Women on the Renaissance Stage

Download or read book Women on the Renaissance Stage written by Clare McManus and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work reassesses women's relationship to performance in early modern England. It investigates the staging conditions, practices and gendering of Anna of Denmark's performances, bringing current critical theorisations of race, class, gender, space and performance to bear on the female courtly body in dance, staging, scenery, costume and make-up in the Jacobean court. The study establishes a tradition of early seventeenth-century female performance which constitutes a trajectory for the emergence of the professional Restoration female actor. Anna of Denmark, wife of James VI of Scotland/James I, was a great patron of Ben Johnson, among others.