“I’ve had enough of your tongue,” Martin said. “Eat or don’t, but keep your mouth shut. Isn’t that what the Bible says?” Apparently Martin was familiar with Father Jaggard’s favorite lesson. Kate Collins in Chapter I, The Secret Player
Sermons and the culture in Kate Collins’ day dictated that women remain silent. Voice means power: men are the ones entitled to speak out, to take the floor, to hold the scepter.
England, however, was ruled by a woman. Queen Elizabeth’s authority over men came not from usurpation but by legal right. Her voice was the one that counted: another sixteenth-century paradox regarding the women’s role.
Shakespeare’s female characters range from near-silent to outspoken. These are plays; characters must speak. But some roles—for instance Gertrude and Ophelia in Hamlet, Isabella in Measure for Measure, can be seen as underwritten, hence the debate as to what’s going on with them. Did Gertrude have an affair with Claudius before he killed her husband, Hamlet the elder? Does she know about, or indeed is she complicit with, his murder? Had Ophelia slept with Hamlet before he left for Wittenberg? Does Isabella accept Duke Vincentio’s hand in marriage at the end of the play? The ladies are silent on these questions; directors and actors must decide.
Yet among the longest roles in the plays–more than 500 lines–are several female ones, according to the list in The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. Rosalind, who plays the boy Ganymede in As You Like it, has the most (668 lines). Cleopatra follows with 622, less than Antony in that play but still a juicy part. Then come two more women who spend part of their plays disguised as men: Portia in Merchant of Venice (565) and Imogen in Cybeline (522). Juliet, who takes wooing into her own hands, has 509 lines, fewer than Romeo but not by much.
Kate Collins becomes Alexander Cooke, aspiring boy player, in order to have a say in her destiny. She is not consulted in the matter of her marriage: her father decides. From the moment she puts on male doublet and breeches, she may speak out. As a boy, that is, and as an actor whose lines are written for her. She must keep her female self secret from all but a few intimates.
In an earlier posting I quote Lisa Jardine on the dependence of apprentice actors. Yet they stand and speak on the stage and have many freedoms denied a girl, which indicates a fair degree of independence. And in Shakespeare’s plays when they play the woman, they often radiate power.
Henry VI Part I, an early play (scholars suggest it was written after parts II and III), gives us Joan of Arc, who takes on the entire English power structure in stirring speeches. Queen Margaret in that play sequence, and in Richard III when she’s old and relatively powerless, develops a strong voice. Kate Minola the Shrew speaks less than her wooer Petruchio, but her quick tongue is what has labeled her a shrew and an undesirable candidate for marriage.
A more acceptable way for a woman to use her voice is to disguise herself as a boy. Among Shakespeare’s female characters who take on male disguise, only Viola, playing Cesario in Twelfth Night, feels vulnerable. She has words aplenty: it is her wooing of Olivia on Orsino’s behalf that makes Olivia fall in love with her as Cesario. But Viola feels at everyone’s mercy, chiefly Orsino’s because she loves him and cannot reveal it. Members of Olivia’s household do not treat Cesario well, Malvolio with scorn and Sir Toby Belch setting up a ludicrous fight between Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the ‘effeminate boy’.
The other disguised girls, played by boy actors, take on power. Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona pursues her lover; Ganymede/Rosalind educates Orlando about love; Imogen escapes treachery and remains true to her chosen husband, and most striking of all, Portia, when disguised as the lawyer Balthazar, conducts Antonio’s trial and sets up the ring test of Bassanio’s love.
It’s more complicated for women as women. Here is Sander in Chapter XI talking about her role as Margaret of Anjou and her friend Jack’s as Joan of Arc:
“My first plays of Shakespeare’s were to teach me as well about women’s power—and where denied, how they counterbalanced, whether by beauty or wiles, witchcraft or playing the man themselves. When I dreamt of playing women on the London stage, my imagination had pretty well stopped with the costumes. Where’s the drama in paneled skirts? No, the audience required dramas involving women’s dangerous potency—and men’s fears.”
Joan burns, though before she’s executed she speaks magnificent lines. Over the course of the four plays in which she appears, Margaret of Anjou goes from minor French princess to Queen of England to the power behind the throne. After her mentor (and lover, in Shakespeare’s version) the Duke of Suffolk is murdered, she takes it upon herself to compensate for her husband King Henry VI’s weakness, not merely speaking up but leading her troops to battle in the War of the Roses.
In The Secret Player, Kate’s becoming Alexander Cooke frees her not only to act these parts but to befriend Shakespeare and talk frankly about his depictions of women; to gain the patronage of Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke; to drink in low taverns with Moll Frith known as Moll Cutpurse; to have a tête a tête with Queen Elizabeth herself. In short, despite the risks, she creates her own destiny.