Women on stage

Beatrice, Cleopatra, Rosalind, Portia, Lady Macbeth – just five of Shakespeare’s many strong female characters. But how did Shakespeare’s audiences see these amazing women come to life?

How were female characters portrayed on stage during Shakespeare’s time?

Women weren’t allowed to act on stage in Shakespeare’s time. So when you went to the theatre to watch Juliet sighing over Romeo or Rosalind and Celia fleeing through the Forest of Arden, you were watching boys or young men in dresses.  

There were no laws which explicitly forbade women from acting. Oxford University Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Emma Smith says: “We don’t know exactly why women were not allowed to perform … there is no formal prohibition, there is no legal problem. It seems to be one of those cultural norms that’s so ingrained that nobody needs to tell anyone to do it and nobody needs to challenge it.”

Josette Simon as Cleopatra (2017), Niamh Cusack as Lady Macbeth (2018) and Meera Syal as Beatrice (2012)
Photos by Helen Maybanks, Richard Davenport, Ellie Kurtttz © RSC Browse and license our images

Gender switching in Shakespeare’s plays

It’s become common to see traditionally masculine roles in Shakespeare’s plays portrayed by women - around 1839 the American actor Charlotte Cushman played Romeo to her sister's Juliet, and Sarah Bernhardt famously performed Hamlet in Paris and London in 1899, then on film in 1900.

And several of Shakespeare's plays make gender switching a key part of the plot, also highlighting the inequalities of power in his society.

There are a few examples of men pretending to be women in Shakespeare’s plays:

  • Francis Flute, one of the Mechanicals, plays Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • Bartholomew dresses as a woman to confuse Christopher Sly in The Taming of the Shrew
  • Falstaff dresses as ‘the fat woman of Brentford’ to avoid Ford finding him in his wife’s house in The Merry Wives of Windsor

But by far the bigger examples, with characters switching gender for large sections of the plays, involve women pretending to be men. They include:

  • Portia and Nerissa pretend to be lawyers (Balthazar and his clerk) in the courtroom scene in The Merchant of Venice – they can be taken seriously, and use their intelligence to resolve an impossible situation
  • Rosalind pretends to be Ganymede in As You Like It – this allows her to be safer in the forest with her cousin, Celia, than if they were two women
  • Viola in Twelfth Night becomes Cesario so she can work for the Duke
  • Innogen dresses up as a boy, Fidele, to travel to her exiled husband in Cymbeline
  • Julia pretends to be Sebastian so she can travel safely to Milan in The Two Gentlemen of Verona
A woman with blonde hair dressed in a man’s clothes.
Letty Thomas as Rosalind in As You Like It, when the character pretends to be a man, Ganymede (2024)
Photo by Marc Brenner © Browse and license our images

 

Were it not better,
Because that I am more than common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man?
A gallant curtal-ax upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand, and in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will,
We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside—
As many other mannish cowards have
That do outface it with their semblances.

Rosalind, As You Like It, Act 1, Scene 3

These examples show that Shakespeare’s female characters had good practical reasons to pretend to be men – they could travel safely, find work and be taken seriously by men. Power and protection seem to be the main reasons why women would cross-dress.

In Shakespeare’s time this meant that men playing the parts of women who are dressing as men. Or men pretending to be women pretending to be men, if you prefer.

It’s also been suggested that, by making his female characters pretend to be men Shakespeare was making life easier for his actors – they could relax into performing their own gender. And that, at a time when there would have been major consequences to 'cross-dressing' in public, the stage gave them a unique opportunity to do just this without any repercussions.

 

Conceal me what I am, and be my aid
For such disguise as haply shall become
The form of my intent. I'll serve this duke:
Thou shall present me as an eunuch to him

Viola in Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1

Woman dressed as a man in a shirt and trousers with a man in a smart grey waistcoat and trousers, his arm around her shoulder
Gwyneth Keyworth as Viola, disguised as Cesario with Bally Gill as Orsino in Twelfth Night (2024)
© Helen Murray Browse and license our images

Women in the theatre

Women may not have been allowed to act on the stage, but that didn’t mean that theatres were exclusively male.

The costumes were sewn by women and as the theatre industry developed and costumes, wigs and make-up all became more elaborate, increasing numbers of women were drawn to find their livelihood from the stage.

Influential women, such as Ellen Burbage, wife of actor and theatre impresario James and mother to Richard, renowned actor and business associate to Shakespeare, were involved in the business side.

And women came to watch the theatre (defined by their accessories), described by Shakespeare's contemporary, Ben Jonson:

The wise and many headed bench
That sits upon the life and death of plays, is
Composed of gamester, captain, knight, knight's man
Lady or pucelle, that wears mask or fan,
Velvet or taffeta cap, rank'd in the dark,
With the shop's foreman, or some such brave spark,
That may judge for his sixpence.

Ben Jonson, Underwood

Clare McManus, Professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Roehampton

“What we think of as the all-male stage really is now just the stage, because these performers are surrounded by women working in the building, taking money, providing costumes, working in the finances of theatre. We know now that women build theatres… that women owned theatres.”

Women in performance

Women didn’t act in plays during Shakespeare’s time, but that didn’t mean they didn’t perform. There is evidence that women were involved in many other types of performance:

  • Court masques – men and women portraying classical or mythic figures, with elaborate costumes and scenery. Women wouldn't speak, but they would hold poses, make choreographed movements or dance 
  • Street performers – often acrobats and aerialists who toured the country. For each new town they needed a license to perform, so we know in the 1630s a woman, Sisley Peadle, was performing with the Peadles
  • Rope dancers – similar to a trapeze, swinging, dangling and performing feats of daring from ropes, there are records of two young girls performing in theatres in Bristol

In other parts of Europe women were allowed to perform, particularly in Italy. The first woman in Europe to sign a theatrical contract was Lucrezia Di Siena for the Commedia dell’arte in Rome in 1564, which stated that she could sing, do declamation (performing a speech) and play music for the company.

The situation changed in England in 1662 when King Charles II issued a royal warrant that from now ‘women rather than boy actors were to play all female roles.’ Two years later, in 1664, a young Nell Gwynn became an orange girl at London’s Drury Lane Theatre, making her first stage appearance the following year. By the end of the decade she was the mistress of the king who had made her career possible.

Nell Gwynn was one of the earliest actresses and mistress to Charles II, who announced that women should be playing female roles on stage
© RSC Browse and license our images

Want to find out more?

‘Women Performers in Shakespeare's Time’ - Professor Clare McManus took part in this podcast about female performers, with the Folger – you can listen or read the transcript.

‘Invisible but influential: women and the theatre in Shakespeare’s time’ - Professor Emma Smith gave a lecture about women – you can watch the lecture in full or read a short article about it.

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