Drama in Stuart England

Introduction: Shifting Sisters

The aim of this book is to broaden the questions asked about women and drama, about the idea of the actress in drama and her presence on stage between 1603 and 1670. This is not a story of appearance and disappearance, but of continuity and change. The standard story is that women first came on stage in the restoration due to Charles II’s familiarity with women performing in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Other shifts have also been identified as causal: the relationship between court theater and public theater, a shift from moral condemnation to celebration. But Tomlinson argues that actresses participated in a longer 17th century shift in the representation and self-representation of women. These changes can be seen across the century leading up to the Restoration, and draw on ideas introduced by Queens Anna and Henrietta Maria. Stuart queens formed around themselves a “second court,” to some extent independent from the Kings Court, which provided scope for a female-centered culture. This culture – despite the grumbling of prominent men – spread into the general population.

The book considers how masques, pastoral entertainment, and “closet plays” developed a woman-led and woman-inclusive theatrical tradition. Public theater was simply the final venue it spread to. In this context, Puritan attacks on actresses as “notorious whores” in the 1630s can be seen, not as prevailing opinion, but as the last gasp of a failed rear-guard. And the late retention of all male professional theater in England was due to isolated provincialism (from the rest of Europe) not a uniquely English characteristic.

The book’s chapters will touch on the following:

• Early modern ideas about female subjectivity – in essence, women’s right to exist in and for themselves, rather than as appendages to men
• The significant influence that (foreign-born) Stuart queens had on influencing culture
• The effect that female performance had on the literary content of plays and related forms, both in terms of female presence in such works, and how women are depicted
• The role women authors had in maintaining women-centered theater during the interregnum

Chapter 1: ‘Magic in majesty’: the poetics of female performance in the Jacobean masque

Queen Anna was known and commented on (for good and ill) for organizing masques in which she participated with the ladies of her court. These were only a part of the playful intellectual culture the queen promoted, but were the most theatrical. The symbolic and mythic themes of the masques had an overt purpose to legitimize the power of the king, but carried additional meanings that centered the queen and female agency, as well as promoting specific political goals.

Masques presented a spectacle that was distinctly different from ordinary court life, displaying the “unusual and exotic” either by using classical settings or depicting a vision of foreign cultures. The content of a masque was chiefly elaborate costumes and expressive dancing, interspersed with songs that articulated the storyline of the performance. As a rule (with few exceptions) the female performers did not speak or sing themselves. While court poets were commissioned to write the lyrics for masques, the topic or theme was often directed by the queen (or other principle female performer).

This chapter dives deeply into the structure and symbolism of specific masques, including the curious “Masque of Blackness” in which the performers in blackface, tell a mythic story of Ethiopian water nymphs coming into an understanding of their own luminous beauty.

[Note: there are a lot of complexities in the fascination early modern culture had for blackness, both as exemplified by black performers, and by the use of blackface. I can’t go into that subject deeply here, but let’s just say “it’s complicated.”]

As an example of how masques were carefully crafted to send a specific message, for the "Masque of Queens," which presented the ladies as martial women of history, Queen Anna requested a contrasting prelude with actors dressed as hags depicting anti-virtues, such as Ignorance. To enhance the contrast, these negative female roles were played by male actors.

[Note: It is very hard to summarize this publication at a reasonable level of detail and length, so my summary will be inconsistent. In general, this publication was not of as much practical use for the history of women on stage as I hoped it would be, though it’s fascinating in its look at the details of a wide variety of performances and texts.]

Chapter 2: ‘Naked hearts’: feminizing the Stuart pastoral stage

This chapter examines how the sexual dynamics of pastoral dramas under queens Anna and Henrietta Maria foreshadow the sexual permissiveness of the restoration stage. Even before the presence of actresses on stage, pastoral dramas were centered around female interests and concerns, such as romance, desire, and the conflicting demands of chastity and love. Female characters drive the action of pastorales by their choices, refusals, and actions with respect to their male suitors.

The chapter explores the gradual insertion of a female performative presence on stage, via female vocalists as narrators of the story, then masque performers who also sing. In a reverse of the professional stage, where men acted both male and female roles, in romantic pastorales such as The Shepherd’s Paradise, women of the court acted both the male and female characters.

[Note: the combination of an all-female cast, and a script in which modesty and chastity are obstacles to expressing love, creates a potential second layer of hesitancy in a woman (role) confessing love for a woman (actress). And, of course, in works such as Il Pastor Fido, this cross-gender dynamic is further entangled with a male character disguising himself as a woman in order to be close to, court, and kiss a female character. This latter creates a different type of homoerotic implication where, within the action of the play a woman (female character, not in disguise) accepts and even welcomes the erotic attentions of a woman (male character, in disguise).]

Chapter 3: ‘Significant liberty’: the actress in Caroline comedy

This chapter looks at three plays that extend the representation of women’s liberty and agency in drama. Once again, this is a deep dive into the structural details of the plays that is difficult to summarize. Of particular interest is The Lady-Errant (published 1651) which predicts a shift to gender-aligned casting in its prologue, which argues “that each sex keeps to its part.” The plot also involves significant gender subversion, with a female warrior rescuing men in distress, and an attempted coup by rebellious women. (Despite all which, it was published in the era when women were not yet acting on the public stage.)

Chapter 4: Sirens of doom and defiance in Caroline tragedy

This chapter examines the intense focus on women’s sexuality in tragic drama under Charles I. Combined with that theme is "women as a cause of men’s seduction or downfall." A counterpoint to this is criticism of theater for the same themes. Expressions of female sexuality and madness expand the scope of women’s representation. (Women are dangerous!)

Interchapter: ‘Enter Ianthe veiled’

[Note: The character “Ianthe” referenced in the chapter title is not the one from Greek myth, so no homoeroticism here.]

Between 1642 and 1660, by order of Parliament, plays in commercial public theaters were banned. As women had not been performing in this context, the ban had little impact on traditions of female performance and, in fact, opportunities increased. Plays were read and performed in private houses and academic settings. Women had always been performing in private household entertainments and continued to do so. Royalists were particularly fond of pastoral dramas, and there are regular records of aristocratic women participating in masques and plays of this type. New plays were written in this tradition, and such works were sometimes noted as being woman-centered.

Even before the ban was lifted, plays and masques began to re-infiltrate official culture, with the support of key officials, emphasizing the moral character of the content. Work-arounds were created, such as reframing the masque genre as a “dramatic narrative in the form of musical theater” and there was even a play discussing the moral pros and cons of dramatic performance (using speeches, music, and song).

But masques were beginning to evolve into a new form, with a more coherent plot, and new preoccupations, such as a fascination with the Ottoman Empire. (Masques were in the process of becoming opera, and even used that label.) Valorous women were popular as central characters.

Chapter 5: The fancy-stage of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle

The next two chapters explore of the works of two prominent female playwrights of the restoration, starting with Margaret Cavendish. Cavendish was exposed to continental theater, both high and low, during her exile on the continent during the interregnum. She commented on being impressed by actresses playing male roles on stage. In this context, she began writing the plays she would later publish, often using them to explore women’s potential and possibilities.

Rather than staging her plays with publication as an afterthought, Cavendish published first and expressed a disinterest in ever seeing them on stage, possibly hesitant about their reception. She saw parallels between the condemnation of women acting and the condemnation of all female public speech. Though she featured women speaking up in her plays, she may have been aware of her own vulnerability in doing so as a published author.

Of particular interest is Cavendish’s play The Convent of Pleasure, in which a group of women set up a woman-only community on feminist principles, only to have it infiltrated by men disguised as women, with romantic aspirations. This creates scenes of apparent same-sex desire via gender disguise.

Chapter 6: Styles of female greatness: Katherine Philips’s translations of Corneille

With respect to the stage, Katherine Philips is primarily known as a translator and adapter of Pierre Corneile’s neoclassical tragedies. Although, like Cavendish, she was working from the female centered culture of préciosité, associated with the court of Henrietta Maria, the stage performance of these plays was likely in the older tradition of all-male companies. The bulk of this chapter is an analysis of the social context of Philips’s work, and the themes of female heroism contained in the plays.

Coda

The final chapter sums up the overall conclusion of this study. The era contains several parallel movements with regard to women and drama. There is the elite, woman-centered culture of court masques and private theatricals, revolving around classical, pastoral, and usually royalist themes. There is the rise of professional actresses who were met with both public acclaim and moral condemnation. As a representation of women having a “public voice,” actresses had an ambivalent reception. But both elite and professional dramatic traditions were changing in ways that increased women’s prominence in drama, as creators, as characters, and as performers.