The source material project that this article draws from--Records of Early English Drama--is far more complete now than it was 20 years ago when this was written. It was being produced on a county-by-county basis and I suspect that some priority was given to locations of significant importance in early drama, such as York. Similar information to what is presented here, but for other English counties, would probably yield much of interest regarding women's performance history.
LHMP
Blog entry
The collection kicks off with a detailed look at the wide variety of performance contexts in 16-17th century England and picks apart the notion that women were not performers.
Now that I've read and written up all the articles in this collection, I'm ready to roll them out in the blog, one per day. Not all of them are directly relevant even to my interests in the history of women in theater, but I've taken at least a few notes on all the articles. Despite being focused on England, these articles provide a lot of background on women in theater elsewhere in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. I suspect that my "women on stage" trope podcast is going to be rather longer than the usual for the trope shows.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 290 - On the Shelf for July 2024 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2024-07-06 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for July 2024.
It’s the middle of summer and all those summer plans are galloping down upon us like a herd of migrating wildebeest! Ok, not sure where that simile came from. Too much Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom in my youth, I think.
This is a list of books on the history of sexuality or queer history (that I’m aware of) that include m/m topics. This will not include books that are solely about m/m queer history because they fall outside my scope of interest. This list was compiled to answer a query on social media (and was too long to post there in response). Because the question was focused around 12th century France, I’ve bolded the titles that have specific coverage of the middle ages.
Although I'm mostly focusing on theater-related publications at the moment, I'd read and taken notes for this one, so I'm getting it off the desktop. It's always hard to find good resources for non-Western cultures, and what's available is often focused on male homoeroticism. I wish I could do better.
No point in spacing these out when I'm on a roll. I've had half a dozen articles sitting on my iPad all read-and-highlighted waiting for me to write them up. I have one more of those to post, then 4 articles on theater to read and post. I'm about a third of the way through making notes from one of the two(?) books on women in theater that I have scheduled. Then I think I'll be ready to tackle the "women on stage" tropes podcast. I think it'll be a lot of fun. Who knows why I'm feeling energized to work on these blogs. I'll just enjoy it while it lasts.
Another article I read for my stage/drama/actresses trope topic. In an odd way, although the author's imaginative extrapolations align well with the purposes of the Project, they don't align well with my ideas about "doing history."
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 289 - Our F/Favorite Tropes Part 13: Mothers, Sisters, Daughter – Pseudo-familial Relationships - transcript
(Originally aired 2024/06/15 - listen here)
Introduction and the Elephant in the Room
I've decided to power through my list of reading for my "actresses and the stage" episode of the tropes series. Maybe I can get it together for the August podcast so you'll have something nice and chewy while I'm off gallivanting around the UK.
Pages
