Reception
Centlivre's plays show a strikingly liberal point of view, and she wrote frankly in the face of strong sexual mores that discouraged women playwrights. Centlivre managed to push the boundaries of contemporary social norms, and yet she was widely appreciated only as a comedic writer. She did not garner much positive critical reputation; even while her plays enjoyed success in theatres, critics such as William Hazlitt wrote condescendingly of them. Alexander Pope found her writings offensive for political and religious reasons, and also thought them threatening to greater dramatists by pandering to popular taste. He even went so far as to assume that she had helped with Edmund Curll’s pamphlet The Catholic Poet: or, Protestant Barnaby’s Sorrowful Lamentation. For those reasons, she was lampooned as having a supposedly mannish appearance (among other faults), most famously by Alexander Pope in several pieces. Regardless of her peers’ opinions, her plays continued to be performed for over 150 years after her death.
Overall, Centlivre was a powerful influence on society as a female intellect, and works encouraged female writers to continue to push the limits of traditional feminine roles by publicly treating the theme of equality between sexes.
Read more about this topic: Susanna Centlivre
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
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