Susanna Centlivre

Susanna Centlivre (c. 1667 - December 1, 1723), was an English dramatist and actress.

She was born about 1667, probably in Ireland, whither her father, a Lincolnshire gentleman named Freeman, had been forced to flee at the Restoration on account of his political sympathies.

When sixteen she married the nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, and on his death within a year she married an officer named Carroll, who was killed in a duel. Left in poverty, she began to support herself, writing for the stage, and some of her early plays are signed S. Carroll. In 1706 she married Joseph Centlivre , chief cook to Queen Anne, who survived her.

Her first play was a tragedy, The Perjured Husband (1700), and she herself appeared for the first time at Bath in her comedy Love at a Venture (1706). Among her most successful comedies are:

• The Gamester (1705)
• The Busy Body (1709)
• A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718)
• The Basset-table (1706)
• The Wonder! a Woman keeps a Secret (1714), (the jealous husband was one of David Garrick's greatest parts)

Mrs Centlivre's plots, verging on the farcical, were always ingenious and amusing, though coarse after the fashion of the time, and the dialogue fluent. She never seems to have acted in London, but she moved in literary circles and was a friend of Nicholas Rowe, George Farquhar and Richard Steele. Her dramatic works were published, with a biography, in 1761.

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