Women on stage

Pop-Up Globe’s director Rita Stone has a misapprehension that Shakespeare’s plays were written “for men because it was illegal for women to go onstage.” It was never illegal, no such law existed — only the informal but powerful law of public moral beliefs and violent disapproval. Legislation was unnecessary because of the iron-clad social perception in Britain that for women to appear publicly on a stage would be a signal of their unacceptable immorality.

In 1629 a French theatre company came to tour Britain.

As was the norm in France, the company featured actresses playing the female roles.

Outraged British audiences greeted the women’s entrances with massed hissing and hurling rotten vegetables. The company left and went back to France.

In 1660, when audience morality had become slightly more flexible, the firstever public theatre performance by a British woman occurred — when Margaret Hughes played Desdemona.

Shakespeare had then been dead for 56 years — having only seen Desdemona, Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Rosalind, and Cleopatra always played by men.

Two years after Margaret Hughes’s Desdemona, a relevant law did come about.

By 1662 Charles II had been on the throne for a year and he loved going to the theatre. King Charles made a chartered law in 1662 (which still exists and can be seen) forbidding male actors to play female roles.

Max Cryer, Three Kings.