LHMP #435 Gough 2005 Courtly Comédiantes: Henrietta Maria and Amateur Women’s Stage Plays in France and England

When we think of dramatic performance by courtiers, masques tend to be the first image, but this article examines the performance of stage plays by the English court under Henrietta Maria, Queen to Charles I. The queen was French and imported French attitudes and expectations to the sphere where she could set the rules. In particular, she greatly increased women’s performance on the court stages, and amateur women’s theatricals became a regular feature of the court.

But to understand that dynamic, we must look at the French court’s interactions with professional actresses, including those from Italy. Henrietta Maria’s background was rooted in the court of her mother, Marie de Medici, in which young women of the court participated in theatrical performance as part of a broadly cultured and cosmopolitan social context.

Unfortunately, we have a little direct evidence for the specifics of her theatrical activities there. As an example—though one, Henrietta Maria was too young to have participated in herself—the article looks at the 1611 performance at the French court of Bradamante, directed by and starring Henrietta Maria’s older sister Elizabeth, who was 9 years old at the time. Elizabeth modeled her performance on that of celebrity Italian actresses, who regularly toured France. These precedents enabled aristocratic women performers to be praised for their performance skills, rather than being criticized for immodesty. They were seen as adding to the prestige and magnificence of the court.

Elizabeth was the instigator of the staging of Bradamante, not simply assigned the role. This was no casual “showing off the kids.” Her mother, the queen, only permitted the performance with the requirement that Elizabeth know and perform her part suitably. (Bradamante is an Amazon character featured in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.) The title role included androgynous cross-dressing, and the performance included girls playing male parts, all familiar tropes from Italian commedia.

There is a discussion of the evidence for various Italian troupes playing at the French court of Maria de Medici, as well as other mentions of performances by court ladies. This would be part of an array of entertainments presented for special occasions. (Ariosto was popular source material for short plays and interludes.)

Why were Italian actresses the inspiration for performance by court women rather than French actresses? French actresses had been participating on local stages as early as the 15th century (there is documentary evidence of a tradesman’s daughter performing in a mystery play in 1468), and by at least 1545 there is evidence for professional performance by women. But women did not regularly perform professionally in Paris until the 1610s. This difference may be related to genre distinctions, with Paris focusing on bawdy farce, which was more hazardous to an actress’s reputation. The introduction of women to the Parisian professional stage accompanied the performance of more elevated works. Even so, Parisian actresses didn’t achieve the same respect and status as Italian ones, well into the mid-17th century. Therefore court women looked elsewhere for models that would situate them as part of an intellectual tradition, rather than one associated with loose morals.

Correspondence by foreign visitors to the French court note Henrietta Maria’s theatrical performances at a time when it must have been part of “showing her off” for potential suitors in the 1620s. There’s a reference to Henrietta Maria later staging a performance for Charles I’s birthday of a play she had previously performed in Paris. The plays she staged as queen were typically performed by her ladies-in-waiting (and herself). Women performing in court masques and visiting foreign actresses had been part of the English performance scene since the reign of Elizabeth I. Queen Anna (wife of James I) was particularly active in promoting a female masquing tradition at the court.

Though masques typically involved dance and acting but not verbal performance, a rare early example of female vocal performance in masques was a 1617 performance by a girls’ school in honor of Queen Anna. So the change that Henrietta Maria brought was not formal performance as such, but an expanded scope and variety of the types of roles and performances women engaged in.

The article details various performances that Henrietta Maria directed and participated in. As the queens “troupe” were all female, these performances often involved cross-dressed roles. English commenters tend to overlook the actual skill of the performances and instead grumbled about the propriety of women—to say nothing of the queen—appearing on stage at all. In contrast, foreign correspondents in England made more favorable comments. (This contrast may speak to why historians have tended to treat Henrietta Maria’s performances as trivial and amateurish, taking their tone from stuffy English disapproval.)

Henrietta Maria sometimes used plays as political activism or commentary, choosing subjects, and even the language of performance as a message to political rivals or allies. She demanded professional standards from her troupe, delaying performances if they were not up to snuff, and bringing in well-known stage actors to coach them.