SOURCE: Rigamonti, Antonella and Laura Favero Carraro. “Women at Stake: The Self-Assertive Potential of Gambling in Susanna Centlivre's The Basset Table.” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 16, no. 2 (2003): 53-62.

In the following essay, Rigamonti and Carraro contend that Centlivre's Basset Table likely failed as a follow-up to the more successful Gamester because the playwright posed a more direct challenge to accepted social norms for women. Comparing the play to similar works by male playwrights, the authors highlight Centlivre's unique take on the empowering possibilities offered to women at the gaming table.

Almost as a bet, Susanna Centlivre¹ wrote, in the same year (1705), two plays dealing with the same theme: gambling. The first, The Gamester, was also her first hit and established for her an identity as “the Author of The Gamester”; the following play, The Basset Table, was instead a flop, although its situations and characters were an improved...