SOURCE: Bateson, F. W. “Mrs. Centlivre.” In English Comic Drama 1700-1750, pp. 61-77. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929.

In the following excerpt, Bateson offers praise for Centlivre's ability to write to the taste of her audience, suggesting that her plays were commercially rather than artistically successful. Bateson also remarks on Centlivre's skillful use of disguise and mistaken identity in comic plots.

I

‘What a Pox have the Women to do with the Muses?’ exclaims the Critick of A Comparison between the Two Stages. ‘I hate these Petticoat Authors; 'tis false Grammar, there's no Feminine for the Latin word, 'tis entirely of the Masculine Gender, and the Language won't bear such a thing as a She-Author.’ The tirade typifies the attitude of the world of culture in the face of the invasion of literature by the ‘fair sex’ which had begun with the Restoration. An authoress was still a monstrosity. It...