Born: 1669 (circa), United Kingdom
Died: 1 December 1723
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Susanna Freeman
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
CENTLIVRE, SUSANNAH, A celebrated comic Writer, was the daughter of a Mr. Freeman, of Holbeach, in Lincolnshire. Being left an orphan, phe went, when about fourteen, to London, where she took much pains to cultivate her mind and person. She was the authoress of fifteen plays, and several little poems, for some of which she received considerable presents from very great personages; among others, a handsome gold snuff-box from Prince Eugene, for a poem inscribed to him, and another from the Duke d’Aumont, the French ambassador, for a masquerade she addressed to him. Her talent was comedy; especially the contrivance of plots and incidents. She corresponded, for many years, with gentlemen of wit and eminence, particularly with Steele, Rowe, Budgell, Sewell, and others. Mrs. Centlivre lived in a very careful and economical manner, and died in Spring-garden, December 1st., 1723, at the house of her husband, Joseph Centlivre, who had been one of Queen Anne’s cooks; she was buried at the church of St. Martin-in-the-fields. She was three times married; the first time, when she was about sixteen, to Mr. Fox, nephew of Sir Stephen Fox. He dying two years afterwards, she married an officer, named Carrol, who was killed in a duel not long after.
It was during this second widowhood that, compelled by necessity, she began to write, and also appeared on the stage. After her marriage with her third husband, she lived a more retired life. She was handsome in person, very agreeable and sprightly in conversation, and seems to have been also kind and benevolent in her disposition. Her faults were those of the age in which she lived.
The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by John Joseph Knight.
CENTLIVRE, SUSANNAH (1667?–1723), actress and dramatist, is said to have been the daughter of a Mr. Freeman of Holbeach, Lincolnshire, a man of some position, who suffered on account of his political and religious opinions after the Restoration. After the confiscation of his estate he went with his wife, the daughter of a Mr. Marham or Markham, a ‘gentleman of good estate at Lynn Regis in Norfolk,’ who was also obnoxious to the authorities, to Ireland, where Susannah is by some supposed to have been born. At this early point her biographies commence to be at issue. The account generally accepted is that of Giles Jacob, which states that her father died when she was three years of age, and her mother when she was twelve. Whincop, or the author, whoever he was, of the list of dramatic poets appended to ‘Scanderbeg,’ who wrote while she was still living, asserts that her father survived her mother, and married a second wife, by whom the future dramatist was so ill-treated that she ran away from home, with little money or other provision, to seek her fortune in London. Biographers have recorded various supposed exploits—one of which consisted in dressing as a boy and living in Cambridge under the protection of Anthony Hammond, then an undergraduate of St. John’s, and subsequently commissioner of the navy, the ‘silver-tongued Hammond’ of Bolingbroke. They also mention a marriage (?), which lasted one year, with a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox. They have neglected a biographical record supplied after her death in Boyer’s ‘Political State,’ xxvi. 670, a portion of which runs as follows: ‘From a mean parentage and education, after several gay adventures (over which we shall draw a veil), she had, at last, so well improv’d her natural genius by reading and good conversation, as to attempt to write for the stage, in which she had as good success as any of her sex before her. Her first dramatic performance was a tragi-comedy called “The Perjur’d Husband,” but the plays which gained her most reputation were two comedies, “The Gamester” and “The Busy Body.” She writ also several copies of verses on divers subjects and occasions, and a great many ingenious letters, entitled “Letters of Wit, Politics, and Morality,” which I collected and published about twenty-one years ago.’ In presence of this statement, which commands respect, the origin assigned her in the ‘Biographia Dramatica,’ and accepted in later compilations, seems more than doubtful. The same writer states that ‘her father’s name, if I mistake not, was Rawkins.’ A connection lasting a year and a half, and rightly or wrongly styled a marriage, subsequently existed between her and an officer named Carroll, who died in a duel. Her early plays, when not anonymous, are signed ‘S. Carroll.’ ‘The Busy Body,’ printed in 1709, is the first that bears the name of Centlivre, the previous play, ‘The Platonic Lady,’ 1707, being unsigned. Her first appearance as an actress was made, according to Whincop or his collaborator, at Bath in her own comedy, ‘Love at a Venture,’ which was produced in that city after being refused at Drury Lane. She then joined a strolling company, and played in different country towns. While acting at Windsor, about 1706, according to the same authority, the part of Alexander the Great in the tragedy of that name, or, more probably, in the ‘Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great’ of Lee, she captivated Mr. Joseph Centlivre, principal cook to Queen Anne and George I, whom she married, and with whom she lived till her death. This took place on 1 Dec. 1723 in Buckingham Court, Spring Gardens, where, according to the rate-books of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, her husband resided between 1712 and 1724. Pope, in ‘An Account of the Condition of E. Curll,’ calls her ‘the cook’s wife in Buckingham Court.’ She is usually stated to be buried close at hand, in the parish church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields; but Mr. Peter Cunningham discovered in the burial register of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, the entry: ‘4 Dec. 1723, Susanna, wife of Joseph Centlivre, from St. Martin-in-the-Fields’ (Gent. Mag. 1850, pt. ii. p. 368). No record of her acting in London is preserved, and it is supposed that her histrionic efforts were confined to the country. In spite, accordingly, of the romantic stories associated with her name, her life, like that of most of her contemporaries, is practically the history of her works and her literary friendships. She enjoyed a certain amount of intimacy with Rowe, Farquhar, Steele, and other dramatists, some of whom wrote prologues for her plays, and with Budgell, Dr. Sewell, Nicholas Amhurst, &c., with all of whom she corresponded. Of her plays, nineteen in number, fifteen were acted, generally with success. The list is as follows: 1. ‘The Perjur’d Husband, or the Adventures of Venice,’ tragedy, 4to, 1700, acted the same year at Drury Lane. 2. ‘Love at a Venture,’ comedy, 4to, 1706, refused at Drury Lane, and acted by the Duke of Grafton’s servants at the New Theatre, Bath. It is taken from ‘Le Galant Double’ of Thomas Corneille. Cibber, by whom the play was refused, is accused of incorporating it into his ‘Double Gallant.’ 3. ‘The Beau’s Duel, or a Soldier for the Ladies,’ comedy, 4to, 1702, acted at Lincoln’s Inn Fields 21 Oct. 1702, taken in part from Jasper Mayne’s ‘City Match.’ 4. ‘The Stolen Heiress, or the Salamanca Doctor outplotted,’ comedy, 4to, no date (1703), acted at Lincoln’s Inn Fields 31 Dec. 1702, and taken from ‘The Heir’ by Thomas May. 5. ‘Love’s Contrivance, or Le Médecin malgré lui,’ comedy, 4to, 1703, acted at Drury Lane on 4 June 1703, and taken from the comedy of Molière of the same name, and from ‘Le Mariage forcé;’ this play is signed R. M. in the dedication to the Earl of Dorset. 6. ‘The Gamester,’ comedy, 4to, 1705 and 1708, acted at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, not for the first time, 22 Feb. 1705. In the ‘Biographia Dramatica’ the play is said to be borrowed from ‘Le Dissipateur.’ This is impossible. ‘Le Dissipateur’ of Destouches, acted in 1753, was in part taken from Mrs. Centlivre, whose ‘Gamester’ is an adaptation of ‘Le Joueur’ of Regnard, played 1696. 7. ‘The Basset Table,’ comedy, 4to, 1706, acted at Drury Lane 20 Nov. 1705. 8. ‘The Platonick Lady,’ comedy, 4to, 1707, acted at the Haymarket 25 Nov. 1706. 9. ‘The Busy Body,’ comedy, 4to, 1709, acted at Drury Lane 12 May 1709. This play, one of the most successful of its author, first introducing the character of Marplot, was so coldly regarded by the actors, that Wilks is said to have thrown down his part of Sir George Airy, and to have been with difficulty induced to resume it. A portion of the plot is taken from ‘The Devil is an Ass’ of Ben Jonson. 10. ‘The Man’s bewitched, or the Devil to do about her,’ comedy, 4to, no date (1710), acted at the Haymarket 12 Dec. 1709. This clever farce is said, without much justification, to be indebted to ‘Le Deuil’ of Hauteroche, which name is in the ‘Biographia Dramatica’ erroneously supposed to be a pseudonym of Thomas Corneille. 11. ‘A Bickerstaff’s Burial, or Work for the Upholders,’ farce, 4to, no date, acted at Drury Lane 27 March 1710, afterwards revived at Drury Lane 5 May 1715 as the ‘Custom of the Country.’ This play is said to be founded on one of Sinbad’s voyages in the ‘Arabian Nights.’ The publication of ‘Les Mille et une Nuits’ by Galland, 1704–1717, had very recently commenced, and this source seems doubtful. A curious coincidence, hitherto unnoticed, is that ‘Le Naufrage ou la Pompe funèbre de Crispin’ of Lafont, produced in Paris on Saturday, 14 June 1710, is all but identical with the work of Mrs. Centlivre, who, however, is at least earlier in date. Parfaic frères, the historians of the French stage, suggest an origin for the plot earlier than the ‘Arabian Nights.’ 12. ‘Marplot, or the Second Part of the Busy Body,’ comedy, 4to, 1711, Drury Lane 30 Dec. 1710, afterwards altered by Henry Woodward and called ‘Marplot in Lisbon.’ 13. ‘The Perplex’d Lovers,’ comedy, 4to, 1712, Drury Lane 19 Jan. 1712, from the Spanish. 14. ‘The Wonder! A Woman keeps a Secret,’ comedy, 12mo, 1714, acted at Drury Lane 27 April 1714, and owing something to ‘The Wrangling Lovers’ of Ravenscroft. 15. ‘A Gotham Election,’ farce, 12mo, 1715, never acted, a dramatic satire on the tories, dedicated to Secretary Craggs, who sent the author by Mrs. Bracegirdle twenty guineas. A second edition of this, 12mo, 1737, is called the ‘Humours of Elections.’ 16. ‘A Wife well managed,’ farce, 12mo, 1715, supposed to have been acted at Drury Lane in 1715, taken from the ‘Husband his own Cuckold’ of John Dryden, jun. 17. ‘The Cruel Gift, or the Royal Resentment,’ tragedy, 12mo, 1717, drawn from the first novel of the fourth day of the ‘Decameron,’ acted at Drury Lane 17 Dec. 1716. 18. ‘A Bold Stroke for a Wife,’ comedy, 8vo, 1718, acted at Drury Lane 3 Feb. 1718; in this piece she was assisted by a Mr. Mottley. 19. ‘The Artifice,’ comedy, 8vo, 1721, acted at Drury Lane 2 Oct. 1722. These works were collected in three volumes, 12mo, 1761, and reprinted in 1872.
The comedies of Mrs. Centlivre are often ingenious and sprightly, and the comic scenes are generally brisk. Mrs. Centlivre troubled herself little about invention, ‘A Bold Stroke for a Wife’ being the only work for which she is at the pains to claim absolute originality. So far as regards the stage, she may boast a superiority over almost all her countrywomen, since two of her comedies remain in the list of acting plays. More than one other work is capable, with some alterations, of being acted. A keen politician, she displays in some of her dramatic writings a strong whig bias, which was in part responsible for their success. Steele in the ‘Tatler’ (No. 19) speaks of ‘The Busy Body,’ and says that ‘the plot and incidents are laid with that subtlety of spirit which is peculiar to females of wit.’ Some of her most successful works were translated into French, German, and other languages. The volume of letters to which allusion is made in Boyer’s ‘Political State’ (see above) has not been discovered. A supposition that it might be a work, ‘Letters and Essays on several subjects, Philosophical, Moral, Historical, Critical, Amorous,’ &c., 1694, mentioned by Lowndes (Bibl. Man. p. 1348), must remain conjecture, as the work is not in the British Museum. She left at her death many valuable ornaments presented to her by royalty or the aristocratic patrons to whom she dedicated her dramas.
The following is excerpted from The Learned Lady in England 1650-1760 by Myra Reynolds, published in 1920.
Susanna Freeman, Mrs. Centlivre (1680?-1723)
The only woman writer of plays of real importance in this period is Susanna Centlivre.198 She was the daughter of a Mr. Freeman of Holbeach, Lincolnshire. He is said to have had a considerable estate at the time of the Restoration, but being a zealous dissenter, he was persecuted, his estates were confiscated, and he was obliged to seek refuge in Ireland, where Susanna was born. Her early life is involved in obscurity, but there cling to her name biographical details of a picturesque and romantic sort, though of rather questionable authenticity. Left an orphan at nine and subjected to the ill-usage of a stepmother, the child, at twelve, finally escapes and makes her way to London which she enters penniless, innocent, beautiful. She is rescued by a Cambridge student, a Mr. Hammond, and disguised as a boy she accompanies him to the University. Later she marries the nephew of Stephen Fox, but is left a widow before she is sixteen. A second marriage to a Mr. Carroll results in a second widowhood before she is eighteen. At twenty her first tragedy is played at Drury Lane. She appears soon after this as an actress in country theaters. Mrs. Behn and Mrs. Haywood could ask no richer material for an adventure novel. Then suddenly the scene changes. The buffeted Susanna marries Mr. Centlivre, Queen Anne’s chief pastry-cook, and settles down into a comfortable, orderly, and apparently happy domestic life, of which, however, we know in reality even less than of her early kaleidoscopic career.199 The events of her life are the presentation and publication of her plays.
Before her marriage in 1706 she had begun the series of comedies of which, between 1703 and 1722, she wrote seventeen. They were all successful, and four of them, The Gamester (1705), The Busy Body (1709), The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret (1714), and A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718), held a fairly prominent place on the stage through the century.
In 1761 there was published a fine edition of her works in three volumes. There is a preliminary address “To the World” in which an anonymous woman endeavors to do justice to “The Manes of the never to be forgotten Mrs. Centlivre.” She thus recounts the difficulties Mrs. Centlivre encountered as a female author:
She was even ashamed to proclaim her own great Genius, probably because the Custom of the Times discountenanced poetical Excellence in a Female. The Gentlemen of the Quill published it not, perhaps envying her superior Talents; and her Bookseller, complying with national Prejudices, put a fictitious Name to her Love’s Contrivance, thro’ Fear that the Work shou’d be condemned if known to be Feminine. With modest Diffidence she sent her Performances, like Orphans, into the World, without so much as a Nobleman to protect them; but they did not need to be supported by Interest, they were admired as soon as known, their real Standard, Merit, brought crowding Spectators to the playhouses, and the female Author, tho’ unknown, heard Applauses, such as have since been heaped on that great Author and Actor Colley Cibber.
Her play of the Busy Body, when known to be the Work of a Woman scarce defray’d the Expences of the First Night. The thin audience were pleased, and caused a full House the Second; the Third was crowded, and so on to the Thirteenth, when it was stopt, on account of the advanced Season; but the following Winter it appear’d again with Applause, and for Six Nights successively, was acted by rival Players, both at Drury Lane and at the Hay-Market Houses. See here the Effects of Prejudice, a Woman who did Honour to the Nation, suffer ‘d because she was a Woman. Are these things fit and becoming a free-born People, who call themselves polite and civilized! Hold! let my Pen stop, and not reproach the present Age for the Sins of their Fathers.…
A Poet is born so, not made by Rules; and is there not an equal Chance that the Poetical Birth should be female as well as male?… I could wish that some young Ladies of my Acquaintance, now in Boarding Schools, had classical Education, which would improve their Minds, furnish them with a more general Knowledge, and of course better fit them for Conversation, and the Management of Business.
The author of ”To the World” finds great satisfaction in the union of Mrs. Lennox with “Lord Corke and Mr. Samuel Johnson” in the translation of Brumoy’s Greek Theatre.
This convinces me [she says] that not only that barbarous Custom of denying Women to have Souls, begins to be rejected as foolish and absurd, but also that foolish Assertion, that Female Minds are not capable of producing literary Works, equal even to those of Pope, now loses Ground, and probably the next Age may be taught by our pens that our Geniuses have been hitherto cramped and smothered, but not extinguished, and that the Sovereignty which the male Part of the Creation have, until now usurped over us, is unreasonably arbitrary: And, further, that our natural Abilities entitle us to a larger Share, not only in Literary Decisions, but that, with the present Directors, we are equally entitled to Power both in Church and State….”
In 1764 Baker, in Biographia Dramatica, gave an account of Mrs. Centlivre’s work, and most eighteenth-century dramatic collections included plays by her. In 1776 The New English Theatre, which professed to assemble “the most Valuable Plays which have been Acted on the London Stage,” published The Busy Body, A Bold Stroke for a Wife, and The Wonder. Her plays were included by John Bell in various collections from 1776 to 1792. Mrs. Inchbald, in her British Theatre (1808), and Oxberry, in The New English Drama, 1818-1824, carried the publication of her plays into the nineteenth century. Such brief notices as occur are highly laudatory. Mr. Baker says: “In a word we cannot help giving it as our opinion, that if we do not allow her to be the very first of our female writers for the stage, she has but one above her, and may justly be placed next to her predecessor in dramatic glory, the great Mrs. Behn.” Nearly half a century later Mrs. Inchbald gave even stronger praise when she said that Mrs. Centlivre “ranks in the first class of our comic dramatists.” Of the Busy Body Mrs. Inchbald said: “This comedy is by far her best work. In excellence of fable, strength of character, and intricacy of occurrences, it forms one of the most entertaining exhibitions the theatre can boast.” Of The Wonder she wrote: “Garrick thought Don Felix worthy his most powerful exertions, in describing the passion of jealousy; and his character was upon the lists with the favorite parts he performed…. Mrs. Centlivre has somewhere said ‘the Muses, like most females, are least liberal to their own sex.’ She was ungrateful if she did not acknowledge her obligation to them in the composition of this work; for they presided with no niggardly influence over the whole production.”
Modern study of Mrs. Centlivre’s work has taken a surprising turn. It has to do entirely with Quellen and Verhältnisse. In 1900-1905 there were seven German dissertations dealing with the sources of her plays.200
The impulse to play-writing seems to have expended itself with Mrs. Centlivre. Hannah Cowley’s popular Belle’s Stratagem (1782) is the only other play of even moderate importance through the rest of the century. The situation with regard to play-writing is rather curious. Virtuous ladies were at liberty to write tragedies because tragedies were supposed to be moral and elevating. But unfortunately none of these ladies succeeded in tragedy. On the other hand, ladies who were not virtuous wrote comedies and were eminently successful. The realm between tragedy and comedy, the sentimental comedy, in its combination of didacticism and morality with social studies from middle-class life and the opportunity for rapid intrigue, might have seemed the very medium in which women could most advantageously work. But the successful sentimental comedies from The Conscious Lovers to False Delicacy were written by men playwrights.