Includes bibliographical references (pages 177-192) and index.
Contents:
Introduction -- 1. Playing for Money: 'This is certainly a large sum but I can assure you I have worked very hard for it' -- 2. Playing the Passions: 'All their Force and Judgment in perfection' -- 3. Playing Men: 'Half the men in the house take me for one of their own sex' -- 4. Playing Herself: 'It was not as an actress but as herself, that she charmed every one' -- 5. Playing Mothers: 'Stand forth ye elves, and plead your mother's cause'.
Summary:
"Over the course of the eighteenth century notions of what it meant to be a woman changed radically and through examining the work of actresses including Anne Oldfield, Peg Woffington, Dora Jordan, and Sarah Siddons, Helen Brooks reveals how female performers both responded, and contributed to, these changes. Ranging from the masculine rhetorical skill of Oldfield and the androgynous cross-dressing of Woffington in the first half of the century, to the performances of 'self' cultivated by Jordan and Siddons at the end, this book reveals how actresses reacted to the cultural shift from the one to two-sex body, and from a protean to a Romantic model of self, by developing new ways of 'playing women'. Consistent throughout the century however was the economic motivation behind these gendered performances: as Brooks emphasizes, actresses were ambitious entrepreneurs who, unlike other professional women, succeeded because, rather than in spite of, their gender"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.