Women in
Theatre in the Renaissance in Great Britain & Italy
Women in the Commedia dell arte in Italy
Around
the 1550’s an improvised form of mask theatre, which had its origins in the
Ancient Roman comedy of about 100BC to 300AD, started to emerge of the
flourishing city states of Italy. The Commedia dell’ arte (sometimes called
the commedia dell’ arte all’ improvviso) which loosely translates
as ‘the comedy of the artisans’ is a improvised masked comedy form which was
primarily performed outside and on temporary or movable stages which was often
performed during carnivale or local city festivals.
A
number of factors made the commedia dell’ arte different to previous drama forms.
Firstly, commedia was primarily improvised not use scripts as such but using
stock characters, routines and scenarios which were adapted and changed to suit
each new town or city state the troupe performed in. Secondly, male and female
actors were part of each commedia troupe and in Western theatre, commedia was
the first form to fully embrace female performers.
Although
females probably only performed female characters and probably performed
without masks, female contributions to acting, directing and dramaturgy through
devising scenes were probably equal to those of males.
Commedia
uses stock characters and social stereotypes and so an audience anywhere in
Italy and in other countries such as France and Spain could relate to the
characters presented. Some characters females played were:
Isabella
(the young naïve lover)
Columbina
(the wordly-wise and cunning servant)
La
Ruffiana (older female with a shady past)
La
Signora (a lady, sometimes the wife of Pantalone, tough and calculating)
The
following clip may give some sense of how female actresses performed scenes in
the original commedia dell arte plays:
Female Drama Practitioners in Early Modern Italy
Margherita Costa
One of the female figures of Early Modern Italian language drama was
Margherita Costa. Although a courtesan, Costa started her artistic career as a singer but by 1641 she had started to write her first poetry and her first plays. Her first play was probably La Flora feconda (1640). Her poem Li Buffoni was probably turned into the short comedy Li buffoni: Comedia ridicola (1641) at this time and it became popular as a Commedia dell arte play performed by a number of commedia troupes at the time. From the courts of Florence to Turin to Venice she performed as a singer. She also performed in France and Germany and her 1650 play Gli amori della Luna (The Loves of the Moon Goddess) was probably written and performed in Germany. Although she probably wrote half a dozen plays, only three plays have survived.
Margherita Costa. Although a courtesan, Costa started her artistic career as a singer but by 1641 she had started to write her first poetry and her first plays. Her first play was probably La Flora feconda (1640). Her poem Li Buffoni was probably turned into the short comedy Li buffoni: Comedia ridicola (1641) at this time and it became popular as a Commedia dell arte play performed by a number of commedia troupes at the time. From the courts of Florence to Turin to Venice she performed as a singer. She also performed in France and Germany and her 1650 play Gli amori della Luna (The Loves of the Moon Goddess) was probably written and performed in Germany. Although she probably wrote half a dozen plays, only three plays have survived.
Women in Elizabethan, Jacobean, Caroline and
Restoration Theatre
The sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries saw a renaissance in theatre in England. While much
attention is often given to William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben
Jonson and the fact that women could not perform on the public stage, what is
less known is that the period also saw a proliferation of female playwrights
and play translators.
Jane Lumley
Probably
the first female playwright who wrote in the English language was Jane Lumley
who translated Ancient Greek speeches and plays into English. During the 1560’s
she translated Euripides’s Iphigeneia at
Aulis. This translation was probably not performed publically but ‘chamber
theatre’ or ‘closet drama’ reading were probably held at either Lumley Castle
or Nonsuch Palace.
Jane
Lumley’s exploits were soon followed by those of Mary Sidney Herbert who
translated Petrarch’s Triumph of Death.
Her interest in verse and soliloquy meant that some of her verse is considered
to be a great influence on some closet drama of the 1590’s such Samuel Daniel’s
Cleopatra and William Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra. In 2010, poetry
and possible verse soliloquys written by Mary Sidney Herbert were discovered.
Elizabeth Cary
The
first female playwright to write original plays in English seems to have been
Elizabeth Cary. Around 1610, she seems to have written her first play around
1610 but this play is lost. Probably her second play, The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry was written in 1613
but was intended as a ‘closet drama’ and so primarily intended to be read. It
is possible that it was done as a performed reading in her house. The play is a
social commentary which addresses divorce, revenge and advocates female agency.
Mary Wroth
Mary
Wroth wrote her most famous play Love’s
Victory around 1620. The play is a pastoral comedy which is principally
written in rhyming couplets. The play centres around shepherds and shepherdesses
in Cyprus and explores a number of different types of love. The pairing up of
different couples at the end of the play to suggest different types of love
suggest staging elements of the play. This would suggest that it may have been
read or performed as a ‘closet drama’ and that female and male friends of Wroth
may have taken on reading different parts.
Jane Cavendish &
Elizabeth Egerton
.
The Concealed Fancies is a masque drama written
by Jane Cavendish
and her sister Elizabeth Egerton.
It probably completed in
1646 after the outbreak of the English Civil War. Being a pastoral masque
drama, and due to the ban on public performances, the play if it was ever
performed at the time, would have been performed first on one of the Cavendish
estates. The play confronts issues of the liberty and freedom of females and
notions of freedom of expression.
Margaret Cavendish
Margaret
Cavendish was a prolific writer who wrote philosophy, poetry, science fiction,
prose and plays. She is the first female playwright who wrote multiple plays in
multiple styles. Fourteen of her plays (Love’s Adventures, The Several Wits, Youth’s
Glory, and Death’s Banquet, The Lady Contemplation, Wit’s Cabal, The Unnatural
Tragedy, The Public Wooing, The Matrimonial Trouble, Nature's Three Daughters,
Beauty, Love and Wit, The Religious, The Comical Hash, Bell in Campo, A Comedy
of the Apocryphal Ladies and The Female Academy) were published in 1662. Another volume
containing another six plays (The
Sociable Companions - or the Female Wits, The Presence, Scenes from The
Presence, The Bridals, The Convent of Pleasure and A Piece of a Play) was published in 1668. The plays cover a range
of issues, themes, plots and styles. The plays are closet dramas and if they
were ever performed, they were probably performed as ‘chamber theatre’ moved
readings with Cavendish’s female and male friends.
Katherine Philips
Katherine Philips was an Anglo-Welsh poet,
playwright, translator and letter writer authored who sometimes wrote under the
name Orinda. She translated at least two plays from Ancient Roman texts. Her
translation of Corneille’s La mort de
Pompee and Horace may have even
been performed during her lifetime. She created a literary circle of males and
females around her and fostered discussion and artistic expression of ideas on
a range of issues.
Frances Boothby
Frances Boothby only wrote one or two plays and she is often credited as first woman to have her plays performed on the London stages. Her romantic comedy Marcelia, or, The Treacherous Friend was seen by audiences in 1669 at the Theatre Royal and it was performed by the King’s Company.
Elizabeth Polwheele
Elizabeth Polwheele was a female playwright
who is attributed as being the second woman who wrote for the professional
London stage with her comedy The Frolicks
(1671). All three of her plays Elysium (1670), The Faithful Virgins (1670) and The
Frolicks, or The Lawyer Cheated (1671) are Restoration comedies with the
normal archetypes evident in Restoration Comedies.
Aphra Behn
Perhaps the most famous female playwrights of
these periods was Aphra Behn. She wrote eighteen plays from 1670 to 1689
including The Forc’d Marriage (1670),
The Amorous Prince (1671), The Dutch Lover (1673), Abdelazer (1676), The Town Fop (1676), The
Rover – Part 1 (1677), Sir Patient
Fancy (1678), The Feigned Courtesans (1679),
The Young King (1679), The Rover – Part 2 (1681), The False Count (1681), The Roundheads (1681), The City Heiress (1682), Like Father, Like Son (1682), Prologue and Epilogue to Romulus and
Hersilia or The Sabine War (1682), The
Lucky Chance (written with composer John Blow in 1686), The Emperor of the Moon (1687), The Widow Ranter (written 1687 but
performed posthumously in 1689) and The
Younger Brother (written 1687 but performed posthumously in 1696).
Where Aphra Behn is all the more remarkable is
not just that her plays were performed in public in theatres, but she embraces
the new liberalism of the Restoration after the English Civil War. Another
significant aspect of Aphra Behn and her plays are that she utilizes and uses
the new theatrical conventions of her time and the new design of English
theatres (with a proscenium arch). One great innovation of the English
Restoration theatre is that women were allowed to act on the stage due to a
shortage of trained boy and young male actors after the long closure of the
stages. Acting on stage was still seen as not respectable and linked to
disreputable women, but Behn played with and challenged this perspective in her
plays.
Here is link to some of Aphra Behn’s plays:
Here is link to an article on Aphra Behn and Restoration Theatre
Anne Finch
Although
primarily a poet, Anne Finch was also a playwright who wrote verse dramas. As
the Countess of Winchilsea, she was a very influential woman, who championed
the work of other female writers. Her poetic and non-fiction writings include
writings on political ideology, religious orientation, aesthetic sensibility
and the mental and spiritual equity of females and males. Her first play is
lost to posterity but her second play Aristomenes:
Or The Royal Shepherd was written around 1710 but published in 1713.
Delarivier Manley
The
playwright, political activist and novelist Delarivier Manley was an amazing
woman. Her first play was the comedy The
Lost Lover, or, The Jealous Husband was written and performed in 1696.
During the same year her ‘she-tragedy’ The
Royal Mischief was also performed and this play and her person were even
satirized and ridiculed in a comedy by a contemporary male playwright. Her
adaptation of The Arabian Nights
Entertainments (1698) was performed in a lavish production with innovative
staging elements. Other notable plays were the tragedy Almyna, or the Arabian Vow (1707), the social satire Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several
Persons of Quality of Both Sexes, from the New Atlantis, an Island in the
Mediterranean (1709) and the tragedy Lucius,
The First Christian King of Britain (1717).
Mary Pix
Mary
Pix was also a successful female playwright writing for the professional
theatre at this time. She was married to a merchant but because during the
1600’s and early 1700’s it was normal for lower and middle class women to work,
so she took on writing as a way of earning income. In 1696, she wrote and had
produced two plays - Ibrahim,
the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks and The
Spanish Wives. In 1697, she had two plays produced The Innocent Mistress
(1697) and The Deceiver Deceived. She
wrote and had performed nine plays after, even though some were attributed on
advertising pamphlets to a male playwright. These plays included Queen
Catharine; or, The Ruines of Love (1698), The False Friend; or,
the Fate of Disobedience (1699), The Beau Defeated; or, the Lucky
Younger Brother (1700), The Double Distress (1701), The Czar of Muscovy (1701), The
Different Widows; or, Intrigue All-A-Mode (1703), Zelmane; or, The
Corinthian Queen (1705), The Conquest of Spain (1705) and The
Adventures in Madrid (1706).
Susannah Centlivre
Susannah
Centlivre (born Susanna Freeman and often known by her professional name
Susanna Carroll) was an actress, poet and playwright. It is believed that her
father died when she was three. Her mother remarried but died shortly after
that. Her stepfather was apparently a kind man but his new wife, Susannah’s new
stepmother was abusive. After years of abuse at the hands of her stepmother,
Susannah left home at the age of fifteen. By the age of sixteen, she was
married and performing young male or ‘breeches roles’. Her husband died soon
after. She married again to Captain Carroll who died eighteen months later in a
duel.
Under
the stage name of Susanna Carroll, Centlivre continued to perform on the stage
and in 1700, at the age of twenty-one, wrote her first play. the tragi-comedy The Perjur'd Husband: or,
The Adventures of Venice which was first performed at the Theatre Royal in
Drury Lane. This was followed up in 1702 with The Beau’s Duel, The Stolen Heiress in 1702 and Love's
Contrivance (1703). Her next play performed in 1705 was a comedy called The
Gamester followed by The Basset Table
in the same year. In 1706, she wrote and had performed Love at a Venture and The
Platonic Lady. She then married again, this time to a yeoman called Joseph
Centlivre. By 1709, she was back writing again and in that year wrote Female Tatler. She continued to write
for the stage with a steady stream of plays in different styles including A
Bickerstaff's Burying (1710), Marplot, or, The Second Part of the
Busie-Body (1710), The Perplex'd Lovers (1712), The Wonder (1714),
A Gotham Election (a political farce written in 1715 but not performed
until 1724), A Wife Well Manag'd (1715), The Cruel Gift (1716), A
Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718) and The
Artifice (1722).
Although she mostly
wrote novels and poetry, the dramatic skills of Scottish writer Charlotte
Lennox should not be overlooked. Her major three plays Philander (1758), The Sister (1762)
and Old City Manners (1775) are
stylistically unique and deserve re-reading or even the breath of fresh air
that a new performance can bring.
References
Women in the Commedia dell arte
MacNeil, A. (2003). Music
and Women of the Commedia dell’Arte in the Late-Sixteenth Century. Oxford,
U.K.: Oxford University Press.
Margherita Costa
Costa-Zalessow,
N. (2005), "Margherita Costa", in Albert N Mancini and Glenn Palen
Pierce, Seventeenth-Century
Italian Poets and Dramatists, Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning,
pp. 113–18
Women in Elizabethan, Jacobean, Caroline and
Restoration Theatre
Anderson, H.D. (2010). Female Agency in Restoration and Nineteenth Century Drama. [Graduate
Thesis]. Retrieved May 19, 2017 from http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2559&context=etd
Barker, S. & Hinds, H. (eds.), The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama, Routledge, Abingdon (2003).
Buck, C., ed. "Lumley, Joanna Fitzalan (c. 1537-1576/77)." The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's
Literature. New York: Prentice Hall, 1992. 764.
McIntosh, S. (2018). 8 Facts You didn't know about Women in Theatre. What's On Stage. London. March 8, 2018. Retrieved from
https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/women-in-theatre-eight-facts_45974.html
McIntosh, S. (2018). 8 Facts You didn't know about Women in Theatre. What's On Stage. London. March 8, 2018. Retrieved from
https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/women-in-theatre-eight-facts_45974.html
O’Connor, K. & Williams, A. (2016). Aphra
Behn and the Restoration Theatre Retrieved
May 21, 2017 from http://writersinspire.org/content/aphra-behn-restoration-theatre
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