type of comedy tended to focus on the romantic intrigues among a triangle of wealthy main characters (generally one young woman being fought over by two young men, one promiscuous, the other devoted). It often involves disguises, duels (or talk of them), and scenarios that balance emotion and farce. Her best-known comedies feature quick-witted female intellects to equal their male counterparts. Due to the widespread prejudice against women playwrights, Centlivre sometimes wrote under a pseudonym, or withheld more controversial messages. Tragedies Little positive is said of her two tragi-comedies, The Perjur'd Husband and The Stolen Heiress, although her pure tragedy, The Cruel Gift, was somewhat better received. These plays were thought to have "figures [that] are shadowy and [a] plot [that] is unconvincing." Reception and criticism Her plays were popular with audiences but less so with literary critics such as William Hazlitt who wrote condescendingly of them. Satirist Alexander Pope found her writings offensive for political and religious reasons, and thought them a threat to greater dramatists by pandering to popular taste. He assumed that she had helped with Edmund Curll's anti-Catholic pamphlet The Catholic Poet: or, Protestant Barnaby's Sorrowful Lamentation. Regardless of her peers' opinions, her plays continued to be performed for over 150 years after her death. The diarist Agnes Porter, governess to the children of Henry Fox-Strangways, 2nd Earl of Ilchester, saw a performance of Centlivre's The Busy Body at the Little Theatre, Haymarket on 7 March 1791, but wrote that it was "very badly performed". List of works Plays The Perjur'd Husband: or, The Adventures of Venice (1700) The Beau's Duel; or, A Soldier for the Ladies (1702) The Stolen Heiress; or, the Salamanca Doctor Outplotted (1702; published 1703) Love's Contrivance (1703) The Gamester (1705) The Basset Table (1705) Love at a Venture (1706) The Platonick Lady (1706) The Busie Body (1709) The Man's Bewitched; or, the Devil to Do About Her (1709) A Bickerstaff's Burying; or, Work for the Upholders (1710) Marplot; or, the Second Part of The Busie Body (1710; published 1711) The Perplex'd Lovers (1712) The Wonder: A Woman Keeps A Secret!!! (1714) A Gotham Election (1715, never produced) A Wife Well Managed (1715; produced 1724) The Cruel Gift (1716; published 1717) A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718) The Artifice (1722) Books Familiar and Courtly Letters as Astraea (1700) The Second Volume of Familiar Letters as Astraea (1701) Letters of Wit, Politicks