by Jinny Webber | Aug 16, 2021 | Gender fluidity, The Man-Woman |
Rare for a living person to be the subject of a play, but so Moll Frith was in The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cut-purse, Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s play of 1607-1611. By then she was legendary in London, sitting onstage at a performance of The Roaring Girl, and...
by Jinny Webber | Aug 11, 2021 | Uncategorized |
When Sander was a motherless girl named Kate Collins in the village of Saffron Walden, her Gran raised her and her younger brother Johnny in their earliest years. Though Kate hadn’t the patience to learn Gran’s healing skills, she thrived through her love and...
by Jinny Webber | Aug 11, 2021 | The Man-Woman |
Sander Cooke has three close women friends in Bedtrick, each rebellious in her own way. On a scale of scandal, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke is the least, Amelia Bassano Lanyer more so, and Moll Cutpurse, as Moll Frith was sometimes known, the most. Sander...
by Jinny Webber | Jul 27, 2021 | Uncategorized |
Bedtrick spans the years 1599-1603, a dramatic time in London. Sander Cooke’s personal challenges define the plot, but so too the tensions during that era in politics and theatre. One change that subtly reflects the times is the nature of clowning. What...
by Jinny Webber | Jul 26, 2021 | Shakespeare and Fiction |
This series of blog posts on Bedtrick should probably have begun with an announcement for the book itself. This link will take you to the publisher’ website: https://cuidono.com/Webber_Bedtrick.html From 1599 until her death in 1603, Queen Elizabeth’s rule...
by Jinny Webber | Jul 26, 2021 | Shakespeare and Fiction |
Alexander Cooke is listed as one of the players in Shakespeare’s First Folio and appears in various other sources of the time. His death in 1614 is documented, the fact that he fathered children, and the speculation that he played Shakespeare’s principal female...
by Jinny Webber | Jul 10, 2021 | Shakespeare and Fiction |
“Bedtrick: sex with a partner who pretends to be someone else.” Introduction, Wendy Doniger, The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade, University of Chicago, 2000. Two of Shakespeare’s plays, All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure, make use of the plot...
by Jinny Webber | Jun 29, 2021 | Boy actors on Shakespeare's stage, Gender fluidity, Sex and Gender in Shakespeare's England |
From 1599 until her death in 1603, Queen Elizabeth’s reign begins to lose its magic. She’s worked hard to be a Prince ‘in a feeble woman’s body,’ the almost mythic Gloriana, but her powers may be waning. Tensions outside her control contribute: intermittent bad...
by Jinny Webber | Nov 24, 2020 | Boy actors on Shakespeare's stage, Gender fluidity, Sex and Gender in |
Numerous posts over the years have covered aspects of gender fluidity: ‘Elizabethan Masquerade’, ‘Androgyny in Male Attire’, ‘Love Between Males on the Elizabethan Stage’, ‘The Roaring Girl’, and four posts on boy actors and sex. Now preparing a Zoom course on gender...
by Jinny Webber | Mar 21, 2020 | Actors in plague time |
Here is Thomas Nashe’s poem, ‘A Litany in the Time of Plague,’ in full. Bubonic plague was way more vicious than Covid-19 with less medical understanding. So Nashe, also known for his satirical and erotic poems, may seem overly dramatic to our ears. But...
