with the Ladies in the boxes who were beginning to enjoy the "Solace of Tears" and to dominate theatrical taste in the middle 1690's. After Aphra Behn's death in 1689, a shattering blow to rising feminism, women had not ventured thus far to write for the stage. Mrs. Behn, however, was still a powerful influence, and her name was invoked by every woman who put pen to paper.

Mrs. Manley openly aspired to be a second Astrea. Certainly there are striking similarities. As in Aphra Behn's case, nothing Mrs. Manley ever wrote as drama or fiction could equal the events of her own life[4]. Her father died when she was fourteen, leaving her in the care of a cousin who took her inheritance, went through a sham marriage with her, abandoned her before their child was born, and left her to starve before she was sixteen. She was befriended by Barbara Castlemaine, Duchess of Cleveland, the notorious former mistress of Charles II, whose character Mrs. Manley draws as Hillaria in The Adventures of Rivella (1714), and whose lineaments are certainly to be seen in the character of Homais in the warmer passages of The Royal Mischief. After Mrs. Manley's cruel dismissal by the Duchess, by her own account she spent two years wandering unknown from place to place in England, and during this time, she wrote plays for her diversion.

During the 1690's, despite the supposition of some modern critics that heroic tragedy was out of style, the great classics of the three preceding decades continued to be played by the Betterton company in whose stock repertory they had been since their inception: Lee's The Rival Queens, Banks' The Unhappy Favourite, Otway's Venice Preserv'd, and many of Dryden's (The Indian Emperour, The Conquest of Granada, All for Love). In fact, Dryden was still writing and pleasing audiences with tragicomedies that contained the ingredients of the old heroic tragedy. Since the same company of actors was presenting the old plays (indeed, most of the actors were still playing their original roles), the histrionic magic of the early tragic hero could still lift an audience to the empyrean heights reached in the heady first years of the restoration of Charles II. If there is anything strange in Mrs. Manley's The Royal Mischief in 1696, it is not that it was an heroic play but that the leading character was a woman, Homais, who out-hectors and out-loves all of the Restoration Alexanders, Montezumas, and Drawcansirs written for and by men.

If her own account of The Royal Mischief is true, Mrs. Manley wrote it after she left the household of the Duchess of Cleveland, some time between 1692 and 1694. Since there was only one theatre in London from 1682 to 1695, she wrote for Thomas Betterton, Elizabeth Barry, Anne Bracegirdle, Edward Kynaston, and other veterans in the Betterton company, who were the prototypes for the characters in the early heroic plays. She could have known no others. When Betterton seceded from the Theatre Royal in 1695 and set up the independent theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mrs. Manley, already committed to Drury Lane because of her first play, gave Drury Lane The Royal Mischief even though it had been written for the Betterton company. Circumstances, then, dictated that The Royal Mischief was finally played by the actors for whom it had been written originally.

It is likely, however, that The Female Wits would never have been written if Thomas Betterton had not aggravated the situation by producing The Royal Mischief as quickly as possible after Mrs. Manley had withdrawn it from Drury Lane under such provocative circumstances. It was played immediately at Lincoln's Inn Fields in April or May, 1696, seemingly at the insistence of the Duke of Devonshire to whom Mrs. Manley dedicated it. When it was published in June, the author was supported by her sister playwrights in commendatory verses included with the play. Catherine Trotter possibly earned her inclusion in The Female Wits when she wrote,

You were our Champion, and the Glory ours.
Well you've maintain'd our equal right in Fame,
To which vain Man had quite engrost the claim:

Mary Pix confirmed her place in the satire with her panegyric:

You the unequal'd wonder of the Age,
Pride of our Sex, and Glory of the Age,
Like Sappho Charming, like Afra Eloquent,
Like Chast Orinda, sweetly Innocent.

Mrs. Manley minced no words in the printed version in answer to the flurry of criticism that had greeted The Royal Mischief when it was played: "I should not have given my self and the Town the trouble of a Preface if the aspersions of my Enemies had not made it necessary." According to her, in spite of "ill nature, Envy, and Detraction," The Royal Mischief was successful (it had a run of six nights) even though some of the ladies professed to be shocked at "the warmth of it, as they are pleas'd to call it.... I do not doubt when the Ladies have given themselves the trouble of reading, and comparing it with others, they'll find the prejudice against our Sex, and not refuse me the satisfaction of entertaining them...." Everything Mrs. Manley wrote, however, simply added to the ridicule that had been mounting against women playwrights, and The Female Wits is merely the distillation of the general attitude of the self-appointed critics and wits at the Rose and the Grecian, at Maynwaring's and at Will's.

In defending The Royal Mischief and its reception, she said of the actress who played the unbelievably wicked Homais: "... Mrs. Barry, who by all that saw her, is concluded to have exceeded that perfection which before she was justly thought to have arrived at; my Obligations to her were the greater, since against her own approbation, she excell'd and made the part of an ill Woman, not only entertaining, but admirable." Years later in The Adventures of Rivella, she was to say, "Mrs. Barry distinguish'd herself as much as in any Part that ever she play'd. I have since heard Rivella laugh and wonder that a Man of Mr. Betterton's grave Sense and Judgment should think well enough of the Productions of a Woman of Eighteen, to bring it upon the Stage in so handsome a Manner as he did...." [5]

It is easy to believe Mrs. Manley's high commendation of the actress but difficult to credit Mrs. Barry's objection to playing a part that was a natural sequel to all the heroic and sometimes wicked women she had played throughout her career. Her audience identified her with Lee's Roxana in The Rival Queens, Dryden's Cleopatra in All for Love, and his recent Cassandra in Cleomenes. Every playwright since 1680 had written expressly for her: Otway's Monimia in The Orphan was her first great part in 1680, followed two years later by Belvidera in Venice Preserv'd. Southerne had given her Isabella in The Fatal Marriage in 1694, Congreve was still to write for her his Zara in The Mourning Bride in 1697, and Rowe his Calista in The Fair Penitent in 1703. Cibber, in 1740, remembered her "Presence of elevated Dignity ... her Voice full, clear, and strong, so that no Violence of Passion could be too much for her." He emphasized that in "Scenes of Anger, Defiance, or Resentment, while she was impetuous, and terrible, she pour'd out the Sentiment with an enchanting Harmony."