Female Playwrights and Eighteenth-Century Comedy

Aphra Behn, Susannah Centlivre, Hannah Cowley, and Elizabeth Inchbald were the only four female playwrights in England with multiple comic successes from 1670-1800. Behn''s interest in the body, Centlivre''s fascination with written contracts, Cowley''s nationalism, and Inchbald''s discussion of divorce emerge in the comic events that are animated by the psychological mechanisms of humor. Attendin...