The Busybody
About this ebook
Like her predecessor Aphra Behn, Centlivre was immensely successful in her day, drawing huge crowds to extended runs of her numerous plays, but the stabbing male pens of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries decried her work as being louche and dangerous, and her name slowly sunk into obscurity.
This edition, published with William Hazlitt's prefatory note and extra material on Centlivre's life and writing, seeks to highlight the dexterity with which she took on the stage.
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About the author
Susanna Centlivre (c.1670–1723) was a wildly successful playwright, actress and poet. Her play The Busybody was an overnight success on the London stage, and remained one of the few comedies in the common repertoire besides Shakespeare's until the end of the nineteenth century. Like her predecessor Aphra Behn, whose nom de plume, 'Astrea', Centlivre borrowed in her early years, her work fell into obscurity for much of the twentieth century, but, thanks to the work of feminist scholars, is returning to the page and stage.
