The One True Dave

A Bold Stroke for a Wife

By Susannah Centlivre

First performed in 1718.

Dramatis Personae:

Sir Philip Modelove, an old beau

Periwinkle, a kind of a silly virtuoso (collector of curiosities)

Tradelove, a changebroker (financial middleman)

Obadiah Prim, a Quaker

Colonel Fainwell, in love with Mrs. Lovely

Freeman, his friend, a merchant

Simon Pure, a Quaking preacher

Mr. Sackbut, a tavern-keeper

Mrs. Lovely, a fortune of thirty thousand pound

Mrs. Prim, wife to Prim the hosier

Betty, servant to Mrs. Lovely

Footmen, Drawers, etc.

This “humane comedy” came after Jeremy Collier’s scathing essay about the debased English Restoration theatre so here we find marriage to be represented as a positive outcome and no one displays sexually promiscuous behavior.  However, the comedy still rests in deception and trickery despite the “good” end it will achieve.  The play is still largely about wordplay and comedy found in the mannerisms of the characters – themselves caricatures of groups of people delineated by profession (mostly).  I see this as a liminal play between the laughing comedies of the Restoration and the bourgeois sentimental comedies written after.  I have to emphasize that Mrs. Lovely is a commodity in this exchange of goods.  It would definitely be a different and darker play if Mrs. Lovely wasn’t “in love” with her pursuer, Colonel Fainwell.  The character of Mrs. Lovely is active and witty in her own right but within very clearly defined gender roles and rights in this male society.

Like most comedies of this time, the premise is established immediately.  Here Mrs. Lovely’s father wanted to ruin his daughter’s chances of marrying (and bringing 30000 pounds to the arrangement through inheritance) by splitting her guardianship between four opposite people – a stokebroker, a collector of antiquities, a fop and a Quaker.  The play opens with Colonel Fainwell vowing to get the consent of these four to allow him to marry Mrs. Lovely (who he has conveniently met has told him she wishes him to win her).  The play then sets out, one by one to win over these contrary gentlemen.  He wins the fop first (and easily) through superficial wordplay.  He almost wins the virtuoso but is foiled at the last by a clumsy servant.  He resorts to tricking him later in the play to thinking his Uncle has died and by having him sign the consent thinking it is a lease.  He beats the stokebroker at his own game by planting a false story about a Spanish siege, effecting stock prices.  He forgives the debt the stokebroker owes him in exchange for Mrs. Lovely’s hand.  (He sells her for 2000 pounds!)  Lastly, the Quaker is the toughest but he poses as a visiting Quaking preacher and pretends to be full of the spirit.  I bet the Quakers (if they were ever in the theatre – meaning never) would have loved this portrayal.  It’s no wonder the Quakers moved to Pennsylvania!  Fainwell tricks all four, he and Mrs. Lovely marry and the world is right once again.  Barf.  With that said; the play is very well written, the wordplay is great and is quite funny in places.