She Ventures and He Wins
The original manuscript mentioned it was an adaptation of a "small novel", which has since been discovered to be The Fair Extravagant by Alexander Oldys, an unknown story that had been almost unheard of since its publication.
She Ventures and He Wins tells the story of two women who are tired of the old ways of dealing with the affairs of the heart.
Meanwhile, the upwardly-mobile Squire Wouldbe is lusting after the innkeeper's wife, Urania, who cooks up a suitable punishment for the would-be cuckolder.
While already married to Dionysus, Ariadne fell in love with Theseus who help her by promising to take her to Athens as his wife.
She gave him two special gifts, a sword and a clue of thread, to find a way back from the Cnossian Labyrinth after killing the Minotaur.
Ariadne is seen as a very progressive tale because of the strength that she shows compared to other female characters at the time the myth began.
The writer of the epilogue of She Ventures and He Wins, Peter Motteux, tried to capitalize on the play by discrediting Ariadne.
Charlotte convinces Lovewell to meet her tomorrow morning; she says that she will have two young ladies and the one that takes his hand is the one he must marry.
After he leaves Mrs. Beldam, Dowdy's mother, comes, upset with her son-in-law for the way he treats her daughter, and then departs on her own business for the day.
Charlotte and Juliana enter the park dressed in men's clothes discussing the matter at hand with their love lives.
Urania receives another note, this time it appears to be written by Dowdy telling her to come to the park to witness the squire cheating on his wife.
They trick Squire Wouldbe in the park into thinking he is cheating on his wife with a beautiful mistress, but rather is it just an older woman in a mask.
When Charlotte proposes to Lovewell, she says that he must take her "as you see me", standing her ground and maintaining her dominance even though she only won him over as a man.
Elizabeth Berry, who also originated the role of Urania, sponsored the play in the hopes of the novelty of a female playwright making the show successful.
These accusations were taking seriously by both companies, but especially by playwright and actor George Powell who called Ariadne out in the prologue of his play The British Heroine.
[1] According to Novak (1975: 51), this “may have been due to its feminist reversal of sexual roles,” particularly because Charlotte humiliates Lovewell “to an uncomfortable degree” through her insistence on testing his love.
And to this we can add Urania’s humiliation of Squire Wouldbe, which was more justifiable morally speaking, but still a subversion of gender hierarchy and a usurpation of her husband’s role.
[2] She Ventures and He Wins, while not part of the standard theater repertoire, is being performed more frequently at the professional and collegiate level with the rise of celebration of female playwrights.
