Abstract
Susanna Centlivre’s The Basset-Table (1705)1 has been explored as a satire against Mary Astell and/or the Royal Society, as a treatise on gambling, and as a commentary on gender and marriage.2 I would argue, however, that while these are certainly valid means by which to investigate this play, and while certainly female gambling plays a key role, the main thrust here is the playful virtuosa, Valeria, in spite of the playwright’s claim in her dedication that her purpose is to correct the vice of the period. If one juxtaposes Valeria in The Basset-Table with the virtuoso, Periwinkle, in her later play, A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718), it becomes evident that Centlivre treats the two “scientific” characters in a much different manner.3 The virtuosa in The Basset-Table obtains the man she loves and apparently continues her “scientific” study, while the silly virtuoso in A Bold Stroke for a Wife becomes the dupe of the lovelorn bachelor. What I will demonstrate in this essay, then, is that Centlivre’s The Basset-Table is a tongue-in-cheek romp that pretends at mockery of the philosophic lady while simultaneously presenting a plot in praise of female curiosity and inquiry.4
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Notes
Susanna Centlivre, The Basset-Table (1705)
ed. Jacqueline Pearson, Eighteenth- Century Women Playwrights, gen. ed. Derek Hughes, vol. 3 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001), 1–52. This play has neither scene nor line numbers; therefore, all references are to act and page.
See, for example, D. N. Deluna, “Mary Astell: England’s First Feminist Literary Critic,” Women’s Studies 22 (1993): 233
Beth Kowalski Wallace, “A Modest Defense of Gaming Women,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 31 (2002): 21–41
Victoria Warren, “Gender and Genre in Susanna Centlivre’s The Gamester and The Basset-Table,” Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 43.3 (Summer 2003): 605–24
Annette Kreis-Schinck, Women, Writing, and the Theatre in the Early Modern Period: The Plays of Aphra Behn and Suzanne Centlivre (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001)
Misty Anderson, Female Playwrights and Eighteenth-Century Comedy: Negotiating Marriage on the London Stage (New York: Palgrave, 2002).
Susanna Centlivre, A Bold Stroke for a Wife, ed. Jacqueline Pearson, Eighteenth-Century Women Playwrights, gen. ed. Derek Hughes, vol. 3 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001), 175–231. This play has neither scene nor line numbers; therefore, all references are to act and page.
Peter Harrison, “Curiosity, Forbidden Knowledge, and the Reformation of Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England,” ISIS 92.2 (June 2001): 265–71.
See Francis Bacon, The New Organon, trans. Michael Silverthorne, ed. Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Book I, aphorism 129. “Just let man recover the right over nature which belongs to him by God’s gift, and give it scope; right reason and sound religion will govern its use.” Further references to this text will be by in-text citation by Book and aphorism number. As Benedict points out, although Bacon advocated an extensive and intensive program of gaining knowledge, he also acknowledged that this learning was done to honor God’s supremacy.
See Barbara Benedict, Curiosity. A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 19.
John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. David Scott Kastan (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2005).
Elaine Hobby, Virtue of Necessity. English Women’s Writing 1649–1688 (London: Virago, 1988), 2.
Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, ed. Patricia Springborg (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2002), 58.
William Kenrick, The Whole Duty of a Woman by “A Lady” (1737)
Susan Scott Parrish, “Women’s Nature. Curiosity, Pastoral, and the New Science in British America,” Early American Literature 37.2 (June 2002): 201.
As qtd in Ruth Gilbert’s, “The Masculine Matrix: Male Births and the Scientific Imagination in Early-Modern England,” in The Arts of 17th-Century Science. Representations of the Natural World in European and North American Culture, ed. Claire Jowitt and Diane Watt (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2002), 166–7.
Abraham Cowley, “To the Royal Society,” in Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (1667), ed. Jackson I. Cope and Harold Whitmore Jones (St. Louis, MO: Washington University Press, 1958). See also Gilbert, “Masculine Matrix,” 166.
Nathaniel Highmore, “Epistle Dedicatory,” in History of Generation (1651), as quoted in Parrish, “Women’s Nature,” 199–200.
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York: Random House, 1983), 8, as quoted in Parrish, “Women’s Nature,” 199.
Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing: Or, Confidence in Opinion (London, 1661; Facs. rprt. in The Vanity of Dogmatizing: The Three Versions. Critical Introduction, Stephen Medcalf [Hove: Harvester, 1970]), 118.
Centlivre was certainly familiar with Behn. Jaqueline Pearson observes that early in her career, Centlivre even adopted Behn’s nom de plume, Astrea, “as a conscious act of homage to Aphra Behn.” See Pearson’s “Introduction,” to Susanna Centlivre, vol. 3, Eighteenth- Century Women Playwrights, gen. ed. Derek Hughes (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001), xiv.
Aphra Behn, Sir Patient Fancy, in Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Janet Todd, 7 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1996) vol. 6, 1–81. See also my essay, “Of Privileges and Masculine Parts: The Learned Lady in Aphra Behn’s Sir Patient Fancy,” Papers in Language and Literature 42.3 (Summer 2006): 317–331.
Thomas Wright, The Female Vertuoso’s (London: Printed by J. Wild for R. Vincent, 1693), 26.
Margaret Cavendish, “The Preface to the Reader,” in The Worlds Olio. Written By the Right Honorble, the Lady Margaret Newcastle (London: Printed for J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1655), A4–A5v.
Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen… this Way of Education (London: Printed by J.D., 1673), 22–3.
Judith Drake, Essay in Defense of the Female Sex (1696)
Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, ed. Patricia Springborg (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2002), 245–6.
As qtd in Myra Renolds, The Learned Lady in England, 1650–1760 (1920; rprt. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964), 147.
Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science. Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 107–08.
Stewart, The Rise of Public Science, 118–19. For Coleridge’s comment, see Samuel Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, in The Collected works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), vol. 2, 6.
Rob Iliffe and Frances Willmoth, “Astronomy and the Domestic Sphere: Margaret Flamsteed and Caroline Herschel as Assistant Astronomers,” in Women, Science and Medicine, 1500–1700, ed Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton (Stroud: Sutton, 1997), 241.
William Egerton, Faithful Memoirs of the Life, Amours and Performances of That justly Celebrated, and most Eminent Actress of her Time, Mrs. Anne Oldfield. Interspersed with several other Dramatical Memoirs (London: s.n.,] 1731).
See F. J. Cole, A History of Comparative Anatomy. From Aristotle to the Eighteenth Century (MacMillan, 1949; rprt. New York: Dover 1975), 198–99.
Samuel Garth, The Dispensary, A Poem (London: John Nutt, 1699; rprt. By Jacob Tonson as The Dispensary: A Poem. In Six Canto’s, 1714), 43–4.
For information on early periodicals for women, see Bertha Monica Stearns, “Early English Periodicals for Ladies, 1700–1760,” PMLA 481 (March 1933): 38–60.
Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 53.
F. S. [Fyge, Sarah]. Poems on Several Occasions, Together with a Pastoral. By Mrs. S. F. London: J. Nutt, 1706.
Aphra Behn, The Dutch Lover, in The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Janet Todd, 7 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1996), vol. 5, 157–238
Douglas R. Butler, “Plot and Politics in Susanna Centlivre’s A Bold Stroke for a Wife,” in Curtain Calls. British and American Women and the Theater, 1660–1820, ed Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1991), 360.
Michael Hunter, Establishing the New Science. The Experience of the Early Royal Society (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1989), 150.
David A. Alton, “Copernicus or Cheesecake? Faultlines and Unjust Des(s)erts: Noes toward the Cultural Significance of the Virtuosa,” Cuadernos de Filologia inglesa 9.2 (2001): 48.
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© 2011 Judy A. Hayden
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Hayden, J.A. (2011). Centlivre: Joint-worms and Jointures. In: Hayden, J.A. (eds) The New Science and Women’s Literary Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118430_8
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