Question about men playing female roles in Shakespeare's times?

Question

I read tonight about how women weren't allowed to act in Shakespeare's times and so younger men dressed up as girls. Is this for real? What about kissing and stuff in the romances that Shakespeare wrote? I wouldn't have thought that would be allowed either back then. Does anyone know about this?

Answer 1

It was allowed. However, thespians were considered a "special" type of people, and so anything they did that seemed out of the ordinary was simply standard procedure for them, and the people didn't mind much. Don't forget, this goes back to a time before political correctness.

It is for real. It would usually be the younger, or the more effeminate men. Some sources state that men were even castrated so that they could continue to play female roles after maturing into puberty.

Another interesting fact: in many of the death scenes, to make it more realistic, actors would actually be killed onstage. Again, we are going back to a different time, where things that are taboo to us were commonplace for them.

Answer 2

Most kissing, etc. that you see today in Shakespearean drama is modern interpretation. Very little of that would have been done, then.

As far as the Puritans go, they were not in control of theatre. When they ruled England (Commonwealth), they outlawed theatre. There were women actors, even professionals, as far back as the early medieval Mystery and Morality plays; but, they were often considered "common" because of the nature of performance and the close quarters with men, etc. Thus, women weren't usually crowding forward to be actresses until beyond Shakespeare's day. It was just simpler all around to have all male casts. And the all male casts lends itself even more to the bawdiness of some of the comedy. Which is fun.

Answer 3

The city fathers, those who made the rules, were Puritans and felt that women should not be in the theater. Thus any role written as a female would be played by the younger, more effeminate actors. A kiss on stage has to be so over acted (so that the audience could see it) that there was nothing erotic about it. And don't forget, Thespians have never been bound by the rigid morals and rules of society, treating them more as 'guidelines'

Answer 4

"Stage Beauty" is a film with Billy Crudup that covers the period just after the Reformation when theater was being re-introduced to England and Shakespeare was performed, however it does show men playing women. I believe "Shakespear in Love" also goes into this.

Yes, boys played women onstage, which is why you see so many women adopting male disguises in Shakespeare. No, the actors were not killed onstage. It would make it kinda difficult to recruit new actors, wouldn't it?

Kissing was overly dramatized; I doubt anyone locked lips during the Elizabethan era onstage.

Answer 5

It was the time period. Theater was a male dominated society. Shakespeare in Love is ALL about this.

I guess you could trace it all the way back to the Greeks.

Think about all the women writers who had to have men's names.

I"m not positive, but I think it was true for Chinese and Japanese theater too.

The culture even up to the early 1900's, many of the dancers and ballerinas were just a few steps from being whores in that society. Just think of the Can-Can.

Answer 6

They were the original DRAG queens---dressed as girl.
You should see Shakespeare in Love and or Stage Beauty depending on your age. Or you could try the novel idea of reading some history of English theatre. Actually this casting occured in other societies, too.

Answer 7

During that time, young men would play the female roles...completely. They would kiss and do everything required of the part. This got even MORE complicated in plays like Twelfth Night and As You Like It, because both heroines had to dress up as boys. You get the drift.

Answer 8

Everyone else pretty much covered this topic for you, and very well, I might add.
I do have to clear up something Nicole B said. Actors in Shakespeare's time did not kill each other during death scenes. They acted the deaths, just the way they do today. I don't know where Nicole got her information, but she is wrong.
D

Answer 9

You are correct, men used to play the roles of both the men and women in all the plays.

Kissing wasn't done hardly as much in productions back then as it is now. It would've been more scandalous in those times to have let a woman be kissed by a man who wasn't her husband, in public no less.

Answer 10

rent stage beauty. its all about this