Analyze the way in which the value of theatre (or a particular aspect of theatre) changed in two historical periods that you have studied on this course.
In considering this question I intend to focus on a specific aspect of theatre, the change in the role of women in theatre. What makes this topic fascinating is the fact women’s status in society and women’s status in theatre have had a different timeline. In simpler terms, theatre foreshadowed society. The first woman playing a female character appeared on a UK stage in 1660, but women only got the right to vote in 1918.
The obvious first choice of historical period would be Greece. It is the period that defined the foundations of European theatre. Greek theatre excluded women in the same way that Greek society did. As clearly put by Aristotle in his book Poetics, “There is such a thing as a good woman and a good slave, even if one of these is perhaps inferior, and the other base.” In Poetics a lot Aristotle’s ideas still resonate today, but this quote is shocking by todays standard. The second period I will use is the seventeenth century. The importance of this period is that it was the century where women were allowed to play their own gender on stage. It also the century during which plays by female playwrights gained acclaim.
The Greeks represented woman in theatre without actually including them, “The Greeks believed that allowing women to perform publicly would be too dangerous and that having men portray them neutralized the danger.” [ref The Harvard Gazette July 17, 2003 Online report https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2003/07/when-men-were-men-and-women-too/]
One thing the Greek period and the seventeenth period shared is they both had strong female characters, but in Greek plays women were often stereotyped. Women at the Thesmophoria is one of the eleven surviving plays written by Aristophanes. This comedy is a parody of Athenian society and features women annoyed at how they are portrayed in plays by Euripides and plotting revenge. It is a play of a man dressing as a woman to find out what women are complaining about. This shows insight into how woman were being treated in society, but also illustrates the absurdity of a man being disguised as a female to try infiltrate a group men playing the parts of women. During this play this is used to heighten the comedic and farcical aspects of this comedy. It isn’t attempting to validate or enhance the role of woman in society, but rather making fun of it.
One interesting difference between the two periods is the evolution of men playing women, to boys playing women and finally to women playing their own gender. At the start of the 17th century the use of boys playing female roles began to explore a more androgynous approach to these roles, which was the first indication as to what the future might hold. It’s fascinating how this small change breathed new found life into theatre merely by changing the age of the male playing the role. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, it almost makes logical sense for a young boy to play a thirteen-year old girl. In the play Juliet remarks, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” Which echoes the irony of a male playing a female role.
While there are strong female characters in the plays of ancient Greece such as Electra in the Sophocles play of that name and Medea by Euripides, neither approach the rounded intensity of Lady Macbeth (first performed at the start of the 17th century in 1606). Like Electra and Medea, Lady Macbeth is a strong, manipulative and inherently villainous character but she is far more believably female. Anna Jameson provided a perfect description of Lady Macbeth as compared to Medea:
“The gothic grandeur, the rich chiaroscuro, and deep-toned colours of Lady Macbeth, stand thus opposed to the classical elegance and mythological splendour, the delicate yet inflexible outline of Medea.” [ Shakespeare’s Heroines. Anna Jameson. London: George Bell & Sons, 1897.]
Lady Macbeth is not a traditional representative of a female Shakespearean character but is one of his best. She also throughout the play makes reference to her ‘female’ anatomy such as, ‘Come to my women’s breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers’ Which seems odd when this would be coming from a young boy rather than a woman. This then puts the question, why Shakespeare did this? Why did he write fully formed female characters knowing they would be played by boys? If he really wanted woman performing his plays he could of done so, or maybe, constrained by society, he wrote his plays knowing that woman would one day be playing these roles.
Europe was ahead of London in terms of putting women on stage, but the first attempt to introduce such ideas in London was a complete failure. In 1629 a troupe of French actors of both male and female, were booed off the stage for merely having women in the act. In the UK in the seventeenth century the civil war helped to change the public opinion of women in theatre. Restoration drama was born after the civil war in 1642 forced the theatres to close for eighteen years. It was given its name after Charles II was reinstated as king of the United Kingdom. During the Restoration period it gave an immense increase to equality between the genders. On the 8th of December in 1660 a thirty-year-old woman named Margaret Hughes took to the stage for the first time in history. She played Desdemona in Killingrew’s production of Othello in the Verre street theatre. She was the first English woman to perform on an English stage[ref] .
The seventeenth century was also the time when women were recognized as professional playwrights. The most famous of female playwrights at the time was Aprha Behn [ref], who wrote political plays. Even though her views were against the monarch at the time, after her death she was buried in Westminster Abbey. The Female Wits were a trio who produced many works for the stage. Mary Pix, Catherine Trotter and Susannah Centlivre wrote nineteen plays including the critically acclaimed ‘A Bold Stroke for a Wife’. But all of this progression came with a negative side too. Many of the new actresses became mistresses off powerful people. Margaret Hughes and Nell Gwinn were both mistresses to King Charles II, and Elizabeth Barry was mistress to the Earl of Rochester. The image of female actors being immoral lasted for centuries.
One thing that didn’t change between the two periods was the number of female roles in theatre. Shakespeare said “all the world is the stage, and all the men and women merely players” this quote is from his play As you like it, which is Shakespeare’s has the highest percentage of female lines at fourty percent. In most of Shakespeare’s plays female roles are heavily outnumbered male roles. Of all 981 characters in Shakespeare’s plays only sixteen percent were woman. In his play Timon of Athens only 0.67% of lines belonged to a female character. In comparison, within Sophocles’ plays, one of the main playwrights from Greece, seventy-three percent of the overall lines were male roles and only twenty-seven percent were female roles.[ the guardian article] While this is similar to Shakespeare, Sophocles achieved something that Shakespeare never did, write one play with mostly female lines – Electra has seventy-seven percent of lines spoken by female parts.
In summary, the role of women in theatre changed dramatically between the time of the ancient Greeks and the 17th century. Ancient Greece had woman characters in theatre but no actual females ever performing. Then in the 17th century women took to the stage and female playwrights had their work published and publicly credited. This improved status of women in theatre occurred centuries before women’s role in society approached equality. Based on the slow but steady increase of equality between genders over the last few centuries there should be complete equality in theatre now. Sadly, it’s not. Men still hold most directorial positions and male actors are employed much more frequently than women. Only twenty four percent of directors 2011/12 were women and taking into account the whole creative team (directors, designers, sound designers, lighting designers and composers) twenty three percent were women.[Guardian report]. Between June 2016- 2017, the top ten highest-paid actresses earned a combined 172.5 million dollars, but the top ten male actors earned 488.5 million dollars.[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/heres-how-much-more-actors-earn-than-actresses.html] The Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film investigated and found that women made up only 12% of lead roles in 2014’s top-grossing films and make up less than a third of all speaking characters. It seems we may just have to wait a few more centuries for there to be equality in theatre.