Susanna Centlivre's satirical retorts to Jeremy Collier: "The Gamester" and "The Basset-Table"

Susanna Centlivre, like so many of her post-Restoration colleagues, was a Whig activist whose milieu was the comic theatre. The Gamester and The Basset-Table, whose shared theme of gambling reform is clearly a pretext, actually use Mary Astell's feminist arguments satirically to counter a backlash against women promoted by Jeremy Collier's anti-theatre writings. Comparing The Gamester's male lead to modern compulsive gambling psychology shows how Centlivre presents a woman exercising wise, enlightened power, while also personifying the Stage as the preferred agent of morality. The intricacies of The Basset-Table game deal reform as punishment to Jacobite-deluded women who passively surrender their personal aspirations and interests to the arbitrary power of men, while independent women are treated more kindly. Disguised as exemplary comedy, these two satirical plays make important statements against threats to the burgeoning ideal of freedom of expression.