ABSTRACT
Susanna Centlivre (c. 1669–1723), a successful playwright for over twenty years in the early eighteenth century, has been much discussed by critics for her Whig politics and their impact on her work. Here, two prefaces from plays written before and after the Hanoverian succession are examined for what they reveal about Centlivre's committed but strategic expression of her politics and its relation to theatrical conditions of the day. Both plays experienced censorship: in the case of The Perplex'd Lovers (1712), the play was performed on the first night without an Epilogue as approval from the Vice-Chamberlain was not forthcoming, while The Gotham Election (1715) was never approved for performance and only appeared in print. The earlier preface, written when Anne was still Queen and the Tories in government, disingenuously claims the non-partisan patriotism of “an English Woman”, while the later, written at the beginning of the Whig ascendancy and more open about its author's political views, champions Nicholas Rowe's tragedy Lady Jane Grey (1715), claiming that the stage has “become a better Advocate for Protestantism than the Pulpit”. Deftly, this challenge to the anti-theatrical sentiments so often voiced in the period strategically aligns a moral mission for the stage with Whig politics.
