Transcriber's Note:
In addition to the ordinary page numbers, the printed text labeled the recto (odd) pages of the first two leaves of each 8-page signature. These will appear in the right margin as A, A2...
A few typographical errors have been corrected. They are shown in the text with popups.
The Augustan Reprint Society
SUSANNA CENTLIVRE
THE BUSIE BODY
(1709)
With an Introduction by
Jess Byrd
Publication Number 19
(Series V, No. 3)
Los Angeles
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California
1949
GENERAL EDITORS
H. Richard Archer, Clark Memorial Library
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
Edward Niles Hooker, University of California, Los Angeles
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
ASSISTANT EDITOR
W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS
Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington
Benjamin Boyce, University of Nebraska
Louis I. Bredvold, University of Michigan
Cleanth Brooks, Yale University
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Ernest Mossner, University of Texas
James Sutherland, Queen Mary College, London
[The Busie Body]
[Dedicatory Epistle]
[Prologue]
[Epilogue]
ACT I
[The Park]
ACT II
[Sir Francis Gripe's house]
[Sir Jealous Traffick's House]
[Charles's lodging]
ACT III
[outside Sir Jealous Traffick's house]
[the Street]
[Sir Francis Gripe's house]
ACT IV
[outside Sir Jealous Traffick's House]
[Isabinda's Chamber]
[Sir Jealous Traffick's house]
ACT V
[Sir Francis Gripe's house]
[the Street before Sir Jealous's Door]
[inside Sir Jealous Traffick's house]
Susanna Centlivre (1667?-1723) in The Busie Body (1709) contributed to the stage one of the most successful comedies of intrigue of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This play, written when there was a decided trend in England toward sentimental drama, shows Mrs. Centlivre a strong supporter of laughing comedy. She had turned for a time to sentimental comedy and with one of her three sentimental plays, The Gamester (1704), had achieved a great success. But her true bent seems to have been toward realistic comedies, chiefly of intrigue: of her nineteen plays written from 1700 to 1723, ten are realistic comedies. Three of these proved very popular in her time and enjoyed a long stage history: The Busie Body (1709); The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret (1714); and A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1717). The Busie Body best illustrates Mrs. Centlivre's preference for laughing comedy with an improved moral tone. The characters and the plot are amusing but inoffensive, and, compared to those of Restoration drama, satisfy the desire of the growing eighteenth-century middle-class audience for respectability on the stage.
The theory of comedy on which The Busie Body rests is a traditional one, but Mrs. Centlivre's simple pronouncements on the virtues of realistic over sentimental comedy are interesting because of the controversy on this subject among critics and writers at this time. In the preface to her first play, The Perjur'd Husband (1700), she takes issue with Jeremy Collier on the charge of immorality in realistic plays. The stage, she believes, should present characters as they are; it is unreasonable to expect a "Person, whose inclinations are always forming Projects to the Dishonor of her Husband, should deliver her Commands to her Confident in the Words of a Psalm." In a letter written in 1700 she says: "I think the main design of Comedy is to make us laugh." (Abel Boyer, Letters of Wit, Politicks, and Morality, London, 1701, p. 362). But, she adds, since Collier has taught religion to the "Rhiming Trade, the Comick Muse in Tragick Posture sat" until she discovered Farquhar, whose language is amusing but decorous and whose plots are virtuous. This insistence on decorum and virtue indicates a concession to Collier and to the public. Thus in the preface to Love's Contrivance (1703), she reiterates her belief that comedy should amuse but adds that she strove for a "modest stile" which might not "disoblige the nicest ear." This modest style, not practiced in early plays, is achieved admirably in The Busie Body. Yet, as she says in the epilogue, she has not followed the critics who balk the pleasure of the audience to refine their taste; her play will with "good humour, pleasure crown the Night." In dialogue, in plot, and particularly in the character of the amusing but inoffensive Marplot, she fulfills her simple theory of comedy designed not for reform but for laughter.
Mrs. Centlivre followed the practices of her contemporaries in borrowing the plot for The Busie Body. The three sources for the play are: The Devil Is an Ass (1616) by Jonson; L'Etourdi (1658) by Molière; and Sir Martin Mar-all or The Feigned Innocence (1667) by Dryden. From The Devil Is an Ass, Mrs. Centlivre borrowed minor details and two episodes, one of them the amusing dumb scene. This scene, though a close imitation, seems more amusing in The Busie Body than in Jonson's play, perhaps because the characters, especially Sir Francis Gripe and Miranda, are more credible and more fully portrayed. From the second source for The Busie Body, Molière's L'Etourdi, I believe Mrs. Centlivre borrowed the framework for her parallel plots, the theme of Marplot's blundering, and the name and general character of Marplot. But she has improved what she borrowed. She places in Molière's framework more credible women characters than his, especially in the charming Miranda and the crafty Patch; she constructs a more skillful intrigue plot for the stage than his subplot and emphasizes Spanish customs in the lively Charles-Isabinda-Traffick plot. Mrs. Centlivre concentrates on Marplot's blundering, whereas Molière concentrates on the servant Mascarille's schemes. Marplot's funniest blunder, in the "monkey" scene, is entirely original as far as I know (IV, iv). But her greatest change is in the character of Marplot, who in her hands becomes not so much stupid as human and irresistibly ludicrous. Mrs. Centlivre's style is of course inferior to that of Molière. In the preface to Love's Contrivance (1703), in speaking of borrowings from Molière, she said that borrowers "must take care to touch the Colors with an English Pencil, and form the Piece according to our Manners." Of course her touching the "Colors with an English Pencil" meant changing the style of Molière to suit the less delicate taste of the middle-class English audience.
A third source for The Busie Body is Dryden's Sir Martin Mar-all (1667). Since Dryden followed Molière with considerable exactness, it would be difficult to prove beyond doubt that Mrs. Centlivre borrowed from Molière rather than from Dryden. Yet I believe, after a careful analysis of the plays, that she borrowed from Molière. She made of The Busie Body a comedy of intrigue based on the theme and plot used by both Molière and Dryden, but she omitted the scandalous Restoration third plot which Dryden had added to Molière. Her characters are English in speech and action, but they lack the coarseness apparent in Dryden's Sir Martin Mar-all. Though it is impossible to prove the exact sources of Mrs. Centlivre's borrowings, there is no doubt that she has improved what she borrowed.
Whatever the truth may be about Mrs. Centlivre's use of her sources, her play remained in the repertory of acting plays long after L'Etourdi and Sir Martin Mar-all had disappeared. The Busie Body opened at the Drury Lane Theater on May 12, 1709. Steele, who listed the play in The Tatler for May 14, 1709, does not mention the length of the run. Thomas Whincop says that the play ran thirteen nights (Scanderbeg, London, 1747, p. 190), but Genest says the play had an opening run of seven nights (Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830, II, 419). The play remained popular throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Genest lists it as being presented in twenty-three seasons from 1709 to 1800. It was certainly presented much more frequently than this record shows, for Dougald MacMillan in The Drury Lane Calendar lists fifty-three performances from 1747-1776, whereas Genest records two performances in this period. The greatest number of performances in any season was fourteen in 1758-59, the year David Garrick appeared in the play. From the records available The Busie Body seems to have reached its greatest popularity in England in the middle and late eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century. William Hazlitt, in the "Prefatory Remarks" to the Oxberry acting edition of 1819, says The Busie Body has been acted a "thousand times in town and country, giving delight to the old, the young, and the middle-aged."
The Busie Body enjoyed a similar place of importance in the stage history of America but achieved its greatest popularity, in New York at least, in the nineteenth century. First performed in Williamsburg on September 10, 1736, the play was presented fifteen times in New York in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century forty-five performances were given in New York in sixteen seasons from 1803 to 1885 (George Odell, Annals of the New York Stage). The Busie Body is frequently cited with The Rivals and The School for Scandal for opening seasons and for long runs by great actors.
The text here reproduced is from a copy of the first edition now in the library of the University of Michigan.
Jess Byrd
Salem College