Whatever the truth may be about Mrs. Centlivre’s use of her sources, her play remained in the repertory of acting plays long after L’Etourdi and Sir Martin Mar-all had disappeared. The Busie Body opened at the Drury Lane Theater on May 12, 1709.  Steele, who listed the play in The Tatler for May 14, 1709, does not mention the length of the run.  Thomas Whincop says that the play ran thirteen nights (Scanderbeg, London, 1747, p. 190), but Genest says the play had an opening run of seven nights (Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830, II, 419).  The play remained popular throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Genest lists it as being presented in twenty-three seasons from 1709 to 1800.  It was certainly presented much more frequently than this record shows, for Dougald MacMillan in The Drury Lane Calendar lists fifty-three performances from 1747-1776, whereas Genest records two performances in this period.  The greatest number of performances in any season was fourteen in 1758-59, the year David Garrick appeared in the play.  From the records available The Busie Body seems to have reached its greatest popularity in England in the middle and late eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century.  William Hazlitt, in the “Prefatory Remarks” to the Oxberry acting edition of 1819, says The Busie Body has been acted a “thousand times in town and country, giving delight to the old, the young, and the middle-aged.”

The Busie Body enjoyed a similar place of importance in the stage history of America but achieved its greatest popularity, in New York at least, in the nineteenth century.  First performed in Williamsburg on September 10, 1736, the play was presented fifteen times in New York in the eighteenth century.  In the nineteenth century forty-five performances were given in New York in sixteen seasons from 1803 to 1885 (George Odell, Annals of the New York Stage). The Busie Body is frequently cited with The Rivals and The School for Scandal for opening seasons and for long runs by great actors.

The text here reproduced is from a copy of the first edition now in the library of the University of Michigan.

Jess Byrd
Salem College

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THE
BUSIE BODY: 

A
COMEDY.

As it is Acted at the
THEATRE-ROYAL
in
DRURY-LANE,

By Her Majesty’s Servants.

Written by Mrs. SUSANNA CENTLIVRE.

Quem tulit ad scenam ventoso Gloria curru,
Exanimat lentus Spectator, sedulus inflat. 
Sic Leve, sic parvum est, animum quod laudis avarum
Subruit aut reficit—­

Horat.  Epist.  Lib.  II.  Ep. 1.

LONDON,

Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT, at the Cross-Keys between the Two Temple-Gates in Fleet-street.