Cross-gender play and disguise is rampant on Shakespearean comedies (and, as we have seen in recent material, in early modern drama generally across Europe). There are two ironies to scenarios of female homoeroticism on Shakespeare's stage. One is that among the professional acting companies staging them, all parts--even women romancing women--were played by male actors. But the other irony is that the scenarios of playful, protective, or adventurous gender disguise that audiences clearly loved to see on stage could be viewed very differently when carried out by ordinary women.
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I'm sitting here, writing an introduction to a study of women claiming their voice and their place in salons and on stage in a historic setting and the sort of crap they got for being trailblazers. It seems oddly apropos on a day when we (unexpectedly) can envision a woman claiming her voice and her place in the White House and making new history.[1] And we all know the crap she's going to get for taking that trail. But frankly I'm tired of doom-sayers and Debbie Downers. It's even harder to win if you don't act like it's possible.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 291 – The Font of Liberty by Elizabeth Porter Birdsall - transcript
(Originally aired 2023/07/20 - listen here)
What it says on the tin.
Did you know that books of jokes and amusing tales were a popular staple of early modern English literature? In addition to published collections, people put together their own, like the one discussed in this article. Although "teller of jokes at private dinners" may not fall in the usual image of dramatic performers, at least this article is vastly redeemed by an anecdote illustrating that ordinary women were wearing mascjuline clothing for active pursuits on occasion.
This takes care of the less pertinent articles in the collection. There's one more article that to post from this collection, but it has enough interesting bits to get its own day.
Interesting, but not pertinent to my present purposes.
Margaret Cavendish is a fascinating person and even has her own tag in the Project. but this article isn't directly relevant to my interests.
I did warn folks that there are a handful of articles in this collection that both strain the book's premise and aren't pertinent to the background research for the "Stage and Actresses" tropes episode. This is one of them. In fact, I think I'm just going to throw up a handful today and get them out of the way.
This article points out that the position "women didn't act on the English stage until the Restoration" leans heavily on some very specific definitions of "act" and "stage." In particular, it erases non-commercial performances such as masques performed by ladies of the court.
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