welve, the improvements our
poetess made were merely by her own industry and application. She was
married before the age of fifteen, to a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox.
This gentleman living with her but a year, she afterwards married Mr.
Carrol, an officer in the army, and survived him likewise in the space
of a year and a half. She afterwards married Mr. Joseph Centlivre,
yeoman of the mouth to his late Majesty. She gave early discoveries of
a genius for poetry, and Mr. Jacob in his Lives of the Poets tells us,
that she composed a song before she was seven years old. She is
the author of fifteen plays; her talent is comedy, particularly the
contrivance of the plots, and incidents. Sir Richard Steele, in one of
his Tatlers, speaking of the Busy Body, thus recommends it. 'The plot,
and incidents of the play, are laid with that subtilty, and spirit,
which is peculiar to females of wit, and is very seldom well performed
by those of the other sex, in whom craft in love is an act of
invention, and not as with women, the effect of nature, and instinct'.

She died December 1, 1723; the author of the Political State thus
characterizes her. 'Mrs. Centlivre, from a mean parentage and
education, after several gay adventures (over which we shall draw
a veil) she had, at last, so well improved her natural genius by
reading, and good conversation, as to attempt to write for the stage,
in which sh had as good success as any of her sex before her. Her
first dramatic performance was a Tragi-Comedy, called The Perjured
Husband, but the plays which gained her most reputation were, two
Comedies, the Gamester, and the Busy Body. She wrote also several
copies of verses on divers subjects, and occasions, and many ingenious
letters, entitled Letters of Wit, Politics, and Morality, which I
collected, and published about 21 years ago[A].'

Her dramatic works are,

1. The Perjured Husband, a Comedy; acted at the Theatre-Royal 1702,
dedicated to the late Duke of Bedford. Scene Venice.

2. The Beau's Duel, or a Soldier for the Ladies, a Comedy; acted at
the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, 1703; a Criticism was written
upon this play in the Post-Angel for August. 3. The Stolen Heiress, or
The Salamancha Doctor Out-plotted; a Comedy; acted at the Theatre in
Lincolns-Inn-Fields 1704. The scene Palermo.

4. The Gamester, a Comedy; acted at the Theatre in Lincolns-Inn-Fields
1704, dedicated to George Earl of Huntingdon. This play is an improved
tran