Lecture 2 - The Shakespearean “Actress”: From Boys to the Female Beauty

The great female roles in the Shakespeare canon - from Rosalind and Viola, to Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth - were all originally played by men. His roles for young female lovers would have been taken by the boy apprentices and the tradition of cross-dressing was a cultural norm. Only later in the seventeenth century did women work professionally on the London stage and it was many years before the reputation of the ‘actress’ was positively established. The Shakespearean actresses who became popular with audiences alongside their male colleagues such as Garrick gradually established their own celebrity status. Sarah Siddons was arguably the first “star” performer, she carefully guarded her offstage reputation and slowly but surely, the role of the actress gained acceptance and status in society. Later, performers such as Sarah Bernhardt began to push the boundaries of the traditional repertoire playing leading male roles including Hamlet, and by the late nineteenth century Ellen Terry had ensured that the “Heroines of Shakespeare” were firmly in the female canon.