, or a woman the employment of a man, they are both unpleasing characters, if they are guided in their pursuits by choice; but, if necessity has ruled their destinies, they are surely objects of compassion and mercy should be granted to their want of skill in their irregular departments.

The female author of The Busy Body was driven to a poet's calling by the hardships of her fate.

Mrs. Centlivre's father was the possessor of a considerable estate at Holbeach, in Lincolnshire, at the time of the Restoration; but, as he was a zealous dissenter, he was, of course, persecuted for the political opinions which adhered to this church: his estate was at length confiscated, and he, with his family, obliged to seek refuge in Ireland.

The authoress of this play was, at twelve years of age, an orphan; and at fifteen, being persecuted on account of her poverty and her beauty, as much as her father had been for his religious and republican principles, she pursued his example; and, flying from her enemies, took shelter in England. England had not the virtue to protect her, either from want or from dishonour. A student of Cambridge met her, a forlorn traveller, on her way to London; and this young man, being of an engaging mind and person, prevailed on her (destitute as she was) to accompany him to the university in man's attire, as his companion and friend.

The haste with which this intimacy was formed was but the forerunner of as hasty a separation. She, however, remained long enough at the college to learn experience, and to improve her taste for literature.

The biographers of Mrs. Centlivre have not said where she met with her second lover; but it is certain she had the prudence to make him her husband: she had the affliction, likewise, to be a widow before she was eighteen.

Her deceased husband was a gentleman, and the nephew of Sir Stephen Fox. Her next husband was also a gentleman; for she married, not long after her widowhood, a Mr. Carrol, who was killed in a duel the year following;—and, once more, she became a widow.

It was now discreet to think on another support than such as had depended on the lives of two young husbands, who, having offended their family by a contract of marriage, the mere effects of love, had, on their demise, left their relict in the most indigent circumstances. Mrs. Carrol became an actress; but, notwithstanding her youth, her wit, and her beauty, she was unsuccessful in that profession.

To avoid the alternative, female profligacy, or domestic drudgery, she now encountered the masculine enterprise of an author. She wrote eighteen plays, of which three will preserve her memory:—these are, The Wonder, Bold Stroke for a Wife, and the present comedy.

In this period of her writing, (and, no doubt, its concomitant, fasting,) the reader will not be surprised that Mrs. Carrol should marry a third time.—She now united herself to a man, whose very title promised her protection from that ancient and modern visitation upon authors, denominated—hunger. Mr. Centlivre was “yeoman to the mouth,” or principal cook to Queen Anne. Mrs. Centlivre's forecast in these her last nuptials, did her judgment more honour than her ambition. She died in 1723, of a disorder neither so lingering, nor so painful, as starving.

The comedy of The Busy Body, which has survived one hundred years, was, by the actors who performed in it, expected to die on the first night.

The foresight of actors, in regard to the success of new dramas, has been long out of credit—unjustly so—for, although their predictions are not infallible actors are as frequently prophetic upon the life and death of a play as the physician upon that of his patient.

The part of Marplot is the sole support of this comedy.—A most powerful protector in all, that original character can give. The busy curiosity, the officious good temper, and the sheepish cowardice of this mean atom of human nature, are so excellently delineated, that he allures the attention and expectation of the auditors, and makes them bear with patience, the dull and common-place dramatic persons which surround them.

Authors of the past time, and those of the present, have had very different notions of the ties which subsist between parents and children. It is shocking to see how tyranny on one part, and deceit on the other, disgrace most of our old play books. It is to be hoped that these portraits of unnatural vice have been daubed with such hideous colours, they have reclaimed all fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, and left to the writers of these days, to paint from nature—parental and filial love.