<i>The Basset Table</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Basset Table James E. Evans Susanna Centlivre . The Basset Table, ed. Jane Milling. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2009. Pp. viii + 166. $18.95. Ms. Milling aptly justifies reprinting The Basset Table in our time because of "the range of strong female roles and the play's interest in female scientific education." Unlike the editors of the only previous paperback version in Female Playwrights of the Restoration: Five Comedies, she provides useful contexts and careful annotation. Centlivre's comic formula—"Humour lightly tost up with Wit, and drest with Modesty and Air"—well describes this lively play about amusingly transgressive women departing from cultural norms. Ms. Milling's fine Introduction makes one wonder why the play did not please its first audiences more. Writing for an actors' theater, Centlivre with "theatrical savvy" recognized the talents of Robert Wilks and Anne Oldfield, whose pairing "as a sparring romantic couple" soon reached its apotheosis in Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem as Archer and Mrs. Sullen. Ms. Milling might productively have juxtaposed these very popular dramatists of the century's first decade. I wish, too, she had devoted attention to Centlivre's pairing of Wilks with John Mills as double gallants, libertine and sentimental, respectively. The Introduction effectively contextualizes Centlivre's gambling and learned women, two recurrent late Stuart stereotypes. Whether reformist or sentimental versions of the female gamester, as found in Steele's The Careless Husband or Cibber's The Lady's Last Stake, spoiled the reception of this play is difficult to determine. Examining Centlivre's representation of Lady Reveller and her gambling companions, Ms. Milling highlights the "unusual stagecraft" of the basset game and the servants' role in the opening scene (as well as the scientific discovery scene in Act 3). I do not know of another comedy which employs so effectively the material disorder associated with gambling; yet, despite this comic chaos, the play "relishes the excitement of gambling culture." Going against the grain of most reactions to Astell's and others' proposals for women, Centlivre provides a "sympathetic" portrayal of Valeria's learning and "reveals some of the economic, social, and gendered forces at work in the rise of natural philosophy itself."With Lady Reveller, the play also modifies the stage widow stereotype in the direction of a stronger female role. Following the first published edition, the text takes "a light touch, offering little editorial alteration." Ms. Milling retains most of the original spelling, punctuation, and placement of stage directions, highlighting Centlivre's use of the long dash as a performance guide. Readers can find a digital version of the 1705 text in the database Eighteenth-Century Collections Online for an even better glimpse of print culture. Ms. Milling's notes are sensible and unobtrusive. Appendices reverse the order of topics in the Introduction, beginning with "Female Education," followed by "Gambling," "Writing for the Stage," and "Criticism," and feature judicious selections by Astell, Defoe, Addison, and others. Useful additions would have been the Prologue and Epilogue to Centlivre's The Gamester, to which this play is a thematic sequel, and [End Page 83] key paragraphs from Farquhar's "Discourse upon Comedy," which parallel Centlivre's defense of their genre. While Ms. Milling includes a passage from Cibber's Dedication to The Lady's Last Stake, I wish she had reprinted part of Act 5, in which Lady Gentle nearly loses her honor as well as her game. There is one notable omission from Works Cited: John O'Brien's "Busy Bodies: The Plots of Susanna Centlivre" (2001). James E. Evans University of North Carolina-Greensboro Copyright © 2011 Roy S. Wolper, W. B. Gerard, E. Derek Taylor, and David F. Venturo