Gender and Genre in Susanna Centlivre's The Gamester and The Basset Table

Examining the texts of two plays by Susanna Centlivre (ca. 1667-1723), The Gamester and The Basset Table, the essay identifies the problematics of the twentieth-century use of the term "sentimental comedy," interrogating its application to Centlivre's plays and analyzing the significance of the cultural context within which Centlivre wrote. The essay argues that there are elements within Centlivre's plays that function as a subversive countermovement in the texts, resisting and deconstructing the dominant ideology of her audience and its demand for a comforting moral.