The Vere Street Desdemona: Othello and the Theatrical Englishwoman, 1602-1660

In 1996, Ann Thompson considered women’s relationship to early modern theatre. Inspired partly by Elizabeth Howe’s First English Actresses, Thompson focused on the Restoration stage but argued for further research into the traditions of women’s theatricality prior to 1660. Seventeen years on, the early modern theatrical woman has become an established focus of critical interest. The grip of the ‘all-male stage’ on the history of early modern theatre has loosened, and the criticism offers an implicit challenge to periodicity: the identification of a tradition of English women’s performance in the century preceding the Restoration suggests that the Restoration actress is no longer a ‘first’, no longer an exception to a hitherto unbroken rule....