SOURCE: Butler, Douglas R. “Plot and Politics in Susanna Centlivre's A Bold Stroke for a Wife.” In Curtain Calls: British and American Women and the Theater, 1660-1820, edited by Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski, pp. 357-70. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Butler distinguishes Centlivre's style in A Bold Stroke for a Wife from Restoration comedy, suggesting that plot, rather than witty banter, is the center of her plays and of their political meaning.

Although she is generally recognized as England's most popular woman playwright, Susanna Centlivre has inspired relatively little critical attention and even less acclaim. The standard critical observation is that she writes highly theatrical plays, full of action, that are quite innocent of thought. Perhaps Centlivre does not have a serious vision, but she does seem to share certain assumptions with the Whiggish writers of her time, with those who believed that...