ABSTRACT
Although the early modern English actors on the Continent were exclusively male, several important types of non-performing women were closely associated with them. This chapter looks at some of the actors’ wives and other female dependants, their female spectators, and businesswomen who, independently or in partnership with their husbands, provided touring actors with essential support services such as loaned costumes, temporary lodgings and playing venues, or financial backing. According to Jane Tylus, the strategy which first made professional actresses possible was the Italian troupes’ recognition of domestic doorways and windows as acceptable onstage spaces for female performers: spaces which in effect punctured the boundary between actors and their audiences. Tylus persuasively argues that ‘the theatre of windows introduces female spectatorship onto the stage in such a way as to allow the woman to transform traditional passivity into manipulative action’.1 English players, no less aware of the economic importance of appealing to female audiences, pursued very different strategies from those of the Italians. In order to gain a licence to play in any particular city, travelling troupes had to submit a signed supplication to the Mayor and Councillors. It was customary for itinerant actors to stage a complimentary performance for them, sometimes rewarded with a donation, before the civic authorities decided whether to grant a licence, and if so, on the permitted level of entrance fee and length of playing season. A rare surviving printed programme for such a performance by a German troupe sets the tone by recording that the ‘Badischen Compagnia Comœdianten’ staged their translation from Brandt’s Dutch tragedy of Der Verstellte Torqvatus on 17 January 1670, for the:
well-and high-born, severe, also noble, steadfast, respected, great and prudent Masters, the Elders, Mayors, and all the honourable magistrates, of this, the Holy Roman Imperial City of Ulm. Most humbly dedicated and presented in honour of our merciful, gracious and highly generous masters, with our lowly thanks for the great favour we have received […] We live in the humble hope that your Noble Excellencies will not reject this expression of our humble gratitude, but will accept it with official grace,
attend it together with your beloved relatives, forgive any weaknesses or mistakes, and not deny us your future affection.2
