The secret of Hannah Cowley's success lay in her dedication to the cause of fair treatment for women. She was the first true and effective feminist.
In her first play The Runaway, she exposed the outrageous injustice of arranged marriages. The law decreed that women, whether daughters or wards, were mere chattels entirely at the disposal of father or guardian. They could 'give them away' either to the highest bidder or to satisfy a personal ambition such as improved social status, a title, acres of countryside or access to a seat in Parliament which would come with the right deal.
Hannah Cowley did not rage against this monstrous wrong: much more subtly, she poked fun at it; most of her plays are fast-moving comedies.
This feminist view was championed by contemporaries such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Hannah More, but Hannah Cowley's message was more widely disseminated, reaching all classes from those in the pit to the aristocrats in the boxes. The plays were performed in provincial theatres (Bath, Dublin, Hull, York and many others) and even reached audiences in Germany and America.
The theatre was the perfect medium to broadcast her views. It was in the nature of things that Hannah suffered throughout her career from jealousy and ill-founded criticism. It started with the box-office success of The Runaway in 1776. Sheridan, basking in the success of The Rivals in 1775, was madly jealous of a new, wildly popular rival. And a woman at that. He had recently bought into the management of the Drury Lane theatre, and did his best to hamper Hannah at every turn. He withdrew The Runaway even though it was playing to full houses. Hannah showed the courage displayed by her heroines and continued steadfastly to entertain and delight audiences everywhere.