Women Players In England, 1500-1660

by Brown, Pamela Allen; PAROLIN, PETER

• ISBN13: 9780754609537
• ISBN10: 0754609537
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-12-09
• Publisher: Ashgate Pub Co

Summary

Offering evidence of women's extensive contributions to the theatrical landscape, this volume sharply challenges the assumption that the stage was all male in early modern England. The editors and contributors argue that the pervasiveness of female performance affected cultural production, even on the professional London stages that used men and boys for women's parts. In short, Women Players in England 15001660 shows that women were dynamic cultural players in the early modern world.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
List of Musical Transcriptions	xi
Contributors	xiii
General Editor's Preface	xvii
Introduction	1	(24)
Pamela Allen Brown
Peter Parolin
Part I Beyond London
Women and Performance: Evidences of Universal Cultural Suffrage in Medieval and Early Modern Lincolnshire	25	(20)
James Stokes
Payments, Permits and Punishments: Women Performers and the Politics of Place	45	(26)
Gweno Williams
Alison Findlay
Stephanie Hodgson-Wright
Part II Beyond Elites
The Case of Moll Frith: Women's Work and the ``All-Male Stage''	71	(18)
Natasha Korda
``Quacking Delilahs'': Female Mountebanks in Early Modern England and Italy	89	(20)
Bella Mirabella
Part III Beyond the Channel
Reading the Actress in Commedia Imagery	109	(36)
M. A. Katritzky
``Merry, nimble, stirring spirit[s]'': Academic, Salon and Commedia dell'arte Influence on the Innamorate in Love's Labour's Lost	145	(26)
Julie D. Campbell
Women Performing Homoerotic Desire in English and Italian Comedy: La Calandria, Gungannati and Twelfth Night	171	(22)
Rachel Poulsen
Courtly Comediantes: Henrietta Maria and Amateur Women's Stage Plays in France and England	193	(26)
Melinda J. Gough
Part IV Beyond the Stage
The Venetian Theater of Aletheia Talbot, Countess of Arundel	219	(22)
Peter Parolin
``Pleaders, Atturneys, Petitioners and the like'': Margaret Cavendish and the Dramatic Petition	241	(22)
Julie Crawford
Part V Beyond the ``All-Male''
Staging the Absent Woman: The Theatrical Evocation of Elizabeth Tudor in Heywood's If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part I	263	(18)
Jean E. Howard
Female Impersonation in Early Modern Ballads	281	(24)
Bruce R. Smith
Jesting Rights: Women Players in the Manuscript Jestbook of Sir Nicholas Le Strange	305	(10)
Pamela Allen Brown
Afterword	315	(6)
Phyllis Rackin
Index	321