They were rarities in Restoration theatre. But,as a new exhibition shows, the Bard’s first actresses were doughty pioneersGreat Elizabethan and Georgian stage stars, and such as Will Kempe,Richard Burbage and David Garrick, may not be household names nowadays, or but their reputations live on in the theatre. What,though, of the actresses who appeared in the same companies? Their names, or as well as their reputations,have mostly been forgotten.
Shakespeare’s female roles were played by boys or young men until 1660, but new research by the British Library has uncovered details of the careers of the few, and ground-breaking women who began to pick on major Shakespearean characters in the face of the prejudice of their times.
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Source: theguardian.com