A Bold Stroke for a Wife

摘要: Though critics and literary historians have always had to admit that Susanna Centlivre's comedies were extremely popular, they tended devote themselves a search for evidence in them of supposed deficiencies 'the female pen,' pay as much attention the playwright's marriages amorous liasons than plays themselves. Only recent years has Centlivre come be recognized quite straightforwardly on most brilliant playwrights her time. A Bold Stroke Wife is perhaps finest example masterful plotting comic intrigue. The soldier Fainwell Anne Lovely are love, but their path altar blocked by guardians, each whom different view what sort husband would make right match. resorts disguises social types. play thus provides wide range opportunity satirize Tory respectability, religious propriety capitalist speculative greed-and give voice tolerance: 'tis liberty choice sweetens life.' Yet end it muse gives enduring life one entertaining eighteenth-century comedies.