Full citation:Brown, Pamela Allen & Peter Parolin (eds). 2005. Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage. Ashgate, Burlington. ISBN 978-0-7546-0953-7
Although this collection does have one paper addressing female homoeroticism on stage, I have covered it primarily as background reading for exploring role-playing and stage theatrics as a context for romance tropes involving female couples.
During the 16th and earlier 17th century, women were not members of professional acting troupes, but did participate in class-appropriate performances at all levels: masques and plays at court, pageants and parish plays in towns, and traveling performers at the poorest level. In addition, women were patrons and spectators. All of these undermine the idea of the “all-male stage”. At the same time, women players were often heaped with scorn. This could be hazardous to the critic when the attacks were on court ladies participating in masques and plays.
Identifying when women “first” acted on the English stage depends on how one defines “act” and “stage”. Restricting the question to paid performers is necessary to exclude court ladies. The question must be restricted to the secular stage to exclude women performing in religious drama.
The claim that women actors first appeared on the Restoration stage erases a vast array of dramatic contexts and players. This collection takes a broader definition and looks at “women players” in a wide variety of contexts, up to the point when the professional, secular, stage actress emerges.
Early systematic research into the many types of dramatic performance – civic, religious, and popular — written beginning around 1895 was curiously oblivious to the extensive participation of women, while more recent work has solidly established that presence. This oversight was not so much deliberate as a byproduct of how early research was conducted, in particular, a presumption that civic pageants formed a unified and uniform tradition, with the best known examples focusing on male guild performers.
But civic entertainments formed a rich diversity of performance types and traditions, many of which included women performers, such as performances sponsored by socio-religious guilds, which included women and men equally. Many of these traditions ended with the destruction of religious guilds in the 16th century, though some pageant traditions continued through the 1580s. (There are references in Shakespeare to women participating in these types of pageants.)
To some extent, the official campaign against a wider array of cultural performance traditions perceived as Catholic paralleled an assault on women’s participation in performance culture, both via the church and through secular courts. This campaign provides some of the clearest evidence for the traditions that were being erased, in the records of commissions investigating matters associated with them.
Parish guilds nearly always had both male and female members — evenly balanced among the non-clerical membership, and including both married and single women. As the performers in traditional entertainments were drawn from these guilds, they too were of mixed gender, though specific activities or roles might be for one gender or the other.
Celebrations were often focused around a local patron saint, the namesake of the parish guild. Local dignitaries, and their wives might have prescribed regalia they were required to wear for these ceremonial occasions, constituting a sort of “costume”. These local pageants could also have participation from craft guilds, who provided specific entertainments, usually religious in nature.
Some traditions, such as May Day customs, have evidence as late as 1660 (in the context of prohibiting them). Traditional parish festivals in the 18th to 19th century may be survivals of pre-Reformation traditions or deliberate revivals of abandoned traditions, but some traditions are recorded as surviving into the early 18th century. Many of these later remnants/revivals include women, sometimes in the form of naming a “lord and lady” to preside over the occasion, but sometimes involving female-specific traditions.
Pre-Reformation convents might hold their own entertainments (although sometimes this is documented via prohibitions on them). “Disguisings” were another form of entertainment, and in addition to playing character roles (such as Robin Hood pageants) they could involve cross-gender play and parody. [Note: see also the gender-panic literature of circa 1600, such as Hic Mulier, which describes gender play during festivals.]
Household accounts of the upper class in the 16th century show payments to a wide variety of performers of both sexes. The children of the aristocracy are also recorded as performing in plays. Aristocratic households might have their own formal “company of players” who were traveling performers, as well as performing for their patrons. (These are the sort of “professional” company that would not include women.)
This article moves away from the traditional focus on professional urban theater companies (in which women had no role prior to the Restoration) to look at regional performance traditions that were more varied. The differences between and among these regional traditions are as important for a closer picture as the quest for continuity and similarity. Local practices were shaped by differences in proximity to London and the court, to prevailing religious attitudes, and to the degree of participation of the local noble families.
The documentary evidence for regional performance traditions often revolves around authorities (of various types) acting to control, limit, or support specific practices, though other records also exist. These official concerns raised questions about “what is theater?” when applied to performance spaces in context. The article focuses on several specific regions, drawing heavily on the extensive documentary project Records of Early English Drama.
York
York functioned as something of a “second capitol” after London for cultural, political, and ecclesiastical concerns. The annual cycle of “mystery plays” collaboratively staged by the craft guilds were performed from the 14th through 16th centuries. Similar play cycles were performed elsewhere, but the York records are the most extensive. Historians have sometimes made unsubstantiated claims that women did not participate in the York cycle (despite the presence of female characters) but a closer look finds women participants in a variety of functions.
One (theoretical) argument for women’s participation involves the sheer scope of the work required year-round in preparing for and producing the pageants, as well as the female membership in the craft guilds that organized specific components. Women’s participation in funding the pageants is clearly documented in the records. Women were responsible for providing props and infrastructure. Plays focusing on the Virgin Mary were typically sponsored by female-dominated guilds. (Note also the importance of women as spectators, including providing viewing stands.) Women participated equally in processions and feasts that were associated with the pageant performances.
But a key question remains under dispute: whether or to what extent women performed on stage in the mystery cycles. With little or no direct evidence (such as cast lists), secondary evidence must be brought to bear. One study notes a proportional relationship between female guild membership and the number of female roles in the pageants produced by the guild. There are some specific records of women playing the role of the Virgin Mary. Another argument focuses on the detailed and personal awareness of childbirth and pregnancy found in the scripts, suggesting female involvement.
The article discusses gendered divisions in the conflict between protestants and Catholics, with women more likely to support Catholicism. It is suggested that certain performative aspects of women’s religious resistance drew on themes and scripts from the cycle plays, especially Christ’s passion, suggesting that this supports women’s direct participation in acting in those pageants.
Lancashire
Records contain no direct reference to payments for women’s performance, although there is one intriguing reference to a woman who was “Mr. Atherton’s fool”. But when looking outside commercial performance, women were regularly (and sometimes primarily) involved in ceremonial performances with religious associations that had come to be treated as seasonal festivals under Protestantism. These activities could involve dancing, singing, disguising, “playing at parts”, and the gathering of fruits or other harvest (e.g., “rush gathering”) to present in the church or to ceremonial figures.
These festivals were considered by religious authorities to have “Papist” associations, and were discouraged or repressed on that basis, especially because churches and churchyards were the usual location for the activities. Not all such festival activities were officially discouraged. In 1617 James I granted official permission for Maypoles, rush-presentation, Whitsun ales, and Morris dancing.
The noble Stanley household in Lancashire were patrons of two troupes of professional players (presumably not including women) and regularly held masques in which women performed, including performance by female aristocrats. These masques were, for all intents and purposes, plays, often on seasonal, symbolic, or classical themes, involving rhymed speeches and dancing. These masques often echo themes seen in communal festivals. There is occasional evidence that the women performing also participated in shaping the script.
Gloucestershire
A combination of significant forces of religious reform and a dearth of noble patronage shaped both the nature of dramatic activity in Gloucestershire and the less-documented participation of women. This wasn’t the case in the 15th and early 16th century. There we find aristocratic women patronizing players and minstrels, and a record of a Christmas entertainment involving men and women on stage as well as a female tumbler. But by the mid-16th century patronage of players was reduced, and there are no records of women in either role.
While direct evidence is scanty, records of plays and performances in Gloucestershire, interpolated with evidence of women’s participation in neighboring counties, suggest that female players may be considered probable. Legal complaints about dancing and music in church include female participants (where the complaints focus on the activity in general, and not on the specific performers).
In the later 16th century, there are records of traveling professional dramatic troupes visiting Gloucestershire every year, some of whom he had female patrons (though not local ones). Such traveling players would need a license from the local authorities to perform.
Royal progresses which often included entertainment offered by the local hosts also seem to have been sparse in Gloucestershire. There is a lone record of a dramatic sketch presented to Elizabeth the first in 1602 on the theme of Daphne and Apollo, in which Daphne may well have been played by a member of the hosting family.
Even scholarship that examines women’s participation in English theater has tended to overlook the role of ordinary women except as audience. One notable exception is studies of Mary (Moll) Frith who, in 1612, is recorded as having appeared on the stage in men’s clothing, playing the lute and singing. This may have been directly connected with performance of the play The Roaring Girl in which she appears as a character, and which advertised her forthcoming appearance on stage in its epilogue. While Moll was certainly exceptional, this article challenges the idea that she was an exception, at least in terms of women’s participation in the supporting activities behind stage performances.
Looking for women’s work only within the formal guild structures overlooks the heterogeneous and ad hoc nature of many women’s livelihoods. In the early 17th century, commercial theater was transitioning from a guild structure to more innovative and unstructured forms to created new, unregulated opportunities. In many trades, women took advantage of loopholes in trade regulations to escape gender-based restrictions, e.g., in secondhand goods, as peddlers, and victualers, and as pawnbrokers and small-scale money lenders.
The article has an extensive exploration of evidence for people involved--directly or peripherally--in theater as pawnbrokers and dealers in secondhand clothing, sometimes overlapping with thievery and fencing of stolen goods. Frith was several times accused of the latter. From this, Frith branched out into thief-taking and something of a protection racket for the return of stolen goods.
Overall, I feel this article strains to create relevant connections to the topic and doesn’t really address “women in theatre” other than Moll herself.
In the era before, women were accepted on the professional stage, they performed in less formal venues – squares, fairs, street corners, inn courtyards, and such – the venue of mountebanks. Typically, this was not as the primary performer, and therefore we must search more carefully for the evidence. The underlying purpose of these vaudeville-like mountebank performances, was to sell non-professional, medical treatments: folk or “quack” remedies. [Note: in this write-up I’m going to use “quack” to cover the entire range both of products and vendors, but the term had a broader sense of “traditional medicine” rather than the specific implication of fake and ineffective cures that it has today.]
Performance had the multifaceted role of drawing and holding potential customers, convincing customers of the efficacy of treatment, and offering spectacles of cures as entertainment. Performances could include dancing, music, acrobatics, and (always) glib patter. It might include faked illnesses or injuries, healed before the audience, and even spectacles such as snake handling. [Note: Also toad-eating, whence, by analogy, the term toad-eater, or toadie for a fawning, obedient follower.] Mountebanks usually traveled and performed in groups, and women are depicted participating as dancers, musicians, and participants in physical comedy.
Mountebanks (by various names) were common throughout Europe – the word mountebank coming from Italian montimbanco “to mount the stage”. (This article covers research into mountebanks in both England and Italy, so some observations may apply only to one or the other.) They made their living by selling quack cures, but part of the audience might buy them, not for their efficacy, but in exchange for the performance. Sometimes the sales portion of the event would be followed by a play. In Italy, there was overlap between mountebank performances, and Commedia dell’ Arte, both in personnel/context and in dramatic content, with commedia plays often using the themes of quack doctors and cures.
The popularity of the Italian commedia/mountebank performances was due in part to the presence of female performers. One famous performer La Vettoria is described as dancing and doing acrobatics “dressed like a trim and neat boy”. Female performers were – in popular thought – considered to sideline as whores, using the sales portion of the event to set up assignations. In turn, male mountebanks were considered to turn their glib tongues to seduction as well as sales. But female participants were not always treated as sex-workers on the side. The aforementioned La Vettoria went home under escort after performances to protect her from her fans.
Other women are described simply as performing, or in some cases, as selling their own quack cures, as well as serving as sales personnel for a male quack. In some cases, a husband and wife team formed the core of a mountebank troupe. There are cases of a mountebank’s widow continuing the trade on her own. Female sellers were especially useful for a female clientele, offering advice and cures for gynecological issues, as well as cosmetics and cures for bad breath, and “the ill scent of the arm pits”. (There is a discussion of how women’s economic and social activities have been erased in much scholarship, which treats them as accessories to their husbands rather than equal partners.)
Civic authorities treated quack doctors and mountebanks as an essential part of the healthcare landscape. Acts were passed authorizing them, and local authorities permitted and licensed their performances. At the same time, medical professionals criticized their trade, and legal penalties for traveling performers were applied to unlicensed mountebanks. Legal records thus provide another source of data for identifying specific female quack/performance.
Both the public image and the reality of mountebanks ranged from knowledgeable folk healers to harmless entertainment to dangerous fraud. Women were, of course, excluded from the formal medical professions so, however knowledgeable and efficacious they might be, they were automatically classified with mountebanks and quacks. Female practitioners came in for especially vicious criticism from professionals, as they not only infringed on the medical profession, but on male spheres of authority.
In addition to traveling mountebanks, some providers of quack or folk remedies offered similar performances in the context of a fixed shop, or from their homes. A fixed location provided the opportunity for more elaborate “stage dressing” for the performance, including anatomical displays of skeletons and such.
Actresses were an integral part of the early modern Italian stage, though the focus in theater history on commedia masks has tended to sideline that point. But female stage participation in Italy, not only transformed theater there, but had ripple effects elsewhere, including England.
Stage actresses are first recorded in Italy around the 1560s. Here we focus on women as members of professional troupes. Indeed, they were not simply participants, but celebrities and a major attraction for the audience. The nature of commedia, which relied on outline scenarios, elaborated by improvisation and stock characters, as well as works performed from full scripts, means that visual depictions are important in researching demographics. Pictorial evidence is the focus of this article.
Commedia derived from a blending of the traditions of humanist comedy and popular entertainment, such as carnival and mountebank performances, resulting in a variety of performance types. The earliest formal record of women in commedia is a contract of 1564 in which Lucretia of Siena and six men joined to form an acting company in Rome. This era saw mixed gender companies arising across Europe. For example, the earliest known French record is from 1545 for one Marie Ferré.
(The article includes a large selection of images from 16th century sources, showing scenes from performances that include women in various roles. In addition to the Italian material, there are works by German, French, and Dutch artist, though, in some cases they may be depicting the Italian stage.)
The premier female role was the "inamorata” requiring a skilled, beautiful, elegant performer, who could declaim, sing, dance, and jest. (Women were also writers and troupe leaders.) Leading actresses might also gain fame as poets, in addition to writing plays.
Although Italian theater had its roots in carnival, by the later 16th century, theater was popular enough to supply a year-round living. In addition to performing for general audiences, troupes would be hired by nobles to perform at court or in private houses, as part of elaborate spectacles for weddings or holidays. Mixed troupes existed alongside the older tradition of all-male casts during this period. Mixed-gender Italian troupes traveled throughout Europe to perform in England, France, Spain, and the Low Countries, though some criticized them as “shameless” and derided actresses as little better than courtesans. In general, English writers considered women on stage to be unusual and noteworthy, even when viewing them on the continent. A comment in 1608 by an English traveler mentioned an Italian actresses playing the part of a boy on stage.
Italian productions, often featured song and well-known actresses were generally accomplished singers. Acceptance of women on stage was variable, even within Italy, and some performances are noted as being required to be all male. Religious leaders in particular often censured the use of actresses, considering them a hazard to morals. These visiting troupes put women on professional stages in England well before English troupes added female actors. Looking more broadly for female performers, female acrobats are noted as performing in Germany, Italy, England, etc. in the mid-16th century. But by around 1600, women were an expected part of the Italian stage.
Interpreting pictorial evidence for women on stage is not entirely straightforward, even once the provenance of the work has been established. The regular use of cross-dressing means that the gender of a depicted character can’t always be assumed to be the gender of the player. Apart from this, illustrations are created for purposes, and are not candid snapshots of reality.
The article then does a deep-dive analysis of various artistic depictions that include women on stage, sometimes making up a substantial proportion of the troupe being depicted, and in a variety of stock rules: the inamorata, wives, servants, courtesans. The women in these images may be labeled by character role, or they may be identified as a specific named actress, emphasizing the “celebrity culture” aspect of Italian theater.
Far more numerous are depictions of unnamed players. Sometimes the costuming and staging can help identify the dramatic characters being depicted, although this can be more difficult than for male stock roles that he had highly stereotyped depictions, usually involving exaggerated masks. Women players fall in four main groups of costume, though this isn’t a sure guide to the roles: elegant upper-class clothing, indicating a respectable position; plain and simple clothing, indicating a servant; sexually provocative outfits indicating a courtesan; and costumes indicating the character is a foreigner, or is in disguise, often using “Oriental” features. The article discusses the features of these costume groupings, and the overlap with depictions of non-commedia performers of various types.
Cross-dressing was a regular motif on stage, especially for courtesan characters, mirroring the references to courtesans in real life sometimes wearing male outfits. Costumes indicating disguise were often drawn from Turkish or Romani (the article uses g*psy) clothing styles, and Turkish inspired outfits were also popular as female Carnival wear. The depictions of actresses in Romani outfits points out of the complex relationship between Romani participants in public performance, and their status as aliens embedded in the culture.
In contrast to male commedia characters who were associated with stereotyped masks, specific to the role, female characters were more rarely and inconsistently masked. It can be questioned whether the black velvet half-mask sometimes worn by the inamorata or courtesan roles is a “character mask” or simply a reflection of ordinary female dress accessories. But women’s theatrical masks could be more extensive than the everyday accessory.
In summary, although Italian women had previously been performing in less “professional” contexts, or in background functions, over the 16th century women actors became common and celebrated, especially in commedia, displacing the older tradition of men and boys playing female roles that was part of more literary theater. With the growing prominence of women actors, plays begin to focus more strongly on women-centered stories.
The premise of this article is that Shakespeare’s Loves Labors Lost is inspired by, and reflects, the prominence of women in Italian theater and in French salons who—as in the play—treated serious philosophical questions via banter and wit. Thus, even with no actual women on stage, Loves Labors Lost creates a strong female presence in English theater. The “French salon culture” of this era refers to the courts of Marguerite de Valois and Catherine de Medici, and predates the era most closely associated with the term “salon” beginning in the later 17th century.
The importance of Italian commedia actresses, participating fully in the improvisational bantering humor of that genre, can be seen in the introduction of Shakespearean characters such as Beatrice, Rosalind, and Viola, but is less commonly acknowledged to be present in Loves Labors Lost. In Loves Labors Lost the philosophical interests of the court ladies and the disorderly assertive nature of female commedia roles are combined in a comedy that declines to resolve in tidy marriages.
The body of the article expands on these points, and on the reception of both continental theater, and what was perceived as the more risque behavior of French and Italian court women that supported the plausibility of the play’s plot.
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night draws on two prominent motifs of Italian theater: a cross-dressed heroine who provokes female desire, and the ideal of the Italian actress, who combined beauty and rhetorical skill. Shakespeare and other English playwrights backed off somewhat on the lesbian eroticism, but retained the image of a female character claiming power through performance and improvising, as manifested in Viola/Cesario’s ambiguous teasing banter with Olivia.
The central dramatic motif (cross-dressing and F/F desire) appears from the early 16th century in Italian plays, such as La Calandria and Gl’Ingannati (commonly seen as the most direct inspiration for Twelfth Night). When I first introduced, the Italian precursors—like Shakespeare’s performances— would have been performed by all-male companies. But by the time Shakespeare was creating Twelfth Night, female performers were a mainstay of Italian theater. This shift changed the transgressive and erotic potential of cross-dressed characters. The cross-dressed woman plot was often combined with a twin plot, such that the female lead (and sometimes her male twin) is not simply taking a random male disguise, but taking on the sibling’s role. Their similarities and equivalence are emphasized.
The Italian plays are far more overt about the possibility of the disguised heroine to stand in for her brother sexually as well as socially. Where Shakespeare’s cross-dressed heroines often emphasize their conventional feminine natures and desires, the Italian heroines focus more on the social constraints and expectations of gender roles, and the potential legal consequences of carrying the role into another woman’s bed. In these plays, the homoerotic tension is resolved via the “convenient twin brother” motif, but also by creating a familial bond between the two women, typically mediated by marriage of one to the other’s relative. Homoerotic desire is not repudiated, but is diverted to an acceptable form. (The article notes tangentially that, although it focuses on two specific Italian plays, the central motif of cross-dressing and resulting homoerotic desire is present in many other 16th century plays in Italy, France, and Spain.)
The article explores the multi-valent nature of the audience reception (including other characters in the plays as audience). Is the audience aroused by the depiction of superficially m/f erotics? By the underlying “true” f/f erotics? (Or in English theater by the sex of the male actors playing the parts?) Is the transgressive nature of the f/f encounter undermined via the disguise or is it deliberately played for the titillation of a (presumed) male audience? The article notes that the performance of Gl’Ingannati was produced and dedicated to a primarily female audience. So scenes of f/f eroticism must have been expected to entertain and please women. And some scenes in the play imply that f/f eroticism could be accepted and excused.
In both plays, the women initially cross-dress for the safety and mobility it affords them, or even in support of heterosexual desire, which gives them a realistic and excusable motivation. The plays embrace both tragic and comedic potential in the motivations and consequences. The desiring women of the Italian plays express more physicality, where Shakespeare’s heroines feel a more diffuse, romanticized yearning. English spectators of Italian plays, often commented on the “wantonness” of the female characters (and by extension, the actresses playing them). In Gl’Ingannati Isabella, in her desire for the disguised Lelia, is described as being “in heat”, not merely restless, but masturbating when thinking of her beloved. F/f erotics are treated more openly in Italian theater, but are more closely policed in Italian culture and law, giving them a clear vocabulary and substance. English society and law expressed anxieties about cross-dressing and gender roles, but shy away from acknowledging female homosexuality. [Note: And had no laws specifically addressing it.]
But another difference is that Shakespeare’s Olivia has far more social power and freedom than her Italian counterpart. Olivia has power over her potential suitors, while Isabella (in Gl’Ingannati) is under others’ control and seeks her goals through deceit. In the Italian plays, the cross-class nature of the forbidden relationships is more highlighted than the cross-dressing. Thus the Italian cross-dressing comedies are transferred for an English audience in a variety of ways, while still retaining the central motif and ambiguous f/f desire.
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.
This article frame is the legal defense of the Countess of Arundel against espionage charges in Venice as a sort of theatrical performance. As context for this, the author reviews the countess’s experience performing in masques at the court of James I. The article feels like it’s stretching the premise of the collection a bit, and feels fairly speculative, using the phrases “might have,” and “must have” a bit too often for confidence.
Margaret Cavendish was known as a playwright—though for reading consumption rather than stage performance—but not as a theatrical performer herself. But both her plays and her political activity can be seen as having significant overlap in communicating her views and promoting her husband’s positions. Both served as petitions for the ear of those in power to convince them of her opinions and wishes. However, as with the previous article, I feel like this one stretches the scope of the collection beyond what is of interest to my purpose.
This article examines the symbolic and philosophical implications of the exclusion of female bodies from the English professional stage, while presenting female characters, as seen through the lens of how Queen Elizabeth I was depicted on stage. Such depictions of women in general relied on stereotypical signifiers. This would apply ever more strongly for depicting a queen as queen (since obviously, there was no actual queen on stage). Though interesting, this article is also out of the scope of my interest.
This article discusses the gendered aspects of ballad performance, both in terms of who is singing, and in terms of the gender of the “persona” of the song. The “female impersonation” of the article’s title refers to male performance of songs representing a female “voice.” This is connected very tangentially to the practice of male actors performing female parts on stage. Like the previous two articles, I did not consider it very relevant to my interests.
“Jest books” and collections of short humorous tales were a staple of the 16th and 17th centuries. [Note: the genre has its roots even earlier, such as Walter Map’s 12th century “Courtiers Trifles.”]
This article looks at one particular example of this genre of recorded vocal performance that has far more evidence for female performance of jests than usual. The book is also unusual in the proportion of original contemporary material as opposed to “reprints” from previously published joke books.
The book was compiled by Nicolas L’Estrange, and includes an index where each anecdote is attributed to a specific person—presumably, the originator. The author’s mother, Alice, features prominently, and in all about 15% are attributed to women. [Note: that this is an unusually high proportion is telling.] Whether or not these attributions reflect authorship, or simply note “informants” (to use a sociological term) one can certainly class them as a type of “performer” on a private, domestic stage.
As noted, Alice L’Estrange is the most commonly cited, not simply among women, but overall. Much of the content is political satire with royalist sentiments (the collection having been compiled largely during the interregnum). The jokes are often scatological or bawdy, shedding interesting light on the private behavior of “respectable” women. Many make reference to class and ethnic stereotypes, and may use dialogue in dialect. Over half of Alice’s jests involve a female narrator or subject.
As an example of the type of jest source to Alice L’Estrange, I offer the following because it also has an interesting peek at contexts for women wearing male garments in the early 17th century.
The Bury Ladyes that usd [to go] Hawking and Hunting, were once in a great vaine of wearing Breeches; and some of them being at dinner one day at Sir Edward Lewkenors, there was one Mr Zephory, a very precise and a silenc’t minister, (who frequented that house much) and discourse being offered of fashions, he fell upon this and declaimed much against it; Rob[ert] Heighem a Joviall blade being there, he undertook to vindicate the Ladyes, and their fashion, as decent and such as might cover their shame: for says he, if an Horse throwes them, or by any mischance they get a fall, had you not better see them in their Breeches then Naked? [S]ayes the over-zealous man, in detestation of Breeches, O no, by no means[!] By my troth Parson, says Rob[ert] Heighem, and I commend thee for’t, for I am of thy mind too.
[My commentary: The backbone of the joke is that in his zeal for disapproving of cross-gender clothing, the uptight parson is tricked into proclaiming his desire to be an “upskirt” Peeping Tom, which the trickster then heartily supports as an outcome. Setting this aside, we have several observations. Well-born women might choose to wear breeches under their skirts when participating in horseback activities such as hunting and falconry. The implied purpose of this fashion (since the breeches would normally be hidden) is modesty in case of accident during this active pursuit. One could speculate that breeches might also enable a woman to ride astride. Women’s underpants were still a novelty in this era (perhaps more common in southern Europe). When riding side-saddle, the skirts would prevent contact with the saddle, but if riding astride, one might want breeches for comfort. But viewing this anecdote in the context of the “hic mulier” controversies around cross-gender fashions, we can see how religious disapproval of anything resembling cross-gender behavior can take no consideration of even a higher moral purpose in adhering to strict rules. Though, of course, the parson may also disapprove generally of women participating in active sports. And many of the cross-gender fashions criticized in pamphlets are clearly just fashion statements, though perhaps with an underlying layer of masculine power being fashionable.]
The afterword sums up the conclusion of the collection that the “all male stage” is a myth and an aberration, being true only of certain specific times, contexts, and locations. Women are absent from the stage only when “the stage” is very narrowly and carefully defined. The concept holds true in England only for a narrow range of time between the rise of private professional companies (displacing the earlier tradition of guild-sponsored plays) and the entrance of women into those companies at the Restoration. It never applied to amateur theatricals, court masques, or local seasonal theatricals. And while other countries had specific theater genres that specified an all-male cast, the prominence of those contexts was more limited than in England and gave way to a mixed-gender profession earlier.