The Busie Body

Busie Body, The

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Title: The Busie Body
Author: Susanna Centlivre
Commentator: Jess Byrd
Release Date: September 24, 2005 [EBook #16740]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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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
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