ICHARD LEVIN, IN WOMEN IN THE RENAISSANCE THEATRE AUDIENCE, has brought together evidence that women formed a substantial part of the audience of many if not most Renaissance English plays.1 In a recent study of Cambridge for the Records of Early English Drama series, I encountered a substantial number of references to women in attendance at college plays. Levin's article prompts me to gather this evidence together as a buttress to his own argument. Although the Cambridge college acting tradition dates in some forms back as far as the middle of the fifteenth century, the heyday of college drama at that university was the middle third of the sixteenth century. In August 1564, just at the end of this period of maximum production, Cambridge witnessed the visit of Queen Elizabeth in what turned out to be the first of many royal visits to both Cambridge and Oxford Universities in which plays formed a focus of royal attention. The queen's surveyors built an enormous in King's College chapel. The queen herself sat in a throne against the south wall of the chapel; the rood screen was fitted out with a stage for Ladies and gentlewemen to stand on, whereas the noblemen had a place of their own on enlarged tables placed on the floor against the face of the rood screen.2 Letters anticipating the advent of the queen are slightly condescending, describing the queen as being adorned with all kinde of good literature, which is rare & mervelous in a woman, & well able to judge of all ower doyngs;3 nevertheless, there is no question that the queen was proficient in Latin and could understand the plays. (One of the four plays prepared for the queen, Nicholas Udall's Ezechias, now lost, was presented in English.) Some years later, in 1578, Elizabeth made a progress to Audley End, near Saffron Walden: once again the students of the university entertained the queen, this time with a comedy, though whether in Latin or English is unknown.4 Cambridge enjoyed no further royal visits from Elizabeth and none from James until after the construction of Trinity College hall (completed around 1608), the venue for all future royal performances through 1642. In 1613 Prince Charles and the Prince Palatine paid a visit to Cambridge. The Prince Palatine left behind his new bride, Princess Elizabeth, and in fact no women are recorded as having been present at the event. Two years later, in 1615, James paid a visit that was so successful that it prompted yet another visit in the same year. Not many women attended this event, but the explanation given by John Chamberlain in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton is telling: