Hamlet and Iago: Nineteenth-Century Breeches Parts

Abstract

T is well known that the ladies of the Restoration, having vanquished the aging boy actresses, soon slipped into what were nicely called breeches parts. Samuel Pepys among others will not let us forget the age's efforts to excite a rather jaded audience, and such monuments to excess as The Parson's 94V 5 If Wedding still have a pleasant notoriety. Nevertheless, it is sometimes useful to remind ourselves that the tradition of transvestitism did not die with the seventeenth century, and that there is a closer relationship between Mary Martin and Nell Gwyn than meets the casual eye. Mrs. Bracegirdle was considered an admirable male; and it was Peg Woffington, it will be recalled, who, having remarked at the close of a masculine impersonation that she believed half the audience took her for a man, heard Quin comfort her by telling her not to be uneasy for the other half could convince them to the contrary. Mrs. Jordan as Sir Harry Wildair and various eighteenth-century actresses continued to give body to this particular theatrical tradition to the extent that it has persisted into our own era in the efforts of such serious performers as Sybil Thorndike, Eva Le Gallienne, and Esme Berenger to play characters like Hamlet, Prince Hal, Lear's Fool, and Ferdinand. But perhaps no age has shown a greater fondness for actresses in male roles than the nineteenth century, an interesting phenomenon in this seemingly staid period. The years with which we are concerned frame themselves with notable clarity. In i802 Sarah Siddons was still performing Hamlet in Dublin, wrapped in a garment generously designed to preserve her modesty. In i899 the other Sarah appeared as Shakespeare's Prince in Paris, London and Stratford. With long, blond hair crowning an exceedingly feminine corporality, Bernhardt was obviously not suffering from Siddonian shyness, and her lack of restraint in this respect seems to have contributed as much to the critics' unhappiness as a text transmogrified to French prose. During the years between Siddons and Bernhardt, British and American theaters were studded with actresses anxious to display themselves in masculine parts. Naturally many of them were sensation-mongers whose efforts are of limited interest to students of serious drama. Ada Isaacs Menken, who as Mazeppa lashed herself to a foam-flecked stallion and galloped madly across a hidden treadmill, comes readily to mind, as does Madame Vestris, whose sprightly Macheath and Don Giovanni were