Susanna Centlivre

Susanna Centlivre (1667-1723), born Susanna Freeman, joined a company of strolling players at age 15. During her long career at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Centlivre wrote eighteen plays, a one-act opera, three volumes of witty letters, prose satires, and dozens of poems. Condemned as a sexual libertine, Centlivre nevertheless went on to become the popular playwright of the 18th Century.