The Folger Shakespeare Theatre is refocusing the spotlight on a playwright who was one of the most famous writers of the early eighteenth century: Susanna Centlivre, whose name would have been very familiar to theatergoers in London in 1705 when she wrote “The Basset Table.” The Folger has renamed the play, set in a home where people gambled at cards all night long, “The Gaming Table.”

“What’s really amazing about this play is that in so many plays written during this time, women were just characters of different ages,” said director Eleanor Holdridge. “They could almost all be the same character except that they’re in different parts of the plot. But the women in Centlivre’s play have such distinct personalities. That’s tremendously rare.”