Yet this hilarious actress played Cleopatra with dignity, and Calista with feeling. She accepted with great reluctance the part of Semandra, in "Mithridates," when that tragedy was revived in 1708; but Chetwood says she performed the part to perfection, and became reconciled to tragedy by reason of her success. In these characters, however, she could be excelled by others, but in Lady Betty Modish and Lady Townley she was probably never equalled. In the comedy of lower life she was, perhaps, less original; at least, Anthony Aston remarks, that in free comedy she borrowed something from Mrs. Verbruggen's manner. When Wilks, as Lord Townley, exclaimed "Prodigious!" in the famous scene with his lady, played by Mrs. Oldfield, the house applied it to her acting, and broke into repeated rounds of applause. "Who should act genteel comedy, perfectly," asks Walpole, "but people of fashion that have sense? Actors and actresses can only guess at the tone of high life, and cannot be inspired with it. Why are there so few genteel comedies, but because most comedies are written by men not of that sphere. Etherege, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Cibber wrote genteel comedy, because they lived in the best company; and Mrs. Oldfield played it so well, because she not only followed, but often set the fashion. General Burgoyne has writ the best modern comedy for the same reason; and Miss Farren is as excellent as Mrs. Oldfield, because she has lived with the best style of men in England. Farquhar's plays talk the language of a marching regiment in country quarters. Wycherley, Dryden, Mrs. Centlivre, &c., wrote as if they had only lived in the _Rose Tavern_; but then the Court lived in Drury Lane, too, and Lady Dorchester and Nell Gwyn were equally good company." In this there is some injustice against Mrs. Centlivre, for whose name should be supplied that of Aphra Behn. Walpole judges more correctly of the comic writers of the seventeenth century, when he places Molière "Senor Moleiro," as Downes absurdly calls him, at the head of them all. "Who upon earth," he says, "has written such perfect comedies? for the 'Careless Husband' is but one; the 'Non-juror' was built on the 'Tartuffe,' and if the Man of Mode (Etherege) and Vanbrugh are excellent, they are too indelicate; and Congreve, who beat all for wit, is not always natural, still less, simple."