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 conte