"A Woman's Case": The Working World of Susanna Centlivre

"'A Woman's Case': The Working World of Susanna Centlivre" places eighteenth-century British playwright Susanna Centlivre within a broad historical context: as a woman, as a playwright, and within her own society. Earlier studies on Centlivre have focused narrowly on the events of her life, on the production histories of her plays, or on critical interpretations of her work. This study focuses on how her personal history and gender affects the Way her work was later viewed by critics and historians, as well as how it affected her work during her lifetime. An examination of the society around Centlivre allows the twenty-first century scholar to understand Centlivre's life and personality more fully. One of the few Whig women who wrote for publications, her strong political opinions affected perceptions of her work from her contemporaries down to our own time. Finally, this dissertation will examine Centlivre's role in the history of theatre, and through her role the fluctuations of the fortunes of British theatre in the early eighteenth century.