Women in Theatre in the Renaissance in Great Britain & Italy

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnuhkteG7r4

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.

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.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/cavendish/fansyes/fansyes.html

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:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21339/21339-h/21339-h.htm

Here is link to an article on Aphra Behn and Restoration Theatre

http://writersinspire.org/content/aphra-behn-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

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

Women in Drama in Medieval Times

Women in Drama in Medieval Times

Hrosvitha of Gandersheim

Around 960 a German aristocratic born canoness called Hrosvitha of Gandersheim (935-1005), wrote six dramas which she based around some of Terence’s comedies. These are often acknowledged as the first known dramas written by a female. She lived in 10^th Century Germany in Gandersheim Abbey in Lower Saxony in a community of unmarried daughters of high nobility. Read at least one of the plays of Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim. She wrote in Latin but here is an English translation of her plays.

https://archive.org/details/playsofroswitha00hrotuoft

Because plays based on Terence could have been counted as immoral for reading and performance, Hrosvitha prefaces her collection by stating that the works are moral and parables whose purpose was to save Christians and that her representation of some less than moral deeds and people were meant to act as a moral lesson for Christians. In this sense her plays ultimately put down the immorality, weakness and over emotionality of some women compared to the chastity, strength and intellect of Christian women. Her comedies concentrate on the love stories of Terence’s work and the plays are didactic in their style and are dialogues more than character and story based dramas. The most famous of Hrotsvitha’s comedies include Gallicanus, Dulcitius, Callimachus, Abraham and Paphnutius. We do not know whether Hrotsvitha’s plays were performed, read with accompanied moving or ‘living’ tableaux or simply heard in readings. Woman certainly would have been in the audience of these plays even if they were performed as ‘chamber theatre’ readings or performed in private houses.

Saint Hildegard of Bingen

Around this time the second great female of western drama and one of the first great female composers started to write and compose. Saint Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess who wrote Ordo Virtutum one of the oldest surviving Morality Plays along with incredible early church music. Ordo Virtutum is a musical Morality Drama in Five Parts concerning the struggle for a human soul between the Virtues and the Devil. The drama may have first been performed in 1152 at the opening and dedication of St. Rupertsberg Church. Many parts are written for female voices in Hildegard’s pieces so we know that females would have sung and performed in her performances. One of the most dramatic and moving pieces of Hildegard of Bergen is Ordo Virtutum written in about 1151. Here is a video-clip of a modern performance of the piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBGgRSPyUFQ

Jodelle and Grevin

In the 15^th and 16^th Centuries, some more liberal attitudes towards the performances of Ancient Greek and Roman plays also saw a decline in religious drama. This also saw a rise in popularity for new secular dramatic forms such as the Commedia del arte and Humanist dramas (some translations of Greek and Roman histories) such as those created in France by Jodelle with Cléopâtre Captive (1553) and Grevin with Jules César (1560). It is likely that females performed in as well as adapted some of the scenes for these new secular drama forms.

Females in Early & Medieval & Renaissance Japanese Drama

Performances of early Japanese storytelling, folk drama, dance and puppetry probably involved female performers but no records really exist of these early forms. References are made during the Kamakura Period (1192-1333) of a female performer Hyakuman who was famous for her kusemai, which is a dance which combines both Buddhist and Shinto themes. The suggestion is that these dances formed a vital part of the stage movements and stylized movements which become Noh Drama and Zeami even praises Hyakuman in his writings which help to form the treatise and basis for Noh Drama.

By the early 1600’s female performers were very much a part of Japanese theatre. The story goes that in 1603, a maiden from Izumo who was called Okuni, performed a dance drama in a dry river bed in the town of Kyoto and this was the birth of female kabuki. In the Kabuki (a style of Japanese Dance Drama) females would play both male and female parts normally in comic scenes about everyday situations and incidents from everyday life. This female form of Kabuki was called onna-kabuki. However, once again, the perception of women performing became linked to concepts of licentiousness and prostitution. By 1629, women’s kabuki was banned throughout japan and young boys started to play female characters in wakashu-kabuki. 

Origins of Women in Drama in Africa, Australia, Ancient Egypt, Greece, India, India, Rome & Turkey

The Role of Females in the Origin of Dramatic Storytelling

In the origins of drama and dramatic storytelling in Africa and throughout other cultures with continuous rituals, ceremonies and culture, the influences and contributions of females probably outweigh those of males. This is simply because as primary caregivers for over 70,000 years, females have been the primary custodians and communicators of knowledge, stories, dances and rituals over the history of humans. Some the oldest stories which have been passed down through oral traditions (sometimes known as orature) and rituals by women are the Ananse tales from the Akan peoples who originate from the West African regions now known as Ghana. The call and response technique is often used in female dramatic storytelling. Dramatic storytellers sometimes are known in Africa as griots. One good source of information is Finnegan’s Oral Literature in Africa (2012).

On other continents, females in Indigenous cultures have been the caretakers of stories, characters, rituals and ways of passing down stories of country, people and ways of being. 

The myths of Iroquois are great Native American creation feminine stories. These stories are still told, danced, sung and acted out in ceremonies.

The Dreamtime stories of Australia have been passed down through song and dances done by women for at least 30,000 years. Some of the oldest include the Gagudji story of the fertility mother Warramurrungundjui. The Awakening section of the Opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics give some sense of the ceremonies and rituals which females have been caretakers of.

Female Performers, Directors and Performance Makers in Ancient Mesopotamia & Ancient Egypt

Enheduanna is probably the earliest poet, playwright and musical lyricist whose name we have recorded. She was born in the Sumerian city state of Ur (an ancient city of Mesopotamia situated in modern day Iraq halfway between Baghdad and the head of the Persian Gulf and today known as Tall al Muqayyar) in the 23^rd century BC.

As a royal daughter holding the title of EN, she was appointed to the role of high priestess and it was while in this role that she wrote, performed and had others perform, the ritual devotional hymns, devotions, scenes and poems many of which were written to the Goddess Inanna. In her lifetime, she composed some 42 temple hymns which were sung and acted out in ritual dances and performances. Of her own work, she is quoted as saying: “My king, something has been created that no-one created before.”

No record remains of how her hymns and poems were performed or presented. The performative aspects of her work are evident in the words, images and rhythms of her language. Some of her remaining hymns and verses which are available in translation are:

Nin-me-šara, "The Exaltation of Inanna" (153 lines written in the first person about her exile from Ur and Uruk), In-nin ša-gur-ra (incomplete but 274 lines remain), In-nin me-huš-a, "Inanna and Ebih", The Temple Hymns and Hymn to Nanna.

In Ancient Egypt, in the Old Kingdom (2663BC to 2195BC) around the times when the Pyramids were built, females were organized in groups to perform ritual storytelling and dances. These groups were known as kheners and they performed in the royal courts. The organisers and choreographers of these groups could be argued to be the first female directors and they were known by titles such as ‘Overseer of the Royal Khener’. The female dominance of these rituals and dances declined by the end of the Old Kingdom.

In the temples, females would dance and perform stories to worship deities. Mostly the stories and rituals were danced and sung and the ‘audiences’ were probably exclusively female. Sometimes these rituals were of a more public nature and men and women would sing, dance and perform acrobatics in processions and other parades. At festivals and specific rituals, females would play a uniquely specific role. At the Festival of Osiris, two virgins would have enacted and performed in The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys. Here is translation of the text. Imagine the role of females in enacting out this play:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/boi/boi04.htm

There is also evidence in tomb friezes and papyrus pictures that women performed at family banquets and funeral events. While most these women seem to be Egyptian, some seem to be of Nubian origin (present day Sudan). The style of performance depicted in the evidence seems to indicate that the performances were highly stylized but this could be due to the Ancient Egyptian artistic perspective of using profile head views with the body facing the front and the absence of the portrayal of depth of field.

The Role of Women in Ancient Greek Theatre and Drama

Although female characters are portrayed in many if not most Ancient Greek plays, these roles would have been performed by men at the time. The place of women in Ancient Greek society and their role in society was strictly controlled. It was considered ‘dangerous’ to have women perform. We are not entirely sure if women were allowed to attend performances of Ancient Greek drama but the common consensus at the moment seems to be that married women of a high status were allowed to attend performances of Tragedies with their husbands. Women were definitely not allowed to attend performances of comedies.

Another interesting prospect for female performances comes from the theory that lyric poetry was often read out aloud and performed in the houses in the gynaikônitis (women's quarters) or in the courtyards of private houses. These texts were read with specific actions and tones and sometimes different people took on different parts. Some theorists suggest that the poetry of the Ancient Greek female poet Sappho (630BC – 570BC), who lived on the island of Lesbos, was performed in this way. Her work was probably accompanied by music from a lyre. Some suggest that she was exiled in around 600BC due to private or ‘chamber’ performances of her erotic poetry. In contemporary times, Sappho is often seen as a symbol of female homosexuality and the term lesbian is often seen as alluding to Sappho and her origins on the island of Lesbos. While much of this is conjecture, it is interesting to consider Sappho as the first feminist performance artist and the mother of ‘queer’ performance.

https://www.poemhunter.com/sappho/

Women in Early Indian Drama

Many accounts of theatre and women in theatre, leave out the early origins of Indian theatre and drama as past down to us through the Nāṭya Śāstra as well as oral and dance traditions. The Nāṭya Śāstra is a treatise on performing arts compiled somewhere from 500BC to 200BC. The format and practical nature of this treatise suggests that some female writers, compilers and or performers may have been involved in the compilation of this important performance treatise. Since females sung, danced and performed as characters in many of the earlier forms of Ancient Indian drama, we can assume that they had some dramaturgical function in the development of the Nāṭya Śāstra.

Female and male parts are evident in the performances in Ancient India. Separate training for female and male parts is also dealt with in the Nāṭya Śāstra. The text emphasizes the importance of different roles in developing a performance including writing, auditing, directing and performing so we may be able to assume that female directors start to emerge in the performing arts in India during this period. Certainly females would have been involved not just as actors, dancers and singers but also as teacher trainers, scene and dance directors and costume and set designers. Here is a link to some websites with some information, videos and pictures of the Nāṭya Śāstra

https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Natya%20Shastra

Women in Drama in Ancient Rome

There seems to be no evidence to suggest that females performed in early Ancient Roman dramas around 200-100BC. Female roles were normally played by male slaves who wore masks. The structure of the cavea or audience area within this period suggest that a separate area was designated for women to view plays both of a tragic and comic nature. 

The tradition of female ‘chamber theatre’ where female writers would perform their poems or stories to all female audiences in their houses probably persisted in this period and some exponents of this may have been Cornelia Africana (190BC to 100BC approx.). This tradition may have been continued by other female writers such as Julia Balbilla (72CE-130CE approx.).

By 100BC, female actresses (known as mima) start to appear in performances in Ancient Rome for the first time. In the secular performances during the Festival of Floralia (the Goddess of flowers and procreation) women (usually prostitutes) were paid to perform without masks realistic scenes and sometimes sex acts on stage. These scenes were probably mimed and the actresses would not speak. The demeaning nature of this life meant that by the arrival of Christianity to Rome, the only escape for some of these women was to embrace the church and Christianity. Some actresses mentioned in the history of Ancient Rome include Claudia Acte (a Greek slave of the Emperor Nero), St Pelagia of Anitoch and Theodora of Constantinople, who later married Emperor Justinian and became Empress of the Eastern Empire. She banned pimping and brothels, made laws to allow women to perform in public and made laws to allow women to inherit property and have some say in civil life.

Women in Early Chinese Drama and Opera

There are no records of early performances in Ancient China that mention females. The development of more composite performing arts forms by the Tang Dynasty (618-907AD) mean that we have some documents which suggest female singers started to perform around 750AD in Canjun Operas. The later development of comic opera forms seems to suggest that men were dressed up as women to mock them, so we may assume that females did not perform in the comic opera forms. The performance training institute of the Emperor Xuanzong during this dynasty, which was called Liyaun (the Pear Garden), seemed to have both male and female performers.

Women in Early Arab and Turkish Drama

There is no evidence to suggest that females did not attend the performances of early Turkish puppet drama and the early Arabic Ta'ziyah passion plays. Indeed, early Ta'ziyah would often have forty or fifty scenes and the staging suggests that a male choir or chorus would chant or sing between scenes and that this would be answered by singing, chanting or wailing of a female chorus on the other side of the stage. So there were female performers in early Ta'ziyah drama. The early Egyptian shadow puppets and the puppet plays of this period also known as the Khayal al-zill which loosely translates as ‘the shadows of the imagination suggest that female puppeteers created and performed some of the characters. The same is probably true of the early Karagoz Turkish puppetry.

In Arabic storytelling form, the Hakawati started to dominate as a storytelling format from around 900AD. The prominence of female characters in this form especially as storytellers as evidenced in the most famous Hakawati stories One Thousand and One Nights make it highly likely that female storytellers or Al Hakawati were performing during these times. 

References & Teaching Resources

African Storytelling

Finnegan, R. (2012). Oral literature in Africa. Open Book Publishers.

Utley, O. (2008, September 1). Keeping the Tradition of African Storytelling Alive. Retrieved from http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/nationalcurriculum/units/2009/1/09.01.08.x.html

Australian Indigenous Storytelling and Dances

McKay, H. (2017, February 12). Australian Aboriginal Storytelling. Retrieved from http://www.australianstorytelling.org.au/storytelling-articles/a-d/australian-aboriginal-storytelling-helen-mckay

Ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian Rituals, Dance and Storytelling

Binkley, B. (2004). "Reading the Ancient Figure of Enheduanna". Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks. SUNY Press. p. 47. 

Dalglish, C. (2008). Humming The Blues: Inspired by Nin-Me-Sar-Ra, Enheduanna's Song to Inanna. Oregon: CALYX Books. ISBN 978-0-934971-92-8.

De Shong Meador, B. (2001). Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart: Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna. University of Texas. 

Weigle, M. (Autumn 1978). "Women as Verbal Artists: Reclaiming the Sisters of Enheduanna". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 3 (3): 1–9.

Ritual Dance of Ancient Egypt. (2012, April 23). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtTnpaO3DQA

Spenser, P. (2005, May 1). Female Dance in Ancient Egypt. Retrieved from http://www.raqssharqisociety.org/femaledanceancientegypt.pdf

Women in Ancient Greek Theatre

Massimino, K. (2012, October 22). Greek Drama and the Role of Women in Ancient Greece. Retrieved from https://prezi.com/m9ch5zcxnynx/greek-drama-and-role-of-women-in-ancient-greece/

Women in Early Indian Drama

Mainkar, T.G. (1978). Sanskrit Theory of Drama and Dramaturgy: The Theory of Samdhis and the Samhyangas in Bharata’s Natyasastra. New Delhi: Ajanta Publications.

Also try:

Natya Shastra. (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 1, 2017, from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natya_Shastra

Women in the Theatre of Ancient Rome

The Actresses Who Scandalised Ancient Rome. (2012, March 10). Retrieved from https://eternallyrome.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/female-actresses-in-ancient-rome/

Women in Early Chinese Opera and Drama

Jin Fu. (2012) Chinese Theatre (3^rd Edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Tan Ye. (2008). Historical Dictionary of Chinese Theatre. Hong Kong: Scarecrow Press.

Here is a webpage with a short but useful brief history of Chines Opera:

https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-chinese-opera-195127

Women in Early Arab and Turkish Drama

Allan, R. (2000). History of Arab Theatre. An Introduction to Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Here is a webpage with a short thumbnail history of theatre if the Arab world:

http://al-bab.com/albab-orig/albab/arab/visual/theatre.htm