Centlivre, Mrs Susannah

Centlivre, Mrs Susannah (1667–1723), English dramatist and actress, a masculine-looking woman who delighted in playing men's parts. She had already written several plays when she achieved her first success with The Gamester (1705), a sentimental drama based to some extent on Regnard's Le Joueur (1696) but with the moral tone of Colley Cibber and Richard Steele. It was followed in the same year by a somewhat similar play, The Bassett-Table, which, like all her early works, was published under her second married name, Mrs Carroll. In 1706 she married as her third husband Joseph Centlivre, cook to Queen Anne, whose name she thereafter retained. Of her many comedies of intrigue, which in verve and ingenuity rivalled those of Aphra Behn, the best were The Busie Body (1709), The Wonder, a Woman Keeps a Secret (1714), and A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718). All three were frequently revived, the second, which owed much of its initial success to the acting of Anne Oldfield as Violante, later providing an excellent vehicle for Garrick in the part of Don Felix. The last, perhaps better classified as a comedy of manners, shows the influence of Congreve.