Africa - 17th,18th & 19th Century Female Playwrights, Directors and Theatre Makers

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    Africa - 17th, 18^th & 19^th Century Female Playwrights, Directors and Theatre Makers

        

        To simplify and try to give some breadth to the contributions of female playwrights, directors and theatre makers during the 18^th , 19^th , 20 and 21st centuries, I have divided the contributions into continents or continental areas (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania which includes Australia, New Zealand and most of Micronesia and Polynesia and South America). Antarctica being a pristine continent with a dominant non-human cultural system is left to its own devices and some contribution will be covered on that continent. To avoid a direct hierarchy, these continents are presented alphabetically.

       Africa

        

        Changes in Storytelling & Performance in Africa in the 17th, 18^th & 19^th Centuries

        It is a fallacy that African storytelling and performance traditions did not change when slavery, the slave trade and colonialism had their devastating impact on much of Africa. The strong oral storytelling traditions and the writing of performed stories and poems especially in Hausa, Swahili and Arabic started to transform stories, songs, poems and performances based on the new abuses and destruction which the slave trade and colonialism brought. The performance of these stories and the sharing of the dances, stories and song cycles were shared by males and females in many languages and in almost all African cultures. The printing of many of these traditions and stories started also to find their way into print in marketplaces from the old souqs in Cairo to Marrakech in Morocco to the bookstalls in Timbuktu in Mali to the Onitsha market in Nigeria, to the Cape Town markets to Magadi markets in Nairobi to Mek'ele markets in Ethiopia. Women had always been at the centre of these traditions and their sharing, so we can assume many of the dramatic texts performed in this period and printed were written and performed by women.

       Mother Walatta Petros

       Mother Walatta Petros was an Ethiopian female saint and nun in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. She was born in 1592 and died in 1642 and the liturgical dramas and ritual ceremonies she developed, performed and wrote down are noteworthy. After becoming a nun at the age of 25, she set up several all female religious communities and developed ritual and liturgical ceremonies and dramas as a way to tell religious stories and parables to her often illiterate female recruits and exiles. Sometimes she would develop her own musical arrangements to liturgical ceremonies which involved a number of dramatic elements.

      Phillis Wheatley

        Although she could be counted as either an African or an African-American writer, I have counted the writer, poet and playwright Phillis Wheatley as an African writer because she was born in Gambia in 1753. She was sold into slavery and taken to Boston in 1761. She was thankfully educated by her 'owners' and she started writing poetry about identity and the experience of slavery and dislocation. Her poetry was often read dramatically and Wheatley would frame her poetry readings with stories and songs from her homeland as well as the slavery experience. Observers to her readings also described the beauty of her gestures and facial expressions. In this sense the dramaturgical elements of her poetry readings as drama and performance can not be underestimated. Her work gives great insight into the life and mind of an African slave in 18th century America. One can imagine the Wheatley performing her own words with sweeping gestures in London (where she visited and did performance readings) in the 1770's:

                    ‘… And pleasing Gambia on my soul returns,

                     With native grace in spring’s luxuriant reign,

                     Smiles the gay mead, and Eden blooms again …’. 

        Olive Schreiner

        Born in Olive Schreiner in 1855 in Wittenbergen (in modern day Lesotho), she was a writer, feminist, playwright, feminist and social activist. She is mostly known for her novel The Story of an African Farm (1833). The short plays she wrote seem to mostly be domestic scenes that provide insight into the lives of women in provincial Africa. Her plays were read in small group readings in Wittenbergen. Often her plays were characterised by descriptive monologues and short domestic scenes about everything from farming life to politics and the rights of females in 19th Century South Africa. Later in her life, she wrote more non-fiction commentaries on the rights of women in modern society.

 ef  References for African Female Storytelling and Drama in the 18th & 19th Century

Belcher, W.L & Kleiner, M. (trans.) (2015). The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros. Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ.
Brown, S. (1937). Negro Poetry and Drama. Washington, DC: Westphalia Press.

Busby, M. (ed.). (1992). Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from Ancient Egyptian to the Present. New York: Random House.

Carretta, V. (2001). Complete Writings by Phillis Wheatley. New York: Penguin Books.

Doak, R.S. (2007). Phillis Wheatley: Slave and Poet. Minneapolis: Compass Point Books.

Odell, M.M. (1834). Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley: A Native African and a Slave. Boston: Geo. W. Light.

Gray, S. (2013). Two Dissident Dream-Walkers: The Hardly Explored Reformist Alliance between Olive Schreiner and Edward Carpenter. English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies Volume 30, Issue 2, 2013.

Female Drama Practitioners in 17th & 18th Century France and Spain and their Colonies

Female Drama Practitioners in 17th & 18th Century France

The influence of females on French drama in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries is profound. Both on the public stage and in the confines of salon culture, the work of female drama practitioners is significant.

Catherine Bernard

Catherine Bernard was a poet and novelist and she was also probably the most successful French female playwright of the 17^th Century. Her first play Laodamie (1689) had a long theatrical run of twenty-three performances. This was followed by her play Brutus in 1690. Both plays seemed to have been well received at the time.

Anne-Marie Fiquet du Boccage

In the Mid-18^th Century, Anne-Marie Fiquet du Boccage was a poet who also turned her hand to playwrighting. A production of her tragic verse drama Les Amazones premiered at the Comedie-Francaise in 1749. A prominent figure in the French performing arts around this time was actress, singer, comedian, composer, librettist and playwright Amélie-Julie Candeille. From a young age she performed and sung on the French stage. She also performed in the salons of Paris. Throughout the 1780’s she performed in plays and wrote some scenes for salon performances. In 1792 she wrote and performed in her first opera Catherine, ou La belle fermière. It was first put on during the trial of Louis XVI and it was performed over 150 times in the next 35 years. She continued to perform on the stage during the ‘Reign of Terror’. The next play she wrote was in 1795 and was a comedy called La Bayadère ou le Français à Surate. She wrote other plays and operas but none after this date seem to have survived.

Marie-Adélaïde Hadot

Marie-Adélaïde Hadot was another French female playwright of this period who wrote predominantly for the ‘boulevard theatres’, popular public theatres I n Paris sometimes known as the ‘boulevard du crime’ because of the performances of melodramas and crime dramas at these venues. Her famous plays were the melodramas Jean Sobieski, ou la Lettre (1800), Zadig, ou la Destinée, mélodrame héroïque (1804), Jules, ou le Toit paternal (1806), L’Homme mystérieux (1806), Cosme de Médicis (1809), Charles Martel (co-written with Philippe-Jacques de Laroche in 1814, L’Honneur et l’Échafaud, Barba (1816) and Les Deux Valladomir (co-written with Victor Ducange in 1816).

Sophie de Bawr

The life of Baroness Sophie de Bawr (also Comtesse se Saint-Simon) is a fascinating woman of France during the period of the French Revolution. Born the illegimate daughter of the Marquis Charles de Champgrand, she studied music and worked as a singer. She married young but her husband was executed during the Reign of Terror and she started supporting herselg through writing stories, music and plays. She married again but divorced. She then married a third time to the Russian Baron de Bawr but he died soon after. Her first play La Suite d'un bal masque (1813) was a success and was part of French repertoire for the next 50 years. Her other plays include the comedy Un quart d'heure de depit, opera comique (1813), the melodramas Melodrames Les chevaliers du lion, melodrama (1804), and Leon, ou le chateau de Montaldi (1811) and the comic dramas La meprise, play (1815) and Charlotte Brown (1835).

Delphine de Girardin

The French writer and playwright Delphine de Girardin was a prolific writer and influential literary figure in her time. She sometimes used the pen-name Vicomte Delaunay. She wrote romances and verse drama including Judith (1843), Cléopâtre (1847), Lady Tartufe (1853), and the one-act comedies, C'est la faute du mari (1851), La Joie fait peur (1854), Le Chapeau d'un horloger (1854) and Une Femme qui deteste son mari (written in 1855 but it was not published or performed until after her death).

Marguerite-Louise Virginie Chardon Ancelot

Marguerite-Louise Virginie Chardon Ancelot was a painter, writer and playwright who wrote dramas in a number of styles for the ‘salon theatres’. She wrote at least four comedic and romantic plays from 1828 until 1848 including Lex Deux Imperatrices, L’Hotel Rambouillet, Hermance and Marguerite. She also published two memoirs about Parisian ‘salon’ culture which were important for understanding the way culture expressed itself within the ‘salons’. Her plays were collected in four volumes in Theâtre complet in 1848.

Female Drama Practitioners in Early Modern Spain and its Colonies

From the 1570’s until the late 1600’s, Spain had a Golden Age of theatre. Spain continued it religious liturgical theatre styles, developed a love for the Commedia dell’ arte improvised comedy and developed its own brand of drama with a three act rather than five act structure. Some elements of Arabic culture may also have influenced Spanish drama since some storytelling elements of the Hakawati seem evident in the prologues and epilogues of Spanish plays of this period. In Spain, women had been allowed to perform on stage since 1587 but by 1599, a new law was enacted that stated that women could only perform if they were married to other members of the company performing.

Juana Ines de la Cruz

While women probably wrote, directed and performed some scenes in commedia troupes in Spain, one of the first Spanish speaking female playwrights of this period was the Mexican poet, nun and playwright, Juana Ines de la Cruz who lived in Colonial era Mexico. Her first play, written about 1688 was El Divino Narciso (Loa to the Divine Narcissus) which is an allegorical evangelical liturgical style drama. This short play acts like a commentary on the historical events surrounding the contact between invading Spanish Christians and the Indigenous Aztecs. Her other plays are mostly comedies including Los empeños de una casa (Pawns of a House or House of Desires). Here is a clip from a Royal Shakespeare production of the play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLU9ORnBb0

 Amor es mas laberinto (Love is More a Labyrinth) was another play written around the same time. She may also have collaborated with Agustin de Salazar on his play La Segunda Celestina (The Second Celeste).

Feliciana Enríquez de Guzmán

Although not a lot is known about the Spanish female playwright Feliciana Enríquez de Guzmán her work seems quite eclectic for her time. Her work includes the 1624 tragi-comedy Tragicomedia of the gardens and Sabean fields, first and second part, with ten choirs and four entreacts is an Aristotelian style tragicomedy of chivalric and mythological themes composed of two independent parts, each divided by five acts, with a total of twenty-eight scenes. A few years after, the Spanish female playwright Ana Caro started to write and have her plays performed. In the twelve years from 1640 until her death in 1652, she wrote a number of plays in a number of styles starting with two Liturgical or Auto-Sacramentales plays. Soon after, Caro wrote about half a dozen commedia comic interludes sometimes identified as entremeses. Most of these have disappeared but the two that have survived, A Loa Sacramental and Coloquio Entre Dos give some indication of her comic talent. Although she probably wrote four or five full length plays, the only two that have survived are El Conde Partinuplés (her most famous romantic comedy) and Agravio y Mujer (Courage, Betrayal, and a Woman Scorned) which were both not performed or published until after her death.

Marcela de San Felix

Marcela de San Felix was the illegitimate daughter of Lope de Vega (the most prolific playwright of all time) and the famous Spanish actress Micaela de Luján. She lived as a nun from the age of sixteen until she died at the age of eighty-two. Many of her plays were mainly performed in the convent and some people refer to theatre performed in this context as ‘convent theatre’. She wrote many plays in many styles including six allegorical plays including the play Coloquios del alma which satirized daily life in a covent, coloquios espirituales (spiritual conversations) including Del nacimiento, romances, seguidillas (folk dances), liras, endechas (death dances or dance laments), and villancicos (a poetic musical form).

References for Female Drama Practitioners in 17th & 18th Century France

French Female Drama Practitioners in Early Modern France

Gethner, P., & Gough, M. J. (2016). The Advent of Women Players and Playwrights in Early Modern France. Renaissance Drama, 44(2), 217-232. Accessed June 8, 2017 from:

http://english.humanities.mcmaster.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/06/Gether-Gough-Advent-Women-Players.pdf

Johnston, J. (2014). Women Dramatists, Humor and the French Stage. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Female Drama Practitioners in Early Modern Spain and its Colonies

Erdman, H. (2014). Feliciana Enríquez de Guzmán, Ana Caro Mallén, and Sor Marcela de San Félix: Women Playwrights of Early Modern Spain - The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe - The Toronto Series, Vol. 49. Tempe, AZ: ACMRS Publications.

Halling, A. L. (2012). Feminine voice and space in early modern Iberian convent theater (Doctoral dissertation, Vanderbilt University).

Weber, A. (2016). Literature by Women Religious in Early Modern Catholic Europe and the New World. The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 33.

Women in Theatre in the Renaissance

Women in Theatre in the Renaissance

Women in the Commedia dell arte in Italy

As a cultural movement which has its origins in Florence in Italy in Europe in the 14^th century, the Renaissance saw a re-birth in philosophy, visual and performing arts, architecture, invention and education. Around the 1550’s an improvised form of Renaissance drama done as mask theatre, which had its origins in the Ancient Roman comedy of about 100BC to 300AD, started to emerge of the flourishing city states of Italy. The Commedia dell’ arte (sometimes called the commedia dell’ arte all’ improvviso) which loosely translates as ‘the comedy of the artisans’ is a improvised masked comedy form which was primarily performed outside and on temporary or movable stages which was often performed during carnivale or local city festivals.

A number of factors made the commedia dell’ arte different to previous drama forms. Firstly, commedia was primarily improvised not use scripts as such but using stock characters, routines and scenarios which were adapted and changed to suit each new town or city state the troupe performed in. Secondly, male and female actors were part of each commedia troupe and in Western theatre, commedia was the first form to fully embrace female performers.

Although females probably only performed female characters and probably performed without masks, female contributions to acting, directing and dramaturgy through devising scenes were probably equal to those of males.

Commedia uses stock characters and social stereotypes and so an audience anywhere in Italy and in other countries such as France and Spain could relate to the characters presented. Some characters which females played were:

Isabella (the young naïve lover)

Columbina (the wordly-wise and cunning servant)

La Ruffiana (older female with a shady past)

La Signora (a lady, sometimes the wife of Pantalone, tough and calculating)

The following clip may give some sense of how female actresses performed scenes in the original commedia dell arte plays:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnuhkteG7r4

In the 15^th and 16^th Centuries, some more liberal attitudes towards the performances of Ancient Greek and Roman plays also saw a decline in religious drama. This also saw a rise in popularity for new secular dramatic forms such as the Commedia del arte and Humanist dramas (some translations of Greek and Roman histories) such as those created in France by Grevin with Jules César (1560). There is evidence that females performed in as well as adapted some of the scenes for these new secular drama forms. Goldoni’s Memoires mentions the performances of women on stage:

   “It was the first time that I had ever seen women upon the stage, and I found

    them a piquant novelty. Rimini lies in the legation of Ravenna, and, as women

    are allowed on the stage there, female roles are not taken by beardless youths or clean-shaven men, as in Rome.”

              (Goldoni, 1787)

Isabella Andreini

One of the important women of theatre in the 16^th Century was the Italian actress and playwright Isabella Andreini (1562-1604). Most of her work was done while she involved with the touring theatre company Compagnia dei Comici Gelosi which performed in Italy and France. The major commedia character Isabella was named after her and she was known mostly for improvisation skills and her portrayal of prima donna inamorata characters. Her innovation as an actress along with her pushing of the boundaries including sometimes taking her clothes off on stage and her physical comedy skills. She played many roles in her lifetime and wrote many scenes and plays, performing until her death at the age of forty-two. She died of a miscarriage on her way back to Mantua. It is rumored that the entire city of Mantua attended her funeral. At least one of her seven children followed her into the theatrical profession. Many of the plays and scenes she wrote challenged the role of women in society. Her play La Mirtilla was the first pastoral play written by a female and was performed many times in her lifetime and after her death.

Andreini’s genius often came in the way she rewrote and decontextualizes scenes. She rewrote a scene from Tasso’s Silvia. In a seduction scene she reverses the power by having the female character Filli tie up a Satyr. She even emasculates the Satyr.  Here is a translation of the scene:

Satyr:   Don’t tie me so tightly!

Filli:      Calm down, and suffer for a moment: because the more tightly I tie you, the more safely I will then kiss you.

Satyr:   Stop! Stop!

Filli:      All right, I’ll stop, but you mustn’t move, so that I can give you a thousand kisses! O my horns, you have wounded my heart!

Satyr:   Oh me! Don’t pull so hard! Don’t twist my neck! Oh me, truly, you are hurting me!

Filli:      Pardon me, my heart, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Oh what soft breasts!

Satyr:   Don’t pinch so hard! Hey, stop it!

Female Drama Practitioners in Early Modern Italy

Margherita Costa

Margherita Costa. Although a courtesan, Costa started her artistic career as a singer but by 1641 she had started to write her first poetry and her first plays. Her first play was probably La Flora feconda (1640). Her poem Li Buffoni was probably turned into the short comedy Li buffoni: Comedia ridicola (1641) at this time and it became popular as a Commedia dell arte play performed by a number of commedia troupes at the time. From the courts of Florence to Turin to Venice she performed as a singer. She also performed in France and Germany and her 1650 play Gli amori della Luna (The Loves of the Moon Goddess) was probably written and performed in Germany. Although she probably wrote half a dozen plays, only three plays have survived. Here is a website  with a reading:

http://www.casaitaliananyu.org/multimedia/margherita-costas-buffoons-ridiculous-comedy

Women in Elizabethan, Jacobean, Caroline and Restoration Theatre

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a renaissance in theatre in England through the Elizabethan, Jacobean, Caroline and Restoration Periods. While much attention is often given to William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson and the fact that women could not perform on the public stage, what is less known is that the period also saw a proliferation of female playwrights and play translators.

Jane Lumley

Probably the first female playwright who wrote in the English language was Jane Lumley who translated Ancient Greek speeches and plays into English. During the 1560’s she translated Euripides’s Iphigeneia at Aulis. This translation was probably not performed publically but ‘chamber theatre’ or ‘closet drama’ reading were probably held at either Lumley Castle or Nonsuch Palace. Here are some extracts from Lumley’s Iphigeneia at Aulis:

In this speech Iphigeneia accepts her fate to be offered to the Gods for the greater good of her people.

Iphigeneia:       Wherfore seinge that I shall be sacraficed for the cõmoditie of all grece,

I do desier you, that none of the grecians may slaie me preuilie:

for I will make no resistance againste you. (Iphigeneia, fol. 95v . 1348-1352)

In contrast to this the character of Clytemnestra is remarkably modern. Here in this speech she attacks Agamemnon and the male members of her family and society.

Clytemnestra: For if any man shoulde aske of you the cause of the deathe of your daughter, you woulde answer for Helens sake, which can be no lawfull cause,

for it is not mete,

that we sholde sleye our owne childe for a naughtie womans sake… (Iphigeneia, fol. 87v . 978–983)

Jane Lumley’s exploits were soon followed by those of Mary Sidney Herbert who translated Petrarch’s Triumph of Death. Her interest in verse and soliloquy meant that some of her verse is considered to be a great influence on some closet drama of the 1590’s such Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra and William Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra. In 2010, poetry and possible verse soliloquys written by Mary Sidney Herbert were discovered.

Elizabeth Cary

The first female playwright to write original plays in English seems to have been Elizabeth Cary. Around 1610, she seems to have written her first play around 1610 but this play is lost. Probably her second play, The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry was written in 1613 but was intended as a ‘closet drama’ and so primarily intended to be read. It is possible that it was done as a performed reading in her house. The play is a social commentary which addresses divorce, revenge and advocates female agency.

Here is an extract from a speech by the Chorus about the nature of female expression:

Chorus:              That wife her hand against her fame doth rear,

                             That more than to her lord alone will give

                             A private word to any second ear,

                             And though she may with reputation live,

                             Yet though most chaste, she doth her glory blot,

                             And wounds her honor, though she kills it not.

Here is a video of a production segment from the play:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOYsjNcG93w

Mary Wroth

Mary Wroth wrote her most famous play Love’s Victory around 1620. The play is a pastoral comedy which is principally written in rhyming couplets. The play centres around shepherds and shepherdesses in Cyprus and explores a number of different types of love. The pairing up of different couples at the end of the play to suggest different types of love suggest staging elements of the play. This would suggest that it may have been read or performed as a ‘closet drama’ and that female and male friends of Wroth may have taken on reading different parts. Love’s Victory has some interesting characters, sequences and stylistic elements. Some parts of the play are like Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour Lost and other section are reminiscent of The Winter’s Tale. Here is an extract from Act 3 Scene 2 of the play where the character of Dalina talks to shepherdesses about the sisterhood of women:

Dalina:            Now w’are alone lett every one confess            

Truly to other what our lucks have bin,

How often lik’d, and lov’d, and soe express

Owr passions past: shall we this sport begin?

Non can accuse us, non can us betray

Unles owr selves, owr owne selves will bewray.

The play’s ending is extraordinarily egalitarian with a suggestion that the audience joined the actors on stage after the characters were taken through the valley of death at the moment of resurrection done in a style reminiscent of ‘magic realism’.

Priests:            Philisses, of us take Musella faire,

Wee joine your hands, rise and abandon care.

Venus hath caus’d this wounder for her glory,

And the Triumph of love’s victory.

Venus Lovers bee nott amas’d this is my deed,

Who could nott suffer your deere harts to bleed.

Come forth, and joy your faith hath bin thus tride,

Who truly would for true love’s sake have dy’de. (Act 5. Lines 483-490)

Jane Cavendish & Elizabeth Egerton

.

The Concealed Fancies is a masque drama written by Jane Cavendish 

and her sister Elizabeth Egerton.

 It probably completed in 1646 after the outbreak of the English Civil War. Being a pastoral masque drama, and due to the ban on public performances, the play if it was ever performed at the time, would have been performed first on one of the Cavendish estates. The play confronts issues of the liberty and freedom of females and notions of freedom of expression. The play has wonderful dialogue and combines verse and prose. Autographical elements of the play combined with the glimpses that it gives into the lives of women in the period makes the play of great and insightful merit. Elements of Ben Jonson style comedy of humours are evident in the piece.

Here is a speech from a nun Sister Luceny in Act 5:

Enter the 2 Nunns mallencholly speakeing to one another.

Sister Luceny:

When I in sadnes am and then doe thinke I'm lul'd a sleepe in mallencholly winke Each chamber seeleing doth create true sad Yet temperd soe as I am quiett, glad, Then when I walke Nunns Gallerye round My thoughts tells mee I'm falling in a swond And when that flowers fine I have Then sure I'm decked for my Grave Soe if each one will have a fine lov'd death Enter your self in sadnes sweeter Earth Then when my quiett soule desires to walke The Gardens doe revive my tongue to talke Soe in white sheete of Innocence I fray Each one that wishes mee to see For Ghosts doe love to have their owne delights When others thinkes they have designes of frights So even as they I wish noe feare to none. But on my Friends contemplate alone./

Here is a digital copy of the whole play.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/cavendish/fansyes/fansyes.html

Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish was a prolific writer who wrote philosophy, poetry, science fiction, prose and plays. She is the first female playwright who wrote multiple plays in multiple styles. Fourteen of her plays (Love’s Adventures, The Several Wits or A Comedy of Wits, Youth’s Glory, and Death’s Banquet, The Lady Contemplation, Wit’s Cabal, The Unnatural Tragedy, The Public Wooing, The Matrimonial Trouble, Nature's Three Daughters, Beauty, Love and Wit, The Religious, The Comical Hash, Bell in Campo, A Comedy of the Apocryphal Ladies and The Female Academy) were published in 1662. Another volume containing another six plays (The Sociable Companions - or the Female Wits, The Presence, Scenes from The Presence, The Bridals, The Convent of Pleasure and A Piece of a Play) was published in 1668. The plays cover a range of issues, themes, plots and styles. The plays are closet dramas and if they were ever performed, they were probably performed as ‘chamber theatre’ moved readings with Cavendish’s female and male friends.  Here is a speech from the character of Lady Solid in Cavendish’s A Comedy of Wits.

Lady Solid:        Indeed, few doth live as they should, that is, to live within themselves; for the soul, which is the supream part of the life, is never at home, but goeth wandering about, from place to place, from person to person, and so from one thing to another, and not only the soul wanders thus; but all the Family of the soul, as the thoughts and passions; for should anything knock at the gates of the soul, which are the senses, or enter the chambers of the soul, which is the heart, and the head, they would find them empty, for the thoughts and passions, which passions are of the Bed-chamber, which is, the heart and Presence-chamber, which is, the head wherein they ought to wait, are for the most part, all gone abroad; as for the thoughts, they are gone to inquire news, walking and running into every Village, Town, City and Country, and Kingdom, all to inquire what such and such persons said or acted, and the particular affairs of every particular person, and every particular Family, as whether they increase with riches, or decay with poverty; whether they live beyond their means, or keep within their compasse; what men and women are in love, who are constant, and who are false; what contracts are signed, or what contracts are broken; who marries, and who lives single lives; who is happy in marriage, and who is not; what children is born, who hath children, and who hath none; who is handsome, and who is ill-favoured; who dyes, and of what diseases they died of; whether they left wealth or were poor, or who were their Heirs, or Executors; who are Widowers, Widows or Orphants; who hath losses, crosses and misfortunes, who is in favour or disgrace with such Princes or States; 

Katherine Philips

Katherine Philips was an Anglo-Welsh poet, playwright, translator and letter writer authored who sometimes wrote under the name Orinda. She translated at least two plays from Ancient Roman texts. Her translation of Corneille’s La mort de Pompee and Horace were performed during her lifetime. In fact, some claim that the performance in Dublin of Pompee was the first play written by a women performed on the British commercial stage. The play certainly has political parallels between the execution of Pompee and that of King Charles I and the civil wars in Ireland.  She created a literary circle of males and females around her and fostered discussion and artistic expression of ideas on a range of issues from politics to the rights of women to the nature of cultural and national identity.

Here is an extract from the Prologue of La mort de Pompee:

The mighty Rivals, whose destructive Rage

Did the whole World in Civil Armes engage:

Are now agreed, and make it both their Choice

To have their Fates determin'd by your Voice.

Frances Boothby

Frances Boothby only wrote one or two plays and she is often credited as first woman to have her plays performed on the London stages. Her romantic comedy Marcelia, or, The Treacherous Friend was seen by audiences in 1669 at the Theatre Royal and it was performed by the King’s Company. Here is an extract from the play:

Euryalus:           What Devil helps thee to dissemble so?

Has that black Favorite of Hell's design,

Taught thee this virtue with the rest to joyn?

Was't not enough you did his life betray,

To serve your pride made that be took away;

But with your curs'd malicious blasting breath,

Strive, in his Fame, to give him second death?

Or, did your Soul such sharp reprovements give

To your false heart, that fear'd to let him live?

Could bubling Greatness thy ambition swell

To such a height, to send thee Post to Hell.

Elizabeth Polwheele

Elizabeth Polwheele was a female playwright who is attributed as being the second woman who wrote for the professional London stage with her comedy The Frolicks (1671). All three of her plays Elysium (1670), The Faithful Virgins (1670) and The Frolicks, or The Lawyer Cheated (1671) are Restoration comedies with the normal archetypes evident in Restoration Comedies.

Aphra Behn

The most famous female playwright of these periods was Aphra Behn. She was prolific and wrote eighteen plays from 1670 to 1689 including The Forc’d Marriage (1670), The Amorous Prince (1671), The Dutch Lover (1673), Abdelazer (1676), The Town Fop (1676), The Rover – Part 1 (1677), Sir Patient Fancy (1678), The Feigned Courtesans (1679), The Young King (1679), The Rover – Part 2 (1681), The False Count (1681), The Roundheads (1681), The City Heiress (1682), Like Father, Like Son (1682), Prologue and Epilogue to Romulus and Hersilia or The Sabine War (1682), The Lucky Chance (written with composer John Blow in 1686), The Emperor of the Moon (1687), The Widow Ranter (written 1687 but performed posthumously in 1689) and The Younger Brother (written 1687 but performed posthumously in 1696).

Where Aphra Behn is all the more remarkable is not just that her plays were performed in public in theatres, but she embraces the new liberalism of the Restoration after the English Civil War. Another significant aspect of Aphra Behn and her plays are that she utilizes and uses the new theatrical conventions of her time and the new design of English theatres (with a proscenium arch). One great innovation of the English Restoration theatre is that women were allowed to act on the stage due to a shortage of trained boy and young male actors after the long closure of the stages. Acting on stage was still seen as not respectable and linked to disreputable women, but Behn played with and challenged this perspective in her plays.

Here is link to some of Aphra Behn’s plays:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21339/21339-h/21339-h.htm

Here is a link to an extract from Behn’s play The Rover:

VALERIA: Am I put into the number of lovers?

HELLENA: You? Why coz, I know thou’rt too good-natured to leave us in an design: thou wouldst venture a cast though thou camest off a loser, especially with such a gamester. I observe your man, and your willing ear incline that way; and if you are not a lover, ‘tis an art soon learnt [sighs] — that I find.

 FLORINDA: I wonder how you learnt to love so easily. I had a thousand charms to meet my eyes and ears e’er I could yield, and ‘twas the knowledge of Belvile’s merit, not the surprising person, took my soul. Thou art too rash, to give a heart at first sight.

HELLENA: Hang your considering lover! I never thought beyond the fancy that ‘twas a very pretty, idle, silly kind of pleasure to pass one’s time with: to write little, soft, nonsensical billets, and with great difficulty and danger, receive answers in which I shall have my beauty praised, my wit admired — though little or none — and have the vanity and power to know I am desirable. Then I have the more inclination that way because I am to be a nun, and so shall not be suspected to have any such earthly thoughts about me, but when I walk thus — and sigh thus — they’ll think my mind’s upon my monastery, and cry, ‘How happy ‘tis she’s so resolved’. But not a word of man.

FLORINDA: What a mad creature’s this?

Here is link to an article on Aphra Behn and Restoration Theatre

http://writersinspire.org/content/aphra-behn-restoration-theatre

Anne Finch

Although primarily a poet, Anne Finch was also a playwright who wrote verse dramas. As the Countess of Winchilsea, she was a very influential woman, who championed the work of other female writers. Her poetic and non-fiction writings include writings on political ideology, religious orientation, aesthetic sensibility and the mental and spiritual equity of females and males. Her first play is lost to posterity but her second play Aristomenes: Or The Royal Shepherd was written around 1710 but published in 1713.

Delarivier Manley

The playwright, political activist and novelist Delarivier Manley was an amazing woman. Her first play was the comedy The Lost Lover, or, The Jealous Husband was written and performed in 1696. During the same year her ‘she-tragedy’ The Royal Mischief was also performed and this play and her person were even satirized and ridiculed in a comedy by a contemporary male playwright. Her adaptation of The Arabian Nights Entertainments (1698) was performed in a lavish production with innovative staging elements. Other notable plays were the tragedy Almyna, or the Arabian Vow (1707), the social satire Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality of Both Sexes, from the New Atlantis, an Island in the Mediterranean (1709) and the tragedy Lucius, The First Christian King of Britain (1717).

Mary Pix

Mary Pix was also a successful female playwright writing for the professional theatre at this time. She was married to a merchant but because during the 1600’s and early 1700’s it was normal for lower and middle class women to work, so she took on writing as a way of earning income. In 1696, she wrote and had produced two plays - Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks and The Spanish Wives. In 1697, she had two plays produced The Innocent Mistress (1697) and The Deceiver Deceived. She wrote and had performed nine plays after, even though some were attributed on advertising pamphlets to a male playwright. These plays included Queen Catharine; or, The Ruines of Love (1698), The False Friend or the Fate of Disobedience (1699), The Beau Defeated; or, the Lucky Younger Brother (1700), The Double Distress (1701), The Czar of Muscovy (1701), The Different Widows or Intrigue All-A-Mode (1703), Zelmane; or, The Corinthian Queen (1705), The Conquest of Spain (1705) and The Adventures in Madrid (1706). Her plays a remarkably modern in their dialogue and outlook and deserve further readings and performances.

Susannah Centlivre

Susannah Centlivre (born Susanna Freeman and often known by her professional name Susanna Carroll) was an actress, poet and playwright. It is believed that her father died when she was three. Her mother remarried but died shortly after that. Her stepfather was apparently a kind man but his new wife, Susannah’s new stepmother was abusive. After years of abuse at the hands of her stepmother, Susannah left home at the age of fifteen. By the age of sixteen, she was married and performing young male or ‘breeches roles’. Her husband died soon after. She married again to Captain Carroll who died eighteen months later in a duel.

Under the stage name of Susanna Carroll, Centlivre continued to perform on the stage and in 1700, at the age of twenty-one, wrote her first play.  the tragi-comedy The Perjur'd Husband or The Adventures of Venice which was first performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. This was followed up in 1702 with The Beau’s Duel, The Stolen Heiress in 1702 and Love's Contrivance (1703). Her next play performed in 1705 was a comedy called The Gamester followed by The Basset Table in the same year. In 1706, she wrote and had performed Love at a Venture and The Platonic Lady. She then married again, this time to a yeoman called Joseph Centlivre. By 1709, she was back writing again and in that year wrote Female Tatler. She continued to write for the stage with a steady stream of plays in different styles including A Bickerstaff's Burying (1710), Marplot, or, The Second Part of the Busie-Body (1710), The Perplex'd Lovers (1712), The Wonder (1714), A Gotham Election (a political farce written in 1715 but not performed until 1724), A Wife Well Manag'd (1715), The Cruel Gift (1716), A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718) and The Artifice (1722). Although she mostly wrote novels and poetry, the dramatic skills of Scottish writer Charlotte Lennox should not be overlooked. Her major three plays Philander (1758), The Sister (1762) and Old City Manners (1775) are stylistically unique and deserve re-reading or even the breath of fresh air that a new performance can bring.

Renaissance Japanese Drama

While by 1629, women were banned from publicly performing in Japan and young boys started to play female parts in kabuki, some women still performed in dance dramas performed in private contexts. The female form of kabuki onna-kabuki while officially banned probably still was performed in brothels and some geisha districts. There is also some suggestion that some rich females would have all female troupes perform plays or dance dramas in private. 

 Here is a short extract from a translation of a kabuki play which was probably performed by Okuni and there is some suggestion it was also performed in private performances in private houses:

Music: O-Toku offers a cup of water before the family altar. She prays for her daughter’s repose in the other world. She keeps back her tears. The toll of the evening bell comes from within.

“Lady Tamate easily finds her way along the road in the night and in the path of love…”

Kabuki Exercises

Kabuki theatre is all about finding slow, stylized, symbolic movements and contrasting. I often use fans as a element and prop to help students find stylized movement. The movements should be done with a neutral face or students can always use a neutral mask during some of this work.

1.    I always get students to start with everyday gestures that have a symbolic aspect or are easily understood or ‘read’ but get students to do these actions slower than in real life and to hold them for longer. I get students to try ‘stop’, ‘come closer’, ‘be quiet’, ‘go away’ and ‘I love you’. Students then slow these gestures even more.

2.    Students then can be led to find ways to show emotions without using facial expression. The gestures should display or show the emotion in movement. Sometimes students find this difficult so I sometimes allow them to use facil expressions initially and then I get them to try to express the emotion without the facial expression. Some expression that work are: happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, disgust, shyness and madness (craziness).

3.    It is at this point that I get students to use a paper fan (cheap Chinese fans can be found for about $2.00). I ask the students to repeat some of the everyday movements and the emotions they did earlier to see which work with the fan. Read out the following words and students do actions for each word.

Words: Old, young, pond, frog, pond, light, moon flower, shadow, creep, forest, winds, rage and leaves. 古い、若い、池、カエル、池、光、月の花、影、クリープ、森、風、怒りと葉。

4.    Get into groups of three, four or five people.

3、4または5人のグループに入る。    

Come to the teacher and get a haiku poem.

先生に来て、俳句の詩を得る。

As a group, you are going to develop a short Noh drama based on haiku poem.

グループとして、俳句詩に基づいて、短い能楽劇を開発しようとしている。

One person should read the poem and the other people should act out or create movements for each line of the poem.

一人は詩を読んで、他の人が演じるか、詩の各行の動きを作成する必要があります。

Please use the fans to help create objects, things, animals or elements in your performance.

あなたのパフォーマンスオブジェクト、物事、動物または要素を作成するためのファンを使用してください。

Here are the haiku poems by the famous female haiku poet Chiyo-ni:

Chiyo-ni wrote her first haiku when she was seven years old. By the time she was seventeen, she was known all over the country. But she was not interested in celebrity; she wanted a simple life. One in which she could immerse herself in the beauty of the ordinary world.

morning glory

the well bucket-entangled,

I ask for water

Nature, stillness, lightness and simplicity. Emptiness, purity, clarity.  She wrote:

moonflowers —

the beauty

of hidden things

References and Resources for Women in Renaissance Drama

 Anderson, H.D. (2010). Female Agency in Restoration and Nineteenth Century Drama. [Graduate Thesis]. Retrieved May 19, 2017 from http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2559&context=etd

Barker, S. & Hinds, H. (eds.), The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama, Routledge, Abingdon (2003).

Biographium fæmineum - The female worthies: or, memoirs of the most illustrious ladies, of all ages and nations. Collected from history, and the most approved biographers, … In two volumes. London: printed for S. Crowder, and J. Payne; J. Wilkie, and W. Nicoll; and J. Wren, 1766.

Bowers, F. (1974). Japanese Theatre. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company.

Buck, C., ed. "Lumley, Joanna Fitzalan (c. 1537-1576/77)." The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature. New York: Prentice Hall, 1992. 764.

Costa-Zalessow, N. (2005), "Margherita Costa", in Albert N Mancini and Glenn Palen Pierce, Seventeenth-Century Italian Poets and Dramatists, Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning, pp. 113–18

Guccini, G. ‘Intorno alla prima Pazzia d’Isabella. Fonti-Intersezioni-Tecniche’. In Culture Teatrali, 7/8. autunno 2002-primavera 2003: 167-207.

Hays, M. “Isabella Andreini.” Female Biography; or, Memoirs of illustrious and celebrated women of all ages and countries (6 volumes). London: R. Phillips, 1803, vol. 1, 91-3.

Koren W. “Isabella Andreini.” Project Continua (June 17, 2013): Ver. 1 [Accessed Jan. 21, 2019], http://www.projectcontinua.org/isabella-andreini/.

La Croix, J. Dictionnaire historique portatif des femmes celebres. Paris, Chez L. Cellot, 1769.

MacNeil, A. (2003). Music and Women of the Commedia dell’Arte in the Late-Sixteenth Century. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.

Mazzoni, S. ‘La vita di Isabella’, in  L’arte dei comici. Omaggio a Isabella Andreini nel quarto centenario della morte (1604-2004), Numero speciale di Culture Teatrali, 10. primavera 2004: 85-105.

McIntosh, S. (2018). 8 Facts You didn't know about Women in Theatre. What's On Stage. London. March 8, 2018. Retrieved from

          https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/women-in-theatre-eight-facts_45974.html

O’Connor, K. & Williams, A. (2016). Aphra Behn and the Restoration Theatre Retrieved May 21, 2017 from http://writersinspire.org/content/aphra-behn-restoration-theatre

Pavoni, G. Diario descritto da Giuseppe Pavoni delle feste celebrate nelle solennissime nozze delli serenissimi sposi, il sig. don Ferdinando Medici, & e la sig. donna Christina di Loreno gran duchi di Toscana. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi, 1589.

Prusek, J. & Slupski, Z. eds. (1978). Dictionary of Oriental Literatures: East Asia. New York: Charles Tuttle Press. p.70-71.

Shoko, K. (2009). The Complete Guide to Traditional Japanese Performing Arts. Tokyo: Bilingual Books.

Valoroso, A. “Isabella Andreini.” Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803). Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, ed. Gina Luria Walker, Memoirs of Women Writers Part II. Pickering & Chatto: London, 2013, vol. 5, 117-19, editorial notes, 423-24.

Varley, P. (2015). Japanese Culture, 4th Ed. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. pp. 186-187.