The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret (Broadview Literary Texts)
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Susanna Centlivres play The Wonder (1714) was one of ...)
Susanna Centlivres play The Wonder (1714) was one of the most popular works on the eighteenth-century English stage. Set in Lisbon, the plot interweaves two romantic intrigues around one secret: the heroine Violante is hiding her best friend, Isabella (who is the sister of her own lover, Don Felix) from Isabellas father who wishes to marry her off to a rich but decrepit old merchant. Because she is sworn to secrecy, Violante cannot reveal Isabellas whereabouts, nor can she explain to Felix why Isabellas new lover, a dashing British soldier, happens to be about the house, prompting Felixs intense jealousy. Centlivres critique on the tyrannical patriarchs in the world of the play is at the same time a veiled critique of similar conditions in Augustan-era Britain.
This Broadview edition includes contemporary responses (by Richard Steele and Arthur Bedford), biographical accounts, selections of Centlivres poetry, and early nineteenth-century criticism (by Elizabeth Inchbald and William Hazlitt).
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