The ways in which a woman could win her bread outside the pale of matrimony were extremely limited.  A stage career, connected with a certain degree of infamy, had been open to the sex since Restoration times, and writing for the theatre had been successfully practiced by Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Pix, and Mrs. Davys.  The first two female playwrights mentioned had produced beside their dramatic works a number of pieces of fiction, and Mrs. Mary Hearne, Mrs. Jane Barker, and Mrs. Sarah Butler had already gained a milder notoriety as romancieres.  Poetry, always the elegant amusement of polite persons, had not yet proved profitable enough to sustain a woman of letters.  Eliza Haywood was sufficiently catholic in her taste to attempt all these means of gaining reputation and a livelihood, and tried in addition a short-lived experiment as a publisher.  Beside these literary pursuits we know not what obscure means for support she may have found from time to time.

Her first thought, however, was apparently of the theatre, where she had already made her debut on the stage of the playhouse in Smock Alley (Orange Street), Dublin during the season of 1715, as Chloe in “Timon of Athens; or, the Man-Hater."[7] One scans the dramatis personae of “Timon” in vain for the character of Chloe, until one recalls that the eighteenth century had no liking for Shakespeare undefiled.  The version used by the Theatre Royal was, of course, the adaptation by Thomas Shadwell, in which Chloe appears chiefly in Acts ii and III as the maid and confidant of the courtesan Melissa.  Both parts were added by Og.  The role of Cleon was taken by Quin, later an interpreter of Mrs. Haywood’s own plays.  But if she formed a connection with either of the London theatres after leaving her husband, the engagement was soon broken off, and her subsequent appearances as an actress in her comedy of “A Wife to be Lett” (1723) and in Hatchett’s “Rival Father” (1730) were due in the one case to an accident and in the other to her friendship for the playwright.

She herself, according to the “Biographia Dramatica,” when young “dabbled in dramatic poetry; but with no great success.”  The first of her plays, a tragedy entitled “The Fair Captive,” was acted the traditional three times at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, beginning 4 March, 1721.[8] Aaron Hill contributed a friendly epilogue.  Quin took the part of Mustapha, the despotic vizier, and Mrs. Seymour played the heroine.  On 16 November it was presented a fourth time for the author’s benefit,[9] then allowed to die.  Shortly after the first performance the printed copy made its appearance.  In the “Advertisement to the Reader” Mrs. Haywood exposes the circumstances of her turning playwright, naively announcing: 

  “To attempt any thing in Vindication of the following Scenes, wou’d
  cost me more Time than the Composing ’em took me up...