by Jinny Webber | Jul 13, 2017 | Boy actors on Shakespeare's stage, Sex and Gender in Shakespeare's England |
“My master warned us: a boy who plays ingle will lose his place in the troupe. We can’t have our playhouse a brothel.” Nat laughed. “Ingle! Brothel! Don’t you just have the fancy words.” His tone turned wheedling. “Come back to bed,...
by Jinny Webber | Jun 20, 2017 | Boy actors on Shakespeare's stage, Sex and Gender in Shakespeare's England
“I shall call myself Alexander, . . . the grandest conqueror the world has ever known.” Chapter III, The Secret Player As Bill Bryson says in his book Shakespeare, The World as Stage, we know very little about the boys who played women in Shakespeare’s plays....
by Jinny Webber | Jun 20, 2017 | Boy actors on Shakespeare's stage, Sex and Gender in Shakespeare's England
“Acting is too dangerous a life for a woman, traveling about, meeting all sorts, wearing costumes, pretending and lying.” Jack Wilson in Chapter II, The Secret Player In his book Impersonations (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Stephen Orgel raises the question of...
by Jinny Webber | Jun 12, 2017 | Boy actors on Shakespeare's stage, Sex and Gender in Shakespeare's England |
Until some fifty years after the death of William Shakespeare, boy actors played women’s roles on the London stage. Alexander Cooke, the protagonist of The Secret Player and its sequels, is an historical actor listed in Shakespeare’s First Folio, the collection of his...
