Squeaking Cleopatras : the Elizabethan boy player / Joy Leslie Gibson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gibson, Joy Leslie.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Characters--Women.

Shakespeare, William.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Stage history--To 1625.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Child actors--Great Britain--History.

Child actors.

English drama--Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600.

English drama.

English drama--Early modern and Elizabethan.

History.

Great Britain--Social life and customs--16th century.

Great Britain.

Manners and customs.

Great Britain--Social life and customs--17th century.

Physical Description:

xiv, 222 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cm

Other Title:

Elizabethan boy player

Place of Publication:

Stroud : Sutton, 2000.

Summary:

That woman is a woman!' So thundered Simon Callow in the film Shakespeare in Love, thus underlining one of the great differences between our theatre and that of the Elizabethans where women were prohibited from appearing on the stage. In this highly controversial book, the first on the subject for over sixty years, Joy Leslie Gibson looks at the female roles in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama from the point of view of the boys who actually had to create these fascinating and dramatic parts.

Some scholars believe that the roles were too demanding to be played by adolescents. In examining in fine detail thirty-seven of Shakespeare's plays and thirty works by his contemporaries, such as Middleton, Dekker and Marston, Joy Leslie Gibson argues convincingly that they could have been performed by adolescents whose life experience was very different from that of English boys today, and considerably more brutal. Contesting that the emotions of the parts were written to be within the boys' range, discovering the age at which boys' voices broke, and demonstrating how the playwrights helped them by tailoring the parts to their vocal and emotional abilities, the author has produced original and stimulating ideas to support her argument.

Gibson considers the social position of women in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and how the boys would have been trained; she also discusses costume and the part cross-dressing played in Elizabethan society, which provides a piquant view of the times. Finally, she gives an inspiring account of why the convention of the boy player was acceptable.

Scrupulously researched, this ground-breaking book sheds new light not only on Elizabethan drama but also on society as a whole. It will be required reading for any lover of Shakespeare or anyone made curious by a visit to the theatre to see one of Shakespeare's plays.

Contents:

1 Education and Apprenticeships 13

2 To be a Woman 33

3 To be an Actor 55

4 The Anatomy of Speech 69

5 The Woman's Part 101

6 The Other Playwrights 121

7 The Children of St Paul's 145

8 The Children of the Revels 161

9 Boys will be Girls and Girls will be Boys 175

Appendix 1 Punctuation of Ophelia's Speech, Hamlet, Act 3 scene i, 'O, What a Noble Mind' 203

Appendix 2 The Sumptuary Laws 207.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-216) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0750924888

OCLC:

44604226