Women Players in England, 1500–1660

Abstract

Contents: Introduction, Pamela Allen Brown and Peter Parolin. Part I Beyond London: Women and performance: evidences of universal cultural suffrage in medieval and early modern Lincolnshire, James Stokes Payments, permits and punishments: women performers and the politics of place, Gweno Williams, Alison Findlay and Stephanie Hodgson-Wright. Part II Beyond Elites: The case of Moll Frith: women's work and the 'all-male stage', Natasha Korda 'Quacking Delilah's': female Mountebanks in early modern England and Italy, Bella Mirabella. Part III Beyond the Channel: Reading the actress in Commedia imagery, M.A. Katritzky 'Merry, nimble, stirring spirit[s]': academic, salon and Commedia dell'arte influence on the Innamorate in Love's Labour's Lost, Julie D. Campbell Women performing homoerotic desire in English and Italian comedy: La Calandria, Gl'Ingannati and Twelfth Night, Rachel Poulsen Courtly comediantes: Henrietta Maria and amateur women's stage plays in France and England, Melinda J. Gough. Part IV Beyond the Stage: The Venetian theater of Aletheia Talbot, Countess of Arundel, Peter Parolin 'Pleaders, atturneys, petitioners and the like': Margaret Cavendish and the dramatic petition, Julie Crawford. Part V Beyond the 'All-Male': Staging the absent woman: the theatrical evocation of Elizabeth Tudor in Heywood's If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part I, Jean E. Howard Female impersonation in early modern ballads, Bruce R. Smith Jesting rights: women players in the manuscript jestbook of Sir Nicholas Le Strange, Pamela Allen Brown. Afterword, Phyllis Rackin Index.