The Restoration Actress PDF

A Companion to Restoration Drama. Edited by Susan J. Owen. © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd....

A Companion to Restoration Drama. Edited by Susan J. Owen. © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 5 The Restoration Actress Deborah Payne Fisk English and Continental Actresses in the Seventeenth Century 'Women-Actors, notorious whores.' So reads an index entry to William Prynne's mad, rambling invective against the theatre, Histrio-Mastix, also known as The Players Scourge, or Actors Tragcedie (London, 1633). Prynne intones his strong feelings about 'women-actors', all of them, in his eyes, 'notorious impudent, prostituted Strumpets' (214), in dissonant keys throughout the volume. It was Prynne's bad luck that the publica- tion of Histrio-Mastix coincided with the appearance of Queen Henrietta Maria and her ladies-in-waiting in a court masque, Walter Montagu's Shepherd's Paradise. Since women were not permitted to act on the public stage, the Star Chamber assumed, not without reason, that Prynne targeted the thespian queen and her ladies. He lost the trial for libel and sedition and suffered an enormous fine, a year's imprisonment and the mutilation of his ears. Such was the state of theatrical (and political) affairs in England prior to the Civil War. As I'affaire Prynne suggests, attitudes towards women acting on stage were nothing if not schizophrenic. Noblewomen could perform in court theatricals and women and girls from 'good families' in private household entertainments. Milton, for instance, wrote the charming masque Comus to celebrate the Earl of Bridgewater's appointment in 1631 to the Lord Presidency of Wales; and it was understood that his daughter, the fifteen-year-old Alice Egerton, would play the part of the Lady. Commercial theatre, however, was until 1661 entirely forbidden to English women harbouring professional ambitions. This was not the case in most European countries. In Spain, women were performing professionally by 1587, nearly seventy-five years earlier than in England. Except for a short period in the 1590s when the Council of Castile banned women from the stage, actresses were an accepted, albeit regulated, part of Spanish theatre (McKendrick 1989: 49). Laws compelled actresses to be married, but the same demand was made of actors, who were expected to have their wives with them at all times, even on tour. 70 Deborah Payne Fisk In Italy, the commedia dell'arte — which featured women prominently in lozzi, a kind of improvisational skit - used actresses from the outset. The same was true of Italian opera, where female performers not only commanded a large following but made more money than the composers. Even Cavalli, who earned far more than other Venetian composers, received 300 scudi (or 450 ducats) for a commissioned opera, the same salary paid to an ordinary female singer. The very best singers would earn twice that amount, confirming that performers, especially women, were the most important members within the opera hierarchy (Rosand 1991: 223). The press further heightened the status of star performers. Anna Renzi, often considered the first 'diva', was extolled in a special volume published in her honour, Le glorie della signora Anna Renzi romana (Venice, 1644). The book features encomiastic poems, descriptions of her roles and a long laudatory essay that provides, in exquisite detail, an account of the diva's every note, word and gesture during performance. As Ellen Rosand notes, these singers, so beloved by their public, similarly exercised enormous power over the opera repertory: 'all of Renzi's roles were clearly tailor-made for her by composers and librettists intimately acquainted with her abilities' (1991: 233). In France, women acted in provincial theatre beginning in the late sixteenth century, travelling with the itinerant bands of players that roamed the countryside. Once the Confrerie de la Passion yielded the Hotel de Bourgogne - the only all- purpose playhouse in Paris - to the professional companies by the early seventeenth century, actresses found themselves welcome in the nation's capital as well. French women helped to establish companies: Madeleine Bejart founded the Illustre Theatre with Moliere in 1643. Actresses were shareholders within the companies; in 1665 they held five out of twelve shares in Moliere's troupe (Howarth 1997: 153). Samuel Chappuzeau, whose Le Theatre frangais (1674) provides an invaluable glimpse of the workings of the seventeenth-century French stage, claimed that 'both sexes share in the authority of their state, women being as useful as men, if not more so, and they contribute and vote on all matters of general concern' (Howarth 1997: 186). According to Chappuzeau, the high rate of intermarriage between actors and actresses accounted for the unusual degree of authority accorded to this particular group of early modern women. Roman Catholic nations, such as Italy, France and Spain, accepted actresses far sooner than Protestant nations did. England was not the only Protestant country to deny women access to the commercial stage: not until 1655 did a Dutch woman receive an appointment to act in the Amsterdam municipal theatre. Protestant suspicion of the stage - and particularly of the women acting on it - also surfaced in countries torn by religious wars. While theatre in Paris included famous Catholic clerics, such as Cardinal Richelieu and the Abbe d'Aubignac, among its apologists, Huguenot reformers cried down the sins of the stage, counting actresses foremost among iniquities. Jansenists, those Calvinist-minded Catholics, also attacked the theatre. Pierre Nicole made apparent his anti-theatrical sentiments in A Discourse against Plays and Romances (1672). Like Prynne, he considered actresses a particular abomination.  The Restoration Actress 71 In part, the Protestant suspicion of actresses can be attributed to the usual sanctions against display and ostentation, whether in everyday life or religious liturgy. Protest- ants and Catholics also disagreed on essential aspects of sin and redemption; and this divergence undoubtedly fuelled their respective attitudes towards female performers. Spectators in predominantly Catholic cultures, such as France, Spain and Italy, could view actresses - even lust after them - with relative impunity since, from the time of the Council of Trent, traditional Catholic theology defined sin as a human act requiring the exercise of both intellect and will. Since concupiscence, or desire, was considered part of human nature, it only posed a threat if reason or the will was overcome. While most theologians advised their flock to avoid temptations that might occasion sin, they nonetheless distinguished between desire and the deed itself. With regard to actresses, one might look but not touch. By contrast, the Puritan emphasis on sincerity - on a correspondence between the inner and outer self - rendered desire far more dangerous. As Jonas Barish observes, for the Puritan, 'all one's acts would be directly revelatory of one's essence' (1981: 94), thereby collapsing the Catholic separation between concupiscence and a sinful action. For this reason, Puritans also distrusted the actor's art of impersonation. The actor pretends to be other than himself, effectively participating in lies, and thus shatters the necessary correspondence between inner essence and outward manifestation at the core of Puritan belief. This peculiarly theatrical form of insincerity, which accounted for the traditional suspicion of performers, was especially damaging to actresses since it belied female chastity: how did one assess the purity of an actress personating an adulteress? If rendered convincingly, then logically the role must proceed from an inner moral flaw. The mutability essential to the actor's art was equally damaging to women. Actresses played queens, noblewomen and gentlewomen; they overreached social origins, transforming themselves on stage as they never could in real life. Actresses also used this protean ability to represent boys; and by violating the concept of absolute identity, they once again contravened the desired equivalency between inner self and outer manifestation. For Puritan moralists, as Barish notes, even distinctions of dress expressed essence and could no 'more be tampered with than that essence itself (1981: 92). In a traditional hierarchical society, such as seven- teenth-century England, a woman assuming male identity (and the concomitant masculine privileges) was far more threatening than a man putting on female identity. For once, the customarily prolix Prynne put it succinctly: 'Secondly, admit men- Actors in womens attire, are not altogether so bad, so discommendable as women Stage-players' (215). Differences in training, as well as in the organization of the acting companies, also kept English actresses from the stage far longer than their Continental sisters. Because European companies were based on a family model, actresses were seen through the bifocal lens of profession and kinship. The high rate of intermarriage between French actors and actresses sometimes resulted in a company where virtually everyone was related. Thus, an actress on the French stage was not merely an available young woman on display but part of a prominent family of actors. She was somebody's wife, 72 Deborah Payne Fisk sister, daughter or cousin; and that familiarity - and one might consider briefly the etymological overtones here - rendered her less dangerous. In Scarron's Roman comique, Mile de la Caverne describes how her social identity derives from this very fusion of family and profession: Ί was born a player, the daughter of a player whose parents have always said to have been in the same profession' (as cited in Mongredien 1969: 199)· In Italy, companies comprised of family members, such as the Gelosi or Fideli, dominated the early years of the commedia dell'arte. Within the commedia troupes, a tradition of training arose not unlike that in Kabuki or Noh theatre whereby parents trained their children - in this instance, daughters as well as sons - in the art of acting. The apprentice system that dominated the training of English actors prior to the Civil War made it virtually impossible for women to 'break into' commercial theatre. In the adult companies, boys entered their bonds between the ages often and thirteen, training for several years in women's parts before graduating to be hired men and perhaps even sharers (Gurr 1992: 95). The apprentice system in the early modern period was, of course, confined solely to men. Women did occasionally enter guilds, but their membership usually derived from the death of a husband. The other source of English actors came from the children's companies. Originally affiliated with the choir schools, such as St Paul's, the boy companies had by 1600 become commercial ventures. The boys were bound to the master of the company and their training, according to Andrew Gurr, appears to have been more rhetorical than that of the male apprentices in the adult companies (1992: 96). Like apprenticeship, the choir schools favoured boys exclusively. Women would have to wait until the Restoration to make their first appearance on the commercial stage. The First English Actresses The closing of the theatres for eighteen years between 1642 and 1660 eradicated these traditional avenues of entry into the acting profession. The boy companies, already unfashionable by the 1620s, were never revived after the Restoration; and the adult companies no longer existed as discrete entities to be reconstituted in full after 1660. The players who managed to survive the Civil War were absorbed into two new licensed acting troupes: the King's Company, headed by Thomas Killigrew, and the Duke's Company, headed by William Davenant. Because a theatrical culture had to be created immediately, the new managers could not afford merely to reinstate the 'old ways' - too many pieces were missing. Moreover, both Killigrew and Davenant had seen Continental innovations during their respective exiles abroad; and both men were eager to incorporate these innovations, including actresses, into the new com- panies. Standard accounts attribute the advent of actresses after 1660 either to Charles II's predilection for pretty women or to his years of exile abroad, when he saw women perform on the commercial stage. J. L. Styan, for instance, says that 'King Charles II  The Restoration Actress 73 was also responsible for the appearance of the actress on the English stage' (1996: 245). The original patent to Davenant and Killigrew (dated 21 August 1660) never mentions actresses, despite Styan and John Harold Wilson's claims to the contrary (1958: 4). Actresses are first mentioned in a petition dated 13 October 1660 in which Michael Mohun and several actors complain to the king that Killigrew suppressed all of their performances until 'wee had by covenant obleiged our selues to Act with Woemen a new Theatre and Habitts according to our Scaenes' (Bawcutt 1996: 235). More specific mention of actresses is made on 5 November 1660 in the 'Articles of Agreement between the players and Davenant' (Bawcutt 1996: 236). The articles stipulate that the actors who had been performing at Salisbury Court would, after one week's warning, 'remove and Joyne with the said Henry Harris and with other men and women prouided or to be prouided by the sd Sir W. m Davenant' (Bawcutt 1996: 238). The articles further give seven shares of the company to Davenant and his assigns in order 'to mainteine all ye Women that are to performe or represent Womens parts in the aforesaid Tragedies Comedies Playes or representacons' (Bawcutt 1996: 238). That both of these documents predate by a good fourteen months the revised royal patents issued to Davenant and Killigrew on 15 January 1662 - which do indeed mention actresses - suggests strongly that the request for actresses originated within the theatre companies, not the government. The revised patents repeat the language of the original documents and acknowledge the various concessions made by the two theatre managers that might justify their monopoly over the theatrical marketplace. The patents also give Davenant and Killigrew permission to employ actresses: And we do likewise permit and give leave that all the women's parts to be acted in either of the said two companies from this time to come may be performed by women, so long as these recreations, which by reason of the abuses aforesaid were scandalous and offensive, may by such reformation be esteemed not only harmless delights, but useful and instructive representations of human life, by such of our good subjects as shall resort to see the same. (Fitzgerald 1882, 1: 77) The language of morality notwithstanding - and reformist rhetoric frequently disguised the more pecuniary motives of the theatre managers - it is important to understand that the theatre managers considered actresses essential to modernizing the stage. In Killigrew's patent they are mentioned in the same breath with 'a new Theatre and Habitts'. Both theatre managers were admittedly self-conscious about theatrical innovation. Killigrew in 1667 boasted to Samuel Pepys how 'the stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious then ever heretofore' (8: 55). He went on to enumerate the improvements: wax instead of tallow candles, more civilized behaviour from spectators, nine or ten musicians rather than a paltry two or three fiddlers, no rushes tossed hastily onto the stage, even the king in attendance. Davenant's fascination with the latest theatrical novelties is similarly well docu- mented (Milhous 1979: 15-25, passim). The first actresses stepped onto the English 74 Deborah Payne Pisk stage because the two new managers wanted to surpass their predecessors and to rival Continental theatre, not because of morality and certainly not because of the more prurient interests of the monarch. Some critics question whether the new actresses had anything to do with a desire for heightened naturalism; the companies themselves, however, saw female performers as a marked improvement over earlier conditions of staging. In Thomas Jordan's A Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie (London, 1663) is the prologue he wrote for a revival of Othello on 8 December 1660, the first known appearance of an actress. In it he jokes about the average age of the actors, specifically the problem in having 'men act, that are between / Forty and fifty, Wenches of fifteen'. He also notes their inappropriate build: 'With bone so large, and nerve so incomplyant, / When you call Desdemona, enter Giant' (22). The prologue to an early revival of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist (n.d.) similarly worries about men personating women's parts: 'What? are the Fellows mad? / Who shall Doll Common Act? Their tender Tibs / Have neither Lungs, nor Confi- dence, nor Ribs' (London, n.d.). Even later in the Restoration, companies periodically threatened recalcitrant spectators with the grim prospect of boy actors. To the men in the audience who would seduce talented actresses away from the theatre, the epilogue to Nathaniel Lee's The Rival Queens (London, 1677) threatens: 'For we have vow'd to find a sort of Toys / Known to black Fryars, a Tribe of chopping Boys: / If once they come, they'l quickly spoil your sport' (65). Theatre traditions that cast boys in female roles typically use some sort of distan- cing device, be it spatial or stylistic, to overcome the inherent difficulties in having boys impersonate women. The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, one of the largest of the Greek theatres, seated upwards of 30,000. Even the much smaller theatre at Epi- daurus seated 6,200 spectators in 300 BC. A century later an upper landing would allow for over 12,000 spectators. The Hellenistic theatres were larger still. The Elizabethan playhouse, although intimate by the standards of ancient theatre, none- theless dwarfed the Restoration playhouse. A boy performing Cleopatra in the 3,000- person-capacity Swan or Globe might well succeed, particularly if we consider that even the groundlings, although pressed close to the stage, were positioned to see ankles better than faces. As we know from the reconstructed Globe theatre in London, spectators standing in the pit would have had to tilt their heads back since the stage was considerably higher than their natural sightlines. The Swan's stage was about 4 feet 8 inches high; the Red Lion was 5 feet high, roughly the same height as the Globe. If one contrasts these dimensions with the extraordinary intimacy of the Restoration playhouse - in the early years roughly the same size as a modern tennis court - the drawbacks to casting boys becomes apparent. Transvestite theatre traditions also use convention to create distance. In Asian and Greek theatre, stylized intonation - which obscures differences between male and female voices - shapes the delivery of language. The performers in Peking Opera chant an archaic dialect according to strictly codified rules, and Noh drama uses a fourteenth-century court dialect that was already remote by the seventeenth century. Elaborate costuming, make-up and masks designate the gender, class and occupation  The Restoration Actress 75 of the dramatic character. A convincing portrayal of a woman in Kabuki drama proceeds from an understanding of these conventions; and, indeed, spectators judge the actor's performance on how well he enacts a stylized representation rather than the behaviour one might expect from a 'real' woman. What we know of Elizabethan acting styles suggests they were similarly bound by convention; as Andrew Gurr notes, 'theatrical shorthand in the conventions of action that mimed the internal passion must have been essential to the Elizabethan actor' (1992: 103). Restoration theatre, by contrast, habitually emphasizes a social specificity that invokes everyday life and manners. Names of streets, taverns and fashionable locales saturate the dialogue of Restoration comedies, and spectators enjoy cosy jokes about coteries and cliques. Prologues and epilogues allude to contemporary events at court. Changeable scenery also encourages this sort of specific social identification. Although companies recycled painted flats from one production to another, a scene of the Pall Mall can only represent itself and therefore limits the sort of imaginative leaps possible in Shakespeare's wooden 'Ο'. This new commercial theatre of social specifi- city demanded a certain level of naturalism that rendered boy actors obsolete. Clearly, notable exceptions exist. In 1660, before actresses were permitted on the stage, Pepys claimed that the strikingly pretty Edward Kynaston 'made the loveliest lady' he had ever seen on stage (1: 224). According to Colley Cibber, ladies of quality were having Kynaston, 'so beautiful a Youth', accompany them in coach rides to Hyde Park (1968: 71). We might remember, however, that Pepys in 1660 had no basis for comparison: he had never seen a woman act and therefore might very well consider Kynaston the 'loveliest' stage woman to date. And Cibber's anecdote discloses the singularity of Kynaston's feminine beauty: court ladies, charmed by his prettiness, have him on display as an exotic, a sort of coveted pet, precisely because his looks were not typical of most boys. If one grants Davenant and Killigrew some degree of theatrical understanding, their desire to employ actresses from the outset in all likelihood proceeded from an intuitive grasp of the new conditions that obtained at the Restoration. Given these changes, it should not surprise that most actresses came from the 'middling ranks' where they would have acquired the social skills to represent a wide range of female characters. They needed, of course, to be literate; and literacy in the seventeenth century presupposed an education the poor could ill afford. Nell Gwyn's mother, according to contemporary lampoons, was reputed to be a prostitute or an orange woman (that is, a woman who made her living by selling oranges to spectators in the playhouse), but she was a notable exception. Women from titled families, the other end of the social spectrum, were equally rare. More typical were women like Rebecca and Anne Marshall, born to the chaplain to Lord Gerard and his wife Elizabeth, nee Dutton, the illegitimate daughter of John Dutton (Highfill et al. 1973-93, 10: 106). Mary Davis was either the illegitimate daughter of Colonel Charles Howard, son of Thomas, Earl of Berkshire, or the daughter of a blacksmith who lived near the Howard estate (Highfill et al. 1973-93, 4: 222). Elizabeth Barry, who would become the greatest actress of the Restoration stage, was born to the 76 Deborah Payne Fisk barrister Robert Barry. Anne Bracegirdle was the offspring of gentry fallen on hard times - in the words of Oldys, 'a gentlewoman of so good an extraction' (1814: 26). Sarah Cooke's mother was a vendor of herbs and her aunt was the governess of the maids of honour to the Duchess of York (Highfill et al. 1973-93, 3: 473). According to William Oldys, Anne Oldfield was 'on her mother's side... well descended' (1814: 3). Her father, who had a commission in the guards from James II, ran through his estate, leaving his widow and daughter in impecunious circumstances. Colley Cibber claimed that Charlotte Butler was the daughter of a 'decay'd Knight' (1968: 93). Most actresses were born - at least those we know about - to 'respectable' families, but a decline in family fortunes (and with it, the prospect of a good marriage dowry) necessitated some form of employment. The daughter of a barrister might resent going into service, but becoming an actress eluded these class overtones, precisely because it was an anomalous social space, one that had never before existed in England. Women made their way to the stage through several avenues. Several cryptic references to 'nurseries' - acting schools for the young - crop up during the first two decades of the Restoration. Very little is known about them, including whether or not they trained girls as well as boys (Van Lennep 1965: xxxviii-ix). William Oldys recounts two instances of actresses discovering fledgling performers. Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle took such a liking to Mary Porter's portrayal of the fairy queen at Bartholomew Fair, they insisted Betterton admit her into the company. Thereafter, adds Oldys, 'they treated her with the most tender indulgence' (1814: 55). Margaret Saunders, whose acting career was cut short by a 'very violent Asthmatical indis- position', was brought to Drury Lane by Anne Oldfield (Oldys 1814: 143). Most women hoping to act had to apply first hand to one of the two houses, a procedure parodied in Henry Neville Payne's comedy, The Morning Ramble, or, the Town-Humours (London, 1673). Merry and Townlove, two rogues on the lam, intend to liberate four 'Gentlewomen' arrested by the Constable and Watch. The fourth woman of the group claims she is 'a very good Gentlewoman both born and bred; I am a Presbyterian Ministers Daughter', one who has a great mind to be a Player, and have offer'd my self to both Houses, and truly most of the sharers have had me severally at their Chambers to try me, and they all say, I do very well; but 'tis the Envy of the women already there, that fearing I should out-do e'm, keep me out, as I was told by two or three of the hired men of the Duke's House, with whom I have been to Night, and spent all my money, but I do not doubt to find Friends to bring it about, for there are two or three Persons of Quality have undertaken it. (25) This passage reveals something of the urgency felt by young women hoping for a career on the stage. This erstwhile minister's daughter has spent money, perhaps even bestowed personal favours, upon shareholders (who would have had particular influ- ence) and then 'hired men' (the full-time actors). That avenue exhausted, she none- theless believes friends will 'bring it about', including 'two or three Persons of  The Restoration Actress 77 Quality'. This final statement discloses the other means of gaining employment in the theatre: through recommendations or introductions. Nobility, of course, were espe- cially influential in this regard. Charles II recommended Charlotte Butler to the Duke's Company (Cibber 1968: 93^4). The Earl of Rochester supposedly put forth Sarah Cooke's name to the King's Company (Highfill et al. 1973-93, 3: 474); and, in an often-told but perhaps apocryphal story, asked Davenant to reinstate Elizabeth Barry after she had undergone tutoring at the Earl's country seat (Oldys 1814: 1 5 - 17). Whatever the means of access, Payne's comedy suggests that by 1673, competi- tion for places was keen. The Daily Life of the Actress Actresses worked very hard for their wages. Customarily, the players laboured six days a week for roughly thirty-five weeks out of the year. They rehearsed in the morning, performed at the playhouse in the afternoon, and sometimes acted again at Whitehall in the evening. The repertory system placed additional demands on their 'spare' time. Frequent revivals of what the prompter John Downes called 'Old Stock Plays', that is, plays written before the Civil War, in addition to productions of new plays meant that actresses were constantly memorizing lines (Downes 1968: 8). Their mnemonic abilities must have been considerable. Revived plays rarely kept the boards for more than two or three days, the same run expected for a new play of middling interest. If a new production proved popular with audiences, it might run for over a week, as did Thomas Shadwell's The Sullen Lovers (1668), which was performed for twelve consecu- tive days (Wilson 1958: 35). Both companies mounted between forty and sixty productions each season. Given these numbers, an actress could expect to perform several roles over the course of a month, in addition to singing and dancing if the play or the entr'acte entertainment asked it of her. In the early years of the Restoration, these demands must have seemed especially onerous to the inexperienced actresses, and Pepys mentions several performances that were 'wronged by the womens being much to seek in their parts', a complaint that lessened over time (2: 8). Previous theatre historians have averred that 'the women's wages were significantly lower than the men's', a statement based solely on the salary disparity between Elizabeth Barry and Thomas Betterton (Howe 1992: 27). Given the historic imbalance between male and female salaries, one might very well infer that seven- teenth-century actresses were also underpaid, but such an inference differs from a stated 'fact'. Betterton and his wife Mary Saunderson, another leading player with the company, jointly earned £5 weekly to Barry's 50J, which means that individually all three players earned the identical salary (Pepys 2: 4 1 , n. 4). As Betterton's career progressed, he acquired responsibilities that would account for additional monies. After Davenant's death in 1668, Betterton co-managed the Duke's Company with Mary Davenant. Betterton went on to manage the United Company in 1682 and Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1695. Additionally, he taught young actors and functioned as a 78 Deborah Payne Fisk 'Monitor in a Schole to looke after rehearsalls' (Milhous 1979: 28). Without extant Restoration account books, it is difficult to know salary ranges conclusively. Barry's weekly salary of 50J appears to be commensurate with the wages paid to senior actors, according to An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, one of our few sources of infor- mation. Unpaid for the first nine months of his apprenticeship, Cibber went on salary at IOJ weekly. A hireling would expect to earn between 30J weekly, as Cibber did in 1694-5, and 4 0 J weekly, as did Thomas Dogget in 1693 (Van Lennep 1965: ciii). The maximum salary was 50J weekly. As Judith Milhous notes, even after 1700 'the annual salary for a senior actor amounted to something between £80 and £150' (1979: 14). Actresses, like actors, could earn more money if they were talented. The theatre manager Thomas Killigrew declared to Pepys that 'Knipp is like to make the best actor that ever came upon the stage, she understanding so well. That they are going to give her 30£ a year more' (8: 55). If an actor eventually held one share in the company, he might expect to augment his salary by roughly £66 a year, assuming the theatre took in an average of £35 a day (Milhous 1979: 14). There is some evidence to suggest that prominent actresses had become shareholders by the late 1670s. In the prologue to Durfey's The Virtuous Wife (London, 1679), the great Restoration actress, Elizabeth Barry, pouts that 'Underhil, Jevan Currier, Tony Lee, I Nokes, all have better Characters than me' (A2r). Barry threatens to 'throw up her Parts' until dramatists write her better roles, but, soothed by Nokes and Leigh, ultimately decides against losing her 'share' in the company (A2V). Certainly by 1695 actresses were active shareholders: Anne Bracegirdle, Eliza- beth Barry and Elizabeth Leigh held three shares of Lincoln's Inn Fields to the men's five shares. Actresses also earned extra money from the annual benefit performance given in their honour; on 28 September 1668, Pepys records that 'Knepp's maid comes to me to tell me that the women's day at the playhouse is today, and that therefore I must be there to encrease their profit' (9: 320). The company benefit died out as the individual benefit performance became more popular towards the end of the century. According to Cibber, it was Elizabeth Barry who 'was the first Person whose Merit was distinguish'd, by the Indulgence of having an annual Benefit-Play, which was granted to her alone, if I mistake not, first in King James's time, and which became not common to others, 'till the Division of this Company, after the Death of King William's Queen Mary' (92). Actresses contended with the indignities besetting any performer: indifferent (or hostile) audiences, loutish admirers and vocal critics. The Lord Chamberlain's records contain numerous proclamations against backstage tumult. Although the proclam- ations periodically banned 'persons of quality' from going into the attiring rooms or behind the scenery, abuses persisted (Wilson 1958: 28). Obsessive fans, then as now, could terrify or degrade an actress. Rebecca Marshall, who was employed at the King's Company, had particular trouble in this latter regard. In 1665 she complained to the Lord Chamberlain of being molested by one Mark Trevor 'as well upon the Stage as of[f}' (Highfill et al. 1973-93, 10: 107). The following year a ruffian, probably hired by Sir Hugh Middleton, flung faeces in Marshall's face and then disappeared (Highfill  The Restoration Actress 79 et al. 1973- 93, 10: 107). A far more disturbing occurrence happened in 1692 to Anne Bracegirdle when she refused marriage from Captain Richard Hill, an ardent fan. Her suitor blamed William Mountfort, another actor in the company, for his failure. After an unsuccessful attempt at abducting Bracegirdle, Hill ran his sword through Mountfort - who did not even have time to draw. Mountfort died the following day, and Bracegirdle, deeply shocked by the turn of events, stayed away from the theatre for nearly three months (Highfill et al. 1973-93, 2: 272). Because of their equivocal social status - half servant and half professional - actresses were prey to the darker impulses of their superiors. This was equally true for actors. Pepys on 20 April 1667 recounts a dispute between Edward Howard and John Lacy that became violent. The diarist marvelled that Howard, who had received 'a blow over the pate' from Lacy, 'did not run him through', but concluded the actor was 'too mean a fellow to fight with' (8: 173). Pepys records another incident on 1 February 1669 involving Edward Kynaston. Sir Charles Sedley, deeply affronted by Kynaston's impersonation of him in a play, hired 'two or three that assaulted him - so as he is mightily bruised, and forced to keep his bed' (9: 435). It was a week before Kynaston could act again. Nobility sometimes used performers as pawns in court feuds. Katherine Corey, who had imitated Lady Harvey's mannerisms in a revival of Jonson's Catiline, found herself imprisoned by the Lord Chamberlain (Pepys 9: 415). The Countess of Castlemaine, no friend to Lady Harvey, sprung Corey from prison and, according to Pepys, ordered 'her to act it again worse then ever the other day'. To be fair, some of the performers invited enmity. Lacy had already been committed to the porter's lodge and the King's Company temporarily shut down because of his inflammatory performance in Edward Howard's A Change of Crownes. Nonetheless, Lacy cursed the playwright - a member of the eminent Howard clan - saying 'he was more a fool then a poet', thus precipitating the ensuing quarrel (Pepys 8: 173). And while violence can never be condoned, one wonders how much Rebecca Marshall contributed to the problems with Trevor and Middleton. She was nothing if not obstreperous. Pepys reports a screaming match in which Marshall called Nell Gwyn 'my Lord Buckhursts whore' (8: 503). On 16 January 1668 a Hannah Johnson went to court against Marshall for reasons unknown; the following year, on 5 November 1669, Marshall sued the theatre concessionaire ('Orange Moll') for abusing her. On 18 May 1672 Marshall was again embroiled in a dispute, this time for debt (Highfill et al. 1973-93, 10: 107). Hardly a paragon of restraint herself, it should not surprise that Marshall clashed with women and men alike, including her admirers. Taken in isolation, these few incidents depict the theatre as a very grim place indeed, the attiring rooms a virtual maze of predatory suitors and the stage door a haven for violent misfits. Contemporary accounts, however, convey the pleasures the theatre held for actresses and actors. Because of its collective nature, the theatre has always been an especially social milieu; and Pepys records numerous instances of actresses chatting, bantering and flirting, often assuming a raucous air that unnerved the poor diarist utterly. At one point he professed to be shocked by 'how lewdly they talk', but in the next breath admitted that 'to see how Nell cursed for having so few 80 Deborah Payne Fisk people in the pit was pretty' (8: 463). At moments such as these, Pepys appears torn between propriety and defiance, perhaps even enjoying a vicarious moment of con- tumacy through the brassy Nell Gwyn. In his diary we also glimpse something of the easy camaraderie typifying the theatre: Pepys sitting backstage, happily munching on fruit given to him by Nell Gwyn while running lines with Elizabeth Knepp for her role in Flora's Vagaries (8: 463). Arguably, the theatre gave seventeenth-century women an unusual degree of freedom, including the freedom to be impudent. The very social fluidity that sometimes resulted in problems with their 'betters' had its flip side in providing actors and actresses an entree to elite circles denied to more established professions. For Colley Cibber, this was one of the great attributes of the acting profession - that the actor is 'receiv'd among People of condition with Favour; and sometimes with a more social Distinction, than the best, though more profitable Trade he might have follow'd, could have recommended him to' (52). Had they been 'eminent Mercers' or 'famous Milliners', queries Cibber, 'though endow'd with the same natural Understanding, they could have been call'd into the same honourable Parties of Conversation?' (52). In rare cases, a man might 'make a name for himself that would allow upward mobility later in life, should he desire such a thing. It is difficult to imagine a seventeenth-century milliner, even the most 'famous' of her profession, as Cibber observes, entering the drawing rooms of London as a social equal. Women customarily derived their social rank (and the accompanying privil- eges) from their fathers, husbands or lovers. Acting was singular among the occupa- tions available to women insofar as it permitted them to enter polite society on the basis of individual achievement and consummate skill. Actresses and the Repertory It would take several years to develop a new generation of playwrights capable of imagining parts for flesh-and-blood women rather than the piping boys of the Renaissance stage. In the meantime, the stock of pre-Commonwealth plays - the Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher - that entered the Restoration repertory were reworked to produce suitable roles for women. As Michael Dobson notes, 'the other factor which transformed the pre-war corpus, equally affecting the unadapted repertory no less than the adaptations which it often stimulated, was the advent of the female player' (2000: 45). Lines were added and characters were adjusted to accom- modate the new actresses. When the number of female roles in an 'Old Stock' play were insufficient, they were created, as occurred with several of the Shakespeare plays adapted for the Restoration stage. In Thomas Shadwell's redaction of Timon of Athens (London, 1678) the roles of Evandra, played by Mary Saunderson Betterton, Melissa, played by Ann Gibbs Shadwell, and Chloe were created anew. Shadwell does far more than toss the actresses a few additional lines: he creates a tense rivalry between Evandra and Melissa that requires subtle manoeuvring and emotional expression. The respective characters are  The Restoration Actress 81 sketched vividly, giving Mrs Betterton and Mrs Shadwell splendid possibilities for theatrical display. Evandra, who has pledged herself to Timon without benefit of marriage, speaks movingly of her plight early in the play and then shows her single- minded devotion in the final acts. Melissa, who regards her admirers as little more than acquired baubles, exults in her various schemes. The addition of female charac- ters not only softens the misogynist tone of the original script but also deepens Timon's character, giving him an opportunity to exhibit more finely nuanced emo- tions than unthinking generosity or raving anger. John Dryden and William Davenant similarly added female characters to their redaction of The Tempest (1667): Dorinda, a second daughter to Prospero, and Sycorax, sister to Caliban. The role of Hippolito, according to the prologue, was also per- formed by an actress because of the 'dearth of Youths' in the Duke's Company, as was Ariel. Dryden and Davenant created several new speeches for the characters, including exchanges in which Prospero's daughters describe meeting men on the island for the first time. They express their desire more forthrightly than the retiring Miranda in Shakespeare's original script, but Prospero still keeps the lovers apart 'lest too light / Winning make the prize light' (3.5.40-1). Nahum Täte, in his notorious reworking of King Lear (1681), enlarged the role of Cordelia for the superb Elizabeth Barry and invented the part of Arante, a servant. By creating a romance between Cordelia and Edgar, Täte hoped to render her 'Indifference and her Father's Passion in the first Scene probable'. In these few examples emerge some of the dramatic possibilities occasioned by the presence of actresses. Old scripts had to be rewritten or enlarged to accommodate women in the two acting companies, but dramatists also seized the opportunity to use additional female characters to 'improve' the plays. While one might grimace at Tate's final product, his intention is perfectly understandable: to give Cordelia and her father sufficient motivation for their opposition in the opening scene (a scene which even today bedevils directors and actors). The expansion of Cordelia's role not only gave Barry more to do on stage but also allowed Täte to 'solve' a critical problem in the play. Dryden and Davenant's decision to award a second daughter to Prospero, in addition to the creation of Hippolito, permitted them to tackle another textual difficulty: Prospero's irritable, curmudgeonly behaviour. This device gives Prospero several opportunities to answer humorously Miranda, Dorinda and Hippolito's eager questions about the opposite sex. Of men, Dorinda exclaims, Ί would stroak 'em and make 'em gentle, / Then sure they would not hurt me', to which Prospero quips, 'You must not trust them, Child: no woman can come / Neer 'em but she feels a pain full nine Months' (2.4.109-12). The overall effect is to soften the edges of his character, making Prospero's decision in 5.2 to bury all past crimes 'in the joy of this / Blessed day' less precipitous than in the original script. When revising the old repertory and penning new plays, playwrights inevitably confronted issues of sexual and psychological difference. Much has been made of the 'novelty of the female body as a specular and frequently disempowered object' on the Restoration stage (Rosenthal 1996: 207). Breeches roles - which proliferated in the 82 Deborah Payne Fisk period - are thought to be little more than visual peep-shows, the form-fitting pants showing off rounded calves and slim ankles. Other critics have stressed the staging of sexual violence against women, especially 'a new emphasis on the representation of rape' (Marsden 1996: 185). Certainly the spectacle of the suffering virtuous woman, popular in the tragedies and pathetic plays of the 1680s and 1690s, depended upon a female interiority that was associated with the body: bared breasts, dishevelled hair, terrified eyes. Plays such as Aphra Behn's The Rover (1677), Thomas Otway's The Orphan (1680) or John Dryden's Amphitryon (1690) all, for instance, include scenes of ravishment. There is also, as Jean I. Marsden observes, a voyeuristic element: 'these scenes present rape as both violent and intensely erotic' (1996: 186). Other critics consider the prologues and epilogues to plays, which actresses from the 1670s on delivered in increasing numbers, as little more than advertisements for their sexual availability (Howe 1992: 98; Rosenthal 1993: 4-5). Some of these generalizations need to be qualified. Prologues and epilogues treated an enormous range of subjects; actresses delivering these set pieces bantered with audiences, scolded critics, castigated unresponsive spectators, promoted the play, defended the writer and debated politics. Given that some 1,200 prologues and epilogues are extant from 1660-1700, and that no more than 2 per cent eroticize the actress, it strains credulity to characterize them as sexual advertisements for available females. A prologue delivered by an actress before Charles II, perhaps in the spring of 1672, suggests that the 'sexually available actress' was more of a theatrical convention than a reality: We are less careful, hid in this disguise; In our own Clothes more serious, and more wise. Modest at home, upon the Stage more bold, We feign warm Lovers, tho our Breasts be cold. For your diversion here we act in Jest; But when we act our selves, we do our best. (Waller 1690: 53) What one finds in the prologues and epilogues from this forty-year period, as might be expected, is the actress performing a variety of social and theatrical functions. To appease hostile audiences a young girl might deliver the epilogue, as happened with Otway's Don Carlos (London, 1676): 'Yonder's the Poet sick behind the Scenes: / He told me there was pity in my face, / And therefore sent me here to make his peace' (67). At other moments, the actresses took a far more martial stance on behalf of the poet or the play. Mrs Lee (Lady Slingsby), still in her disguise as a soldier, 'Offers to Draw' against anyone damning Settle's The Conquest of China by the Tartars (A4r). Elizabeth Barry, who played the Woman Captain in Shadwell's play of the same name, functions as his champion, declaring she will 'assert his cause' (A4r). Sometimes the actresses made apparent their differences with the men in the acting company, as occurs in the prologue to John Smith's Cytherea (London, 1677). The actress playing  The Restoration Actress 83 Venus, who 'descends in a Chariot drawn by Doves', declares 'The Lady-Players say this Author's Pen / Writes something worth my pains - but not the men' (A3r)· At other moments they advocated partisan politics, as did Mrs Cook in the epilogue to Southerne's The Loyal Brother (London, 1682). During the Exclusion Crisis, Elizabeth Barry proved an especially popular speaker of partisan prologues and epilogues. And actresses were fully capable of directing ribaldry against men in the audience or even their fellow actors, taunting their sexual insufficiency. Barry, in the epilogue to Lee's Lucius Junius Brutus (London, 1681), tells the men, 'Know we have born your impotence too long' and then mocks their 'monstrous Judgment' in regard to the stage. They are, according to Barry, like a fumbling old keeper, full of 'midnight storming / For your all talking, and your noe performing' (74). Rebecca Marshall in the prologue to Killigrew's The Parson's Wedding (London, 1672) reveals the actresses have 'prevail'd again' upon the poet 'to give us our Revenge upon the men' in the company: 'Our tricks, our jelting hath been often told, / They nere were tax'd for impotent, and old' (3). The representation of sexual violence against women, while abhorrent, existed well before the Restoration period. Jacobean theatre, as recent studies have shown, revelled in violence against women. The presence of actresses did not suddenly give birth to stage violence against women; but actresses did make possible a more physical, less abstract, representation. This is true of Restoration drama in general, which tends to underscore the materiality of the female body, as if to emphasize the authenticity of the actress playing the part. The prologue to the Dryden/Davenant Tempest warns the audience that the actress playing Hippolito will not be transformed into a woman at the end of the play. If spectators want 'To find her woman, it must be abed', presumably after the performance proper. In William Wycherley's The Plain Dealer (1676), which borrows elements from Twelfth Night, Fidelia's femininity is established when a stage direction stipulates that Vernish 'pulls off her peruke and feels her breasts' (4.2.379). Female authenticity is also underscored when male charac- ters itemize delectable body parts; for instance, in Sir George Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676), Medley catalogues Harriet's attributes for Dorimant in an oft-cited passage:... a fine, easy, clean shape; light brown hair in abundance; her features regular; her complexion clear and lively; large, wanton eyes; but above all, a mouth that has made me kiss it a thousand times in imagination - teeth white and even, and pretty, pouting lips, with a little moisture ever hanging on them, that look like the Provins rose fresh on the bush, ere the morning sun has quite drawn up the dew. (1.1.126-33) Only a theatre that employs actresses can sustain such repeated references to women's breasts, lips and shoulders, even their scent; significantly, theatre traditions that use boy actors to play female roles tend to produce scripts that direct the spectator's focus away from an embodied specificity to an abstracted ideal. This is equally true of male roles. Plays written for the Greek, Noh or Renaissance stage 84 Deborah Payne Fisk simply do not have speeches detailing the glories of the male or female body in erotic or highly physical terms. Even Cleopatra, the most lusty of Shakespeare's women, expresses her sexual longing for the absent Antony in terms of his body's movement, not the particularized body itself: 'Stands he, or sits he? / Or does he walk? or is he on his horse? / O happy, happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!' (1.5.19-21). A theatre of female impersonation cannot afford the implicit comparison between a material, 'authentic' male body and an artificially represented female body; thus, the language of Greek or Noh drama directs the viewer towards the manifestation of movement or emotion - what the body produces, not what it is. Even on the Renaissance stage, playwrights are chary of physical description that might overly emphasize the reality of the boy actor rather than the fiction of the female character he impersonates. Perhaps the best-known moment of physical cataloguing occurs in Twelfth Night when Olivia haughtily lists her glories for Viola: 'item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth' (1.5.233-4). Notice the implicit androgyny of this description: necks and chins rather than breasts, grey eyes rather than a woman's soft curves. Red lips remain the only specifically gendered body part; and their colour is easily remedied by stage make-up. Even this description is unusual; Shakespeare typically refrains from writing passages that call attention to the appearance of his female characters. We know, for instance, very little about the features of comic heroines such as Portia, Rosalind, Viola, Hermia and Helena. When a character, such as Lady Macbeth, makes explicit the femininity of her body, she does so in the past tense or in a conditional clause. Of the 'babe' Lady Macbeth nursed in the past, she 'would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / And dashed the brains out' (1.7.56-8). These lines encourage the spectators to imagine a lactating female body that relates to the boy actor impersonating Lady Macbeth through memory only. In Restoration theatre, an insistent emphasis on the female, as well as the male body, accentuates sexual difference. Nemours in Nathaniel Lee's The Princess of Cleves (London, 1681?) enumerates to Marguerite the most tantalizing bits of her body: 'a skin so white and soft', 'beauteous dimples', 'hands, arms, and breasts', and 'pleasures that must be without a name' (4.1.166-70). The play also eroticizes the male body. Tournon entices Celia and Elianor - both bored with their husbands - with the prospect of two lovers, the first who 'has eyes as black as sloes - you can hardly look on 'em - and a skin so white, and soft as satin with the grain', and the second with 'such a straight bole of a body, such a trunk, such a shape, such a quick strength' (2.2.166- 71). To ensure that Celia will put this male body to good use, Tournon underscores its sexual prowess: 'He will over anything he can lay his hand on, and vaults to admiration' (2.2.172-3). Indeed, male characters in Restoration plays are often rated in fairly harsh physical terms, particularly the older men who would secure young attractive wives. In Thomas Otway's The Soldiers' Fortune (London, 1680), Lady Dunce, forced to marry Sir Davy seven years earlier by her parents, endures Sylvia's description of the 'charming animal', her husband:  The Restoration Actress 85 Tis an unspeakable blessing to lie all night by a horse-load of diseases - a beastly, unsavoury, old, groaning, grunting, wheezing wretch, that smells of the grave he's going to already. From such a curse and hair-cloth next my skin, good heaven deliver me! (1.2.6-10) Lady Dunce goes her friend one better, pointing out Sir Davy's 'incomparably odious' person, his stinking breath ('one kiss of him were enough to cure the fits of the mother'), his fondness for garlic and chewing tobacco, and his penchant for wearing fouled linen (1.2.35-41). Actresses also affected the subject matter of new plays. Jean I. Marsden contends that because of actresses, Restoration drama 'devoted new attention to the subjects of family, love and marriage, a development closely linked to the definition of women as inhabitants of the private or domestic sphere and their exclusion from the public world of politics and commerce' (1991: 43). This shift to love and domesticity found expression in dramatic forms such as tragicomedy or the pathetic play. Comedy registered the impact of actresses quite differently, as plays showed - sometimes in uncomfortable detail - dissatisfied wives married to doddering, philandering or just plain cruel husbands. Female desire was expressed explicitly in plays like Wycherley's The Country Wife (1675), Thomas Durfey's A Fond Husband (1677) or Aphra Behn's The Lucky Chance (1686); and female characters often claim for themselves, at the very least, the right to choose husbands, if not sexual partners should the husband fail to please. Hellena's injunction to her sister in Behn's The Rover — 'let's ramble' - with all of its sexual overtones, serves as a slogan for the lively heroines who grace these comedies. Playwrights wrote parts that played upon the particular strengths of actresses within the companies. Some actresses became known for a particular kind of role and had a clear impact on the evolution of dramatic form. Nell Gwyn, reputedly weak in tragedy, nonetheless possessed comedic skills so impressive that playwrights scrambled to show them off in the 'gay couple' comedies written in the 1660s. Gwyn performed with her lover Charles Hart in several such plays: James Howard's All Mistaken (1665) and The English Monsieur (1663); Richard Rhodes's Flora's Vagaries (1663); the Duke of Buckingham's redaction of Fletcher's The Chances (1667); and Dryden's Secret Love (1667). Sometimes parts were fashioned to appearance; as actresses aged, they moved into different kinds of roles. Of Elizabeth Bowtell, Edmund Curll, in The History of the English Stage (London, 1741), says 'she was low of Stature, had very agreeable Features, a good Complexion, but a Childish Look. Her Voice was weak, tho' very mellow; she generally acted the young Innocent Lady whom all the Heroes are mad in Love with' (21). Several times she was coupled with Rebecca Marshall, who played the villainess to Bowtell's innocent. After 1670 Mrs Bowtell turned to a wider range of parts befitting her maturity: cuckolding wives and tragic heroines, especially meek, virtuous women caught up in larger forces, such as Cyara in Lee's The Tragedy of Nero (1674). For versatile actresses, playwrights wrote a wide range of roles. Mary Lee (later Lady Slingsby) would throughout her career play 86 Deborah Payne Fisk virginal ingenues or martial women, for instance, Eugenia in Edward Howard's The Six Days Adventure (1671) versus Amavanga in Elkanah Settle's The Conquest of China by the Tartars (1676). Elizabeth Barry, the most famous actress of the late seventeenth- century stage, excelled in tragedy, but her abilities were such that she could play almost anything, from ingenue, to jealous mistress, to villainess, to wife or widow. Some Final Thoughts It is something of a commonplace that society regarded actresses to be little more than whores, a topic I have addressed elsewhere (Payne 1995: passim). Suffice it to say that attitudes ran the gamut of opinion. As might be expected, the authors of acerbic lampoons accused actresses of promiscuity and, in some cases, of trading sex for money. Robert Gould, Tom Brown and the anonymous lampooner who wrote The Session of the Ladies (London, 1688) all attacked the actresses in the nastiest of terms. Gould in The Play-House, A Satyr characterizes the actresses thus: 'All Paint their Out- sides and all Pox within' and 'Divested of the Robes in which they're Cas'd, / A Goat's as sweet, and Monkey's are as Chast' (Summers 1964: 311). The Session of the Ladies describes 'chestnut-maned Boutell, whom all the Town fucks' (2r). The vitriol of these writers, as I have argued especially in regard to Robert Gould, may very well have proceeded from their own embattled position in the literary marketplace, a position that structurally paralleled the actresses' (Payne 1995: 19-22). Whatever the motive, whether jealousy or spleen, lampooners and satirists indulged the childish pleasure of attacking their victims through sexuality. That some actresses, like Nell Gwyn or Moll Davis, left to become mistresses is indisputable. To say that only one-quarter of the eighty known actresses led 'what were considered to be respectable lives' (Howe 1992: 33) or that 'the actresses' sex lives really were fairly unorthodox' (Maus 1979: 602) seems quaintly Victorian. Social historians, such as Lawrence Stone, have shown that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 'unmarried English women enjoyed what was by European standards a quite exceptional freedom to conduct their own courtship rituals', which included, up to the gentry, the choice to 'grant limited or even full sexual favours to their suitors' (1995: 12). Most of the actresses who reportedly enjoyed sexual freedom were not 'kept' in the manner of a Nell Gwyn but, like Elizabeth Barry, continued to work and earn their livelihood over a long career. Others, like Mary Saunderson Betterton, Elinor Leigh or Anne Gibbs Shadwell, were married to fellow actors or playwrights. The Session of the Ladies may very well have touted Bowtell's sexual infamy, but her will tells quite a different story: she died a rather grand old lady (Milhous 1985: 130-1). Bowtell married into respectable gentry (and, indeed, her own family, as indicated by the estate of a maternal uncle, were also decidedly well off). Whether or not she benefited from the generosity of lovers, as Curll alleged, is simply unknown. She did profit from various family inheritances. Mrs Bowtell acted sporadically over a twenty- five-year period; after retiring from the stage in 1696, she appears to have lived a  The Restoration Actress 87 comfortable country existence in Middlesex. When Bowtell died in 1715, she left an estate worth over £800 that included, among other things, East India bonds, lottery orders, a 100-guinea ring, silver, china and a portrait of a sister (replete with the family coat of arms). She requested burial in Winchester Cathedral 'in the manner I have ordered it to my Executrix' (130). Because so little material evidence exists for seventeenth-century actresses, we risk gross generalizations on the basis of a few scraps of scurrilous writing. Bowtell's will hints at a woman eminently concerned with the trappings of respectability, a far cry from the town slut enshrined in The Session of the Ladies. Perhaps, like Moll Flanders, Bowtell sowed her wild oats in youth and acquired gentility later in life (although her stolidly gentrified origins suggest otherwise). Whatever Bowtell's trajectory, the theatre afforded her and other women the freedom to earn a living, to have lovers, to enjoy themselves. That very autonomy may have been what so threatened the satirists; within the local culture of the theatre, the actresses were admired for their professionalism. It should not surprise that the highest praise comes from play- wrights, fellow actors and early chroniclers of the theatre. Dramatists were especially fulsome. Thomas Shadwell, whose play The Humorists (London, 1671) had 'met with the clamorous opposition of a numerous party', not to mention poor acting, credits Mrs Johnson with its rescue: 'This of mine, after all these blows, had fall'n beyond Redemption, had it not been revived, after the second day, by her kindness (which I can never enough acknowledge) who, for four days together, beautified it with the most excellent Dancings that ever has been seen upon the Stage' (Van Lennep 1965: 178). William Joyner praised Mrs Bowtell's performance as Aurelia in The Roman Empress (London, 1671), 'which, though a great, various, and difficult part, was excellently performed' (A2V). Dryden, in his preface to Cleomenes, echoed 'what the Town has generally granted, That Mrs. Barry, always Excellent, has, in this Tragedy, excell'd Herself, and gain'd a Reputation beyond any Woman whom I have ever seen on the Theatre'. Thomas Southerne in the dedication to Sir Anthony Love (London, 1691) commended Mrs Mountfort's interpretation of the eponymous hero: 'as I made every Line for her, she has mended every Word for me; and by a Gaity and Air, particular to her Action, turn'd every thing into the Genius of the Character' (A2r). In the preface to The Comical History of Don Quixote, Part II (London, 1694), Thomas Durfey extolled Mrs Bracegirdle's performance of Marcella ('so incomparably well sung and acted... that the most envious do allow, as well as the most ingenious affirm, that 'tis the best of that kind ever done before') and praised Mrs Verbruggen's 'extraordinary well acting' in the role of Mary the Buxom (Van Lennep 1965: 436). Despite claims that the actress's sexuality 'became the central feature of her professional identity as a player' - supposedly a preoccupation of contemporary critics - early accounts of the theatre focus far more on an actress's talent on the stage than her skill in the bedroom (Howe 1992: 34). Often cited is John Downes's inimitable quip about Moll Davis's charming delivery of a song raising 'her from her Bed on the Cold Ground, to a Bed Royal' (24) as well as his equally memorable remark how Mrs Davenport, Mrs Davis and Mrs Jennings 'by force of Love were Erept the Stage' (35). 88 Deborah Payne Pisk Less remarked is the praise he bestows throughout Roscius Anglkanus on the skill of actresses: of Davenant's The Rivals, 'all the Womens Parts admirably Acted' (23); of Dryden's Sir Martin Mar-all, 'All the Parts being very Just and Exactly perform'd', especially 'the last Act at the Mask, by Mr Priest and Madam Davies' (28); of Betterton's The Woman Made a Justice, 'Mrs. Long, Acting the Justice so Charmingly; and the Comedy being perfect and justly Acted, so well pleas'd the Audience, it continu'd Acting 14 Days together' (30); of Otway's The Orphan, the part of Monimia (as well as the roles of Belvidera in Venice Preserv'd and Isabella in The Fatal Marriage) 'gain'd her the Name of Famous Mrs. Barry, both at Court and City; for when ever She Acted any of those three Parts, she forc'd Tears from the Eyes of her Auditory, especially those who have any Sense of Pity for the Distress't' (37-8); of the Dry- den/Lee Oedipus, 'This Play was Admirably well Acted; especially the Parts of Oedipus and Jocasta: One by Mr. Betterton, the other by Mrs. Betterton (37); of Betterton's The Amorous Widow, Mrs Betterton performed her role 'so well, that none Equall'd her but Mrs. Bracegirdle' (30); of Durfey's Don Quixote, 'Mrs. Bracegirdle Acting, and her excellent Singing in't' (45); and of Congreve's The Way of the World, 'Madam Brace- girdle performing her Part so exactly and just, gain'd the Applause of Court and City' (45). Colley Cibber echoes similar accolades for Elizabeth Barry, Mary Saunderson Betterton, Elinor Dixon Leigh, Charlotte Butler, Susanna Percival Mountfort Ver- bruggen, Anne Bracegirdle and Anne Oldfield, listing their finest roles and noting their particular gifts. William Oldys, Edmund Curll and other early chroniclers of the stage devote the bulk of their pages to acting, not to sexual gossip. When as historians of the theatre we focus critical attention on the actress's 'specularized body' to the exclusion of her artistry, we merely reinscribe the salaciousness of a Robert Gould. To uncover 'unconscious structures' of oppression is one thing; to overlook evidence that calls into question easy stereotypes quite another. Breathing life into words in a way that convinces and moves audiences has always posed a challenge, even for the most skilled of performers. That actresses lacking a tradition of training could so quickly master the notoriously difficult demands of Restoration language should command far more attention than is credited. The distinguished actor Simon Callow observes that Restoration comedies demand the most exhausting kind of acting: sustained thinking. Shakespeare with his glorious word-music and the unfailing pulse of his rhythms provides the actor with an emotional wave; the lines have a sort of momentum which bears you along with them. They give you energy. But Restoration comedy demands that the brain, as well as the heart and senses, of the actor is fully engaged. These plays live in the play of ideas, which can only be achieved by thinking through each line. (1991: 13-14) 'Thinking through each line' suggests some of the creative work Restoration actresses performed. While Restoration acting styles, especially in tragedy, might  The Restoration Actress 89 seem excessively mannered to modern eyes, performers nonetheless did then what they have always done: use their artistry to make audiences believe them. Given the cool, analytical quality of many Restoration comedies, the challenge for actors and actresses to use their intellect as well as their emotions was particularly great. Nonetheless, Betterton's remark of Barry, that Ί have frequently observ'd her change her Countenance several Times as the Discourse of others on the Stage have affected her in the Part she acted', or Southerne's comment of how Mrs Mountfort 'by a Gaity and Air, particular to her Action, turn'd every thing into the Genius of the Character' show just how successful the better performers could be. Moreover, these examples also underscore the dynamism of Restoration acting: the performers were not just talking heads who stood and declaimed in 'tones'. Both actresses perform a verb that completes the dramatic action: Barry 'changes' her countenance as she responds to other actors, and Mountfort 'turns' the gaiety arising from the action into character- ization. Actresses who take their art seriously - and from all evidence, most Restor- ation actresses did - exert and control performance energy. They pace language in such a way as to balance spontaneity with predictability; they accelerate or decelerate events, building them into a coherent sequence; and they fill space so that ordinary movements assume extraordinary significance. Actresses are active agents who 'do' something to the script to make it come alive in performance; they are not merely specularized, sensationalized or otherwise sexualized objects. By its very nature, acting could not but give early modern women a sense of agency: the chance to earn money, the freedom to have pleasure and, above all else, the power to do things with words. NOTES 1 I too fell into the trap of assuming that wages were lower for actresses by not double-checking Howe's source for this statement when I was writing a previous article on actresses. See Payne (1995: 17). Maus similarly claims that 'all the evidence suggests t h a t... actresses were never as numerous or as well-paid as their male colleagues' (1979: 600). 2 Laura J. Rosenthal contends that 'The Restoration Tempest demonstrates a high degree of self- consciousness about the gender of the actors and confronts the erosion of earlier forms of patriarchal authority' (1996: 208). Both of these assertions are highly questionable. Rosenthal locates self- consciousness about gender in the 'sexually indefatigable Hippolito', concluding that 'while Pros- pero's daughters comically and seductively discuss their cravings for a husband, Ferdinand battles Hippolito over his (her) uncontained desires' (ibid.). Because Hippolito was played by an actress, probably Jane Long, this character is read as manifesting unbridled female desires - desires so dangerous they must be murdered by Ferdinand. Nowhere in the dramatis personae is it specified that the role be performed by a woman; as the prologue makes clear, the paucity of young male actors (cleared out because of the Second Dutch War) necessitated the casting of a woman in the role, a substitution they were 'forc'd to'employ'. In effect, Rosenthal reads the conditions of a particular performance, not the script. Furthermore, extension of the same logic would dictate that every desiring female on the Renaissance stage would in actuality be expressing male passion since the roles were played by boys. As for the erosion of 'patriarchal authority', Prospero stage manages the action 90 Deborah Payne Fisk as much in this version as in the original, including the meetings between his daughters and their suitors. 3 In my previous article, I stated that fewer than 1 per cent of prologues and epilogues 'mention either the sexual availability of the speaker or actresses in general' (Payne 1995: 23). If the category of 'sexual availability' expands to include innuendo - for instance, a speaker's remark about her enticing legs - then the number swells to 2 per cent. REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING Barish, Jonas (1981). The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bawcutt, N. W. (ed.). (1996). The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels 1623-73. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Callow, Simon (1991). Acting in Restoration Comedy. New York: Applause Theatre Books. Cibber, Colley (1740; 1968). 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Howe, Elizabeth (1992). The First English Actresses: Women and Drama 1660—1700. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. McKendrick, Melveena (1989). Theatre in Spain 1490—1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marsden, Jean I. (1991). 'Rewritten Women: Shakespearean Heroines in the Restoration', in Jean I. Marsden (ed.), The Appropriation ofShakespeare: Post-Renaissance Reconstructions of the Works and the Myth. New York: St Martin's Press, 43-56. Marsden, Jean I. (1996). 'Rape, Voyeurism, and the Restoration Stage', in Katherine M. Quinsey (ed.), Broken Boundaries: Women and Feminism in Restoration Drama. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 185-200. Maus, Katharine Eisaman (1979). '"Playhouse Flesh and Blood": Sexual Ideology and the Restoration Actress', ELH 46, 595-617. Milhous, Judith (1979). Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields 1695—1708. Carbon- dale: Southern Illinois University Press. Milhous, Judith (1985). 'Elizabeth Bowtell and Elizabeth Davenport: Some Puzzles Solved', Theatre Notebook 39, 124-34. Mongredien, Georges (1969). Daily Life in the French Theatre at the Time of Moliere, trans. Claire Eliane Engel. London: George Allen and Unwin. [Oldys, William] (1814). The History of the English Stage. Boston: William S. & Henry Spear. Payne, Deborah C. (1995). 'Reified Object or Emergent Professional? Retheorizing the Restoration Actress', in J. Douglas Canfield and Deborah C. Payne (eds), Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-century English Theater. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 13-38.  The Restoration Actress 91 Pepys, Samuel (1970-83). The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Rosand, Ellen (1991). Opera in Seventeenth-century Venice: The Creation of a Genre. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rosenthal, Laura J. (1993). 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