ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the problems posed to early twentieth-century audiences by the sexually and politically transgressive elements of The Maid’s Tragedy, while offering close analysis of the roles of Evadne and Aspatia, as imagined separately by Beaumont and by Fletcher. In considering four key productions of the play, by the Mermaid Society (1904), the Play Actors (1908), the Phoenix Society (1921) and Renaissance Theatre (1925), the chapter places them firmly within the contexts of the companies that mounted them, examines their critical reception and concludes by comparing the performances of Sybil Thorndike and Edith Evans as Evadne.
