far from least, a nice little wen adorning her left eyelid.
She possessed other characteristics too, but those herein mentioned
are the only ones which stand out clearly after the lapse of nearly
two centuries. This doughty woman had been married twice before she
went to Windsor, where she once more entered into the matrimonial
noose, or rather, again inveigled an unfortunate into that treacherous
device. The visit to the seat of Royalty was signalised by her acting
of Alexander the Great, but from the atmosphere of Kings and Queens
she passed without a murmur to the humbler air of a kitchen. In other
words, she married a Mr. Centlivre, chief cook to her well-fed Majesty
Queen Anne; and the mean-livered Pope would refer to her, later on, as
"the cook's wife in Buckingham Court." She might, indeed, be a cook's
wife, but she knew how to write with vivacity, and produced many an
entertaining play. Among them were "A Bold Stroke for a Wife" and "The
Wonder," that comedy which Garrick would so relish in after years.

The nature of the aforesaid "Wonder" was explained in the satirical
reflection of the secondary title, "A Woman Keeps a Secret!" And Mrs.
Centlivre had this to say in her epilogue, upon the mooted question of
feminine loquacity:

"Keep a secret, says a beau,
And sneers at some ill-natured wit below;
But faith, if we should tell but half we know,
There's many a spruce young fellow in this place,
Wou'd never presume to show his face;
Women are not so weak, what e'er men prate;
How many tip-top beaux have had the fate,
T'enjoy from mama's secrets their estate!
Who, if her early folly had made known,
Had rid behind the coach that's now their own."

Mrs. Oldfield received fresh cause for nervousness, had she been of
a timid temperament, when, some years later, during the season of
1717-18, Cibber's political play of "The Non-Juror" was brought out.
The comedy was a blow aimed at the Jacobites and the Pretender, who
had met with such disastrous treatment in the rebellion of 1715, and
was a skilfully-wrought laudation of the Hanoverian dynasty.[A]

[Footnote A: The piece was published and dedicated to George I., who
acknowledged his sense of the honour by paying to Cibber the sum of
two hundred guineas. That the good old prejudice against the stage was
still in full force, despite the march of liberal ideas, is clearly
shown in the author's address to the King: "Your comedians, Sir, are
an u