I here and there o'heard a Coxcomb cry,
Ah, rot--'tis a Woman's Comedy.
Thus Aphra Behn ushers in a new era for women in the British
Theatre (Sir Patient Fancy, 1678). In the hundred years that were
to follow -- and exactly those years that Curtain Calls examines --
women truly took the theater world by storm.
For each woman who chose a career in the theater world of the
eighteenth century, there is a unique tale of struggle, insult,
success, good or bad fortune, disaster, seduction, or fame. Whether
acting, writing, reviewing, or stage managing, women played a
major, if frequently unacknowledged, role in the history of the
theater from the late seventeenth through the early nineteenth
centuries. From Alpha Behn's earliest plays through the glorious
celebrity of Sara Siddons, women molded the taste of the age and
carved out in the theater one of the few available opportunities
for independence and renown.
Not all the women who tried succeeded, of course, and even the best
faced opposition as they challenged the male stronghold of
playwriting and theater managing. Curtain Calls maps the new
territory as these pioneering women staked it for their own; it
chronicles their lives, their triumphs, and their losses.
We begin with Aphra Behn, whose first play was staged in 1670, and
conclude in the early decades of the nineteenth century with
Inchbald and Siddons. The one hundred and fifty years encompassed
by their lives contain the careers of dozens of lesser-known women,
a network, as Dr. Johnson would have it, encompassing both talent
and tribulation.
Contributors include: Edward Langhans, Linda R. Payne, Pat Rogers,
Maureen e. Mulvihill, Deborah Payne, Betty Rizzo, Ellen Donkin,
Frances M. Kavenik, Jessica Munns, nancy Cotton, Edna L. Steevs,
Doreen Saar, Jean B. Kern, Katherine M. Rogers, Constance Clark,
William J. Burling, Judith Phillips Stanton, Douglas Butler, Rose
Zimbardo, and the editors.
General
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