In Charles Gildon's Comparison between the Two Stages (1702) we have a discussion by two gentlemen, Rambler and Sullen, and a critic, Chagrin, as to the comparative merits of Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields. The most important reference to women playwrights is in the following passage:
Rambler. Proceed to the next.
Sullen. "The Lost Lover, or, The Jealous Husband."
Rambler. I never heard of that.
Sullen. Oh this is a Lady's!
Crit. How's that?—Audetg; viris contendere virgo?
Rambler. See how Critick starts at the naming a lady.
Crit. What occasion had you to name a Lady in the confounded work you're about?
Sullen. Here's a Play of hers.
Crit. The Devil there is. I wonder in my heart we are so lost to all Sense and reason: What a Pox have the Women to do with the Muses? I grant you the Poets call the Nine Muses by the names of Women, but why so? not because the Sex had anything to do with Poetry, but because in that Sex they're fitter for Prostitution.