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13 Jan 25 | Events
Pioneers of the Stage: Breathing New Life into 18th-century Theatre
As the curtain rises on a forgotten gem of the 18th century later this month, Professor David Francis Taylor of St Hugh’s College, Oxford, is breathing new life into plays that once dazzled audiences but have since faded into obscurity. Among them is Susanna Centlivre’s The Busy Body—a sharp-witted comedy of intrigue and disguise that captivated London audiences in 1709 and remained a favourite for over a century. In the article below, Taylor takes us behind the scenes of this exciting revival and shares his passion for bringing these remarkable works back to the spotlight.
A father locks his daughter in her room. She must marry the man of his choosing and, in the meantime, be kept well away from the opposite sex. Her friend is in a still worse position. Her legal guardian is determined to wed her himself, first and foremost to get his hands on her fortune. But these two women are clever. They’re not to be told what to do or who to love. Plans are hatched…
This is the situation in Susanna Centlivre’s The Busy Body, a comedy first staged in 1709 that would go on to become one of the London stage’s most popular plays across the next century. It’s a comedy of intrigue, disguise, and – in its title character – one of the greatest comic roles in the history of British theatre. The insatiably curious Marplot (the ‘busy body’) just can’t help himself. Again and again, he sticks his nose in where it’s not welcome – and, in the process, he causes the best laid plans of his friends to unravel. As his name suggests, he mars their plots.
Centlivre is a master of comic stagecraft, perhaps because she began her career as an actress. She knew through experience how theatre works; she knew how to entertain and move an audience. She was a prolific and successful playwright in her day but her writing – comprising some nineteen plays – has largely and unjustly been forgotten. But then, to judge by the programmes of our commercial repertory theatres, and with the exception of a handful of plays, British theatre between Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde barely exists at all.
In fact, there are many great plays of the Restoration and eighteenth century – and a large number of them were written by and for women. It was only in 1660, with the return of the monarchy and the reopening of the public theatres (closed during the Civil Wars and the Interregnum), that women were allowed to appear on the professional stage. And the arrival of the actress profoundly changed the way plays were written: now, for the first time, writers were creating characters specifically to be embodied by women. Nor was it long before women were writing plays themselves. Centlivre belongs to the second wave of pioneering women playwrights of this period.
I’m part of a group of scholars – based in the USA, Canada, and the UK – who are trying to get the many brilliant plays of Restoration and eighteenth century back on our stages. In 2019, we founded the R/18 Collective with the express purpose of finding ways to work with professional theatre practitioners to recover, explore, and stage this period of British theatre. It’s been hugely exciting to be part of this project.
In particular, since 2022 I’ve been collaborating with Creation Theatre in Oxford to mount plays by women. To date, we’ve staged five such plays through script-in-hand performances, and have performed a further one in an experimental digital production. Plays live through performance. They’re meant to be performed. So as someone who teaches and researches this period of theatre, I’ve learned an incalculable amount from being in the rehearsal room with actors and directors, thinking with them – thinking always done on our feet – about the language, characters, and ideas of these plays. And thinking, above all, about how we can make them speak to audiences today.
Thanks to the Cultural Programme, The Busy Body is our most ambitious such staging yet. Now collaborating with the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond (who have a venerable history of mounting this period’s plays) as well as Creation, we will spend a week workshopping Centlivre’s comedy with director Gabriella Bird and a cast of nine professional actors. In the past, the cast has met only on the morning on which the script-in-hand performance is to take place, so it’s wonderful to have more time to grapple and experiment with The Busy Body. We’ll be staging it twice: once in Oxford (at St. Hugh’s College) on Friday 24 January and then again at the Orange Tree on Sunday 26.
The Busy Body is a dazzlingly funny play but it’s also a work of theatre that has much to say to us in 2025, not least about gender identity, freedom of choice, and generational conflict. I can’t wait to delve into it with our director and cast – and I can’t wait to share it with audiences.
Whether it’s the lively chaos of The Busy Body or the broader legacy of pioneering 18th-century playwrights like Centlivre, this project reminds us that theatre, like history, comes alive most vividly when brought to the stage. Don’t miss the chance to experience The Busy Body taking place on Friday 24 January in Mordan Hall, St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and also at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, on Sunday 26 January.
13 Jan 25