The Busie Body

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Title: The Busie Body

Author: Susanna Centlivre

Commentator: Jess Byrd

Release Date: September 24, 2005 [EBook #16740]

Language: English

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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

Introduction

The Busie Body

Dedicatory Epistle

Prologue

Epilogue

Dramatis Personae

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

a Tavern

ACT IV

outside Sir Jealous Traffick's House

Isabinda's Chamber

a Garden Gate

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

List of ARS titles

INTRODUCTION

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