Boys Should be Girls: Shakespeare's Female Roles and the Boy Players

Abstract

Recent performances of female roles in Shakespeare's plays by adult males help to perpetuate the myth that this was the practice of Shakespeare's time. This article attempts to reinforce the view that all female roles were played by boys – i.e., young males with unbroken voices – by analyzing the demands made by the plays. Shakespeare regularly had available to him up to four boy actors, perhaps more. Yet some plays have as few as two female roles, and few have more than four. The conclusion is that Shakespeare would have been highly unlikely to waste the resources of his company by calling upon adult males to play parts that make use of the talents of his boys. Stanley Wells is Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham. A former editor of Shakespeare Survey and director of the Shakespeare Institute, he is author of numerous books on Shakespeare, general editor of the Penguin and Oxford editions of Shakespeare, and co-editor of The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare.