`
(1704)
Introduction by
LUCYLE HOOK
PUBLICATION NUMBER 124
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
University of California, Los Angeles
1967
George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The Female Wits; Or, The Triumvirate of Poets at Rehearsal,published anonymously in 1704 with "written by Mr. W. M."on the titlepage, was played at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lanearound October, 1696. [1] A devastating satire in the manner ofBuckingham's The Rehearsal, it attacks all plays by women playwrightsbut Mary de la Riviere Manley's blood and thunder femaletragedy, The Royal Mischief (1696), in particular. The FemaleWits resembles The Rehearsal in that the satire is directednot only at the subject matter and style of a particular type ofdrama but supplies searing portrayals of recognizable persons—inthis case, of Mrs. Manley herself, and to a lesser degree, ofMary Pix and Catherine Trotter (later Cockburn). It also followsBuckingham's satire in that the actors play double roles—that ofthe characters assigned to them and their own—and in so doing,reveal their own personalities with astonishing clarity.
Colley Cibber tells the best stories of the chaos that ensuedafter the secession of Betterton and most of the veteran actors in1695 from the dominance of Christopher Rich at Drury Lane. [2]Since Betterton had been virtual dictator in London since 1682,he was able to command the efforts, at least at first, of most ofthe well-known playwrights who had written for the company beforethe establishment of his theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields.Young playwrights scrambled to ingratiate themselves with oneor the other of the two London managements. Among them, therehad been three women with four plays in less than a year.
When Mrs. Manley arrived upon the dramatic scene with herfirst play, The Lost Lover; Or, The Jealous Husband, in March,1696, she bore the brunt of a growing criticism against a surfeitof female plays. But when she protested in the preface of theprinted version that "I think my Treatment much severer than Ideserv'd; I am satisfied the bare Name of being a Woman's Playdam