Produced by Chris Curnow, Katie Hernandez, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY THE FEMALE WITS (Anonymous) (1704) _Introduction by_ LUCYLE HOOK PUBLICATION NUMBER 124 WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES 1967 GENERAL EDITORS George Robert Guffey, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Earl Miner, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Maximillian E. Novak, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Robert Vosper, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ ADVISORY EDITORS Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_ James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_ Ralph Cohen, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_ Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_ Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_ Everett T. Moore, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Lawrence Clark Powell, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ James Sutherland, _University College, London_ H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_ CORRESPONDING SECRETARY Edna C. Davis, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ INTRODUCTION _The Female Wits; Or, The Triumvirate of Poets at Rehearsal_, published anonymously in 1704 with "written by Mr. W. M." on the titlepage, was played at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane around October, 1696. [1] A devastating satire in the manner of Buckingham's _The Rehearsal_, it attacks all plays by women playwrights but Mary de la Riviere Manley's blood and thunder female tragedy, _The Royal Mischief_ (1696), in particular. _The Female Wits_ resembles _The Rehearsal_ in that the satire is directed not only at the subject matter and style of a particular type of drama but supplies searing portrayals of recognizable persons--in this case, of Mrs. Manley herself, and to a lesser degree, of Mary Pix and Catherine Trotter (later Cockburn). It also follows Buckingham's satire in that the actors play double roles--that of the characters assigned to them and their own--and in so doing, reveal their own personalities with astonishing clarity. Colley Cibber tells the best stories of the chaos that ensued after the secession of Betterton and most of the veteran actors in 1695 from the dominance of Christopher Rich at Drury Lane. [2] Since Betterton had been virtual dictator in London since 1682, he was able to command the efforts, at least at first, of most of the well-known playwrights who had written for the company before the establishment of his theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Young playwrights scrambled to ingratiate themselves with one or the other of the two London managements. Among them, there had been three women with four plays in less than a year.