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course as in the Middle English poem. It thus agrees with the second definition of Cotgrave, who gives "més" as 'a messe, or service of meat; a course of dishes at table.' 60

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To return to the immediate subject of this paper, which has led to the consideration of various features in other feasts, the elaborate dinner in Shakespeare's time, as in former centuries, was prevailingly of not more than three courses. Quite as certainly, supported as it is by so much evidence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the ordinary meal had two courses only. Shakespeare's "great nature's second course" owes its appropriateness as a figure to the fact that the second course was not only, as Macbeth goes on to call it, the "chief nourisher at life's feast," but the concluding part of the table entertainment. This must have been the specific meaning of the term in the age to which the great dramatist belonged. Of "second course in Henry V (IV, iii, 106) and Coriolanus (I, v, 17) it is not clear that the words relate to an Elizabethan meal, but if so each allusion would indicate reference to the final and more solid part of the feast.

Western Reserve University.

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o This is probably the explanation of mes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 999,

Bope at mes & at mele messes ful quaynt.

For the alliteration, mes course or part of meal' is used with mele 'meal,' and in the last half-line messes 'portions for one or more people at a feast.' Compare also Pearl 862, where the word mes may mean 'a course,' or possibly the whole meal.' In my "Notes on the Pearl" (Publ. of Mod. Lang. Ass'n XXXVII, 82-3) I connected this word in Pearl with OE. mèse rather than with OF. mes. I should now assume the OF. word, which has long open in other places, as for insta ẹ in the King of Tars passage above quoted. So also the compound ntremees rimes with pees 'peace' in Rom. of Rose C, 6831.

WOMEN ON THE PRE-RESTORATION STAGE

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BY THORNTON SHIRLEY GRAVES

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In spite of the labors of Malone and others who have seriously investigated the subject, various writers have from time to time found it difficult to suppress the feeling that actresses adorned the stage in Shakspere's lifetime. Taine's bit of carelessness or malicious sensationalism accusing Shakspere no less than Molière of adventures de coulisses and amours de cabotines was considered worthy of refutation only recently; while the later sensationalism of Clemence Dane in having the "Dark Lady" save Romeo and Juliet by a display of her histrionic ability at its initial performance occasioned a German scholar to propound again the old question as to whether women actors did not occasionally function on the Elizabethan stage. But the producers of literature are not the only writers who, in the memory of man, have raised the question as to whether English actresses were known prior to 1660. Sidney P. Lee raised the question a good many years ago; very recently Miss Janet Spens made the rather vague assertion that Beaumont and Fletcher "probably, sometimes at least, had women actresses"; while Mr. Allardyce Nicoll is strongly of the opinion that both D'Avenant and Killigrew before the closing of the theaters had "known the charm of seeing Rosalind and Ophelia played by persons of their own sex." "

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Such opinions are natural; for in view of the evidence to be presented below, it is almost inconceivable that females were totally excluded from appearance on the stage during the Elizabethan period. Before presenting this evidence, however, much of

1 History of English Literature, ed. 1873, 1, 168-9. Lacour, Le premières actrices françaises (1921), • Will Shakespeare (1922).

pp. 41-2.

Eichler, Albert. "Schauspielerinnen in London um 1600?" Beiblatt zur Anglia, May, 1921, pp. 118-20.

Among the most interesting cases is Tamayo y Baus's Un Drama Nuevo (acted 1867) produced in New York in 1874 under the title of Yorick.

• Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, XI, 285. For the discussion that followed see N. and Q., 6 Series, XI, 435; XII, 221, 304; 7 Series, 1, 143. "Elizabethan Drama (1922), p. 122.

* History of Restoration Drama (1923), p. 70.

which is well known to stage historians, it will be well to say once and for all that there is hardly a practice of our old theater more demonstrably certain than the fact that professional actresses were never regularly employed in England prior to the Restoration. This is proved by the definite and specific assertions of such men as Nashe, Wybarne, 10 and the authors of Pathomacia (1630) 11 and Mr. William Prynne, his defence of Stage-Playes or a Retraction of his former book (1649); 12 by the complete silence regarding women actors in England on the part of numerous Puritans who concerned themselves with the evils of the theater and the settlement of the much discussed passage in Deuteronomy about the interchange of apparel by the two sexes; 13 and by the specific statements by Restoration authors.1

In the face of what precedes, it will perhaps be something of a

• Works, ed. McKerrow, 1, 215.

10 The New Age of Old Names (1609), p. 52.

11 In II, 2 Urbanite replies thus to Love's statement that some object to men's putting on women's apparel: “If Men did so take their Rayment, that they were mistaken for Women, they might not a little solicite weake passions. But now euen Barbers know that Women in Theaters are but Men in Womens Attire: and therefore the Curtizans in Rome and Spaine that act the parts of Women, because they are known to be Women indeed, doe vehemently and impudently contaminate the Spectators mind."

12 Hazlitt, English Drama and Stage, p. 270. Cf. also the implication in Heywood's Apology for Actors, ed. Collier, p. 28.

13 As a striking illustration of a passage which makes it almost certain that English professional actresses were unknown to Prynne see his comment (Histriomastix, p. 215) in which he admits that of two evils the French and Italian practice of employing females is less pernicious than the English one of having boys assume the rôles of women. Cf. also Gosson's discussion of the subject (Hazlitt, English Drama and Stage, pp. 195-7).

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14 Cf., for example, Snarl, the old Elizabethan, who remarks in Act I of Shadwell's Virtuoso: Besides, I can never endure to see Playes, since Women came on the Stage. Boys are better by half." Interesting, too, are the lines in the prologue to Shadwell's Tempest, where the writer urges that, had it not been for the ingenuity of the company about to act the piece,

“You still had rusty arras had, and thred-bare playes;
Nor scenes nor Woomen, had they had their will,

But some with grizl'd Beards had acted Woomen still."

Cf. also Wright's Historia Histrionica, ed. Hazlitt, p. 412, and Cibber's Apology, ed. Lowe, 1, 90.

shock to know that there is considerable evidence to suggest that the employment of females in dramatic entertainments of one form or another was nothing particularly novel in Elizabethan England. Spencer 15 is inclined to believe that in the mystery plays female rôles were always taken by men but admits that the scarcity of evidence makes any generalization unsafe. It is at least safe to say that occasionally, at least, women possibly participated in religious plays in England as they did in France,16 for in the pre-Reformation banns of the Chester plays reference is made to the fact that The Assumption of the Virgin was to be brought forth by "the worshipfull wyves of this towne." 17 This, of course, does not mean that the 'wyves" necessarily acted the play, still it is possible that Sir Walter Scott may not have been straining matters too unduly after all when he has Laneham attempt to smuggle his wife Sibyl into the Kenilworth festivities, remarking that she "hath played the devil ere now in a.mystery in Queen Mary's time," and by such recommendation securing the privilege of having her journey as the "major devil" of the rustic actors until she is overtaken by labor.18 That the "worshipfull wyves" of Chester and the women who at one time no doubt embarrassed the Danes in the Coventry Hock Tuesday play 10 were not the only provincial females who may have acted on occasion seems to be indicated by a passage which may well have provided Sir Walter Scott a suggestion for his interesting Kenilworth episode referred to above. In Shirley's Triumph of Beauty (1639) Scrip suggests that his own wife take the part of the dragon in "The Tragedy of the Golden Fleece " which certain rustics are to present before Prince Paris; but unfortunately for the humor of the piece Bottle objects in the downright words of an anti-suffragette: "We woo' not be troubled with women; and you'll do't yourself, well and good."

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Feminine participation in other entertainments closely related to the drama was rather frequent. At an early date women had

15 Corpus Christi Pageants in England, p. 216.

16 Cohen, Gustav. La Mise en Scene, pp. 206-9. Cf. also the article by the same writer in Revue des Deux Mondes, May 15, 1923, p. 415.

17 Cf. E. K. Chambers in Mod. Lang. Review, Oct. 1916, p. 466 and Mediaval Stage, II, 409.

18 Kenilworth, chap. 17.

1o Cf. Furnivall's ed. of Laneham's Letter, pp. 26-32 and the works cited in the notes.

taken part in the "mumming" or "disguising" of New Year's Eve; 20 they had apparently participated in the St. George ridings; 21 and Falstaff's words to the Hostess 22 are usually explained by saying that in later times the rôle of Maid Marian in the May games and morris dance had so often been assumed by females of unsavory reputation that the name degenerated into a term of reproach. Again, the employment of girls in pageants and similar public entertainments got up on the occasion of the royal entry and like events was apparently a common practice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.23 It is probably to this well-known practice that Shirley refers in the prologue to his Coronation: Since 'tis become the title of our play,

A woman once in a Coronation may,

With pardon, speak the prologue, give as free

A welcome to the theatre, as he

That with a little beard, a long black cloak,

With a starch'd face, and supple leg hath spoke
Before the plays this twelvemonth.

In attempting to determine the possible connection of women with the London theaters it is well to keep in mind, too, the considerable number of female "freaks" that were exhibited for money in London and elsewhere in Elizabethan England. "I have seene a Catamountaine once," remarks a character in Captain Underwit (III, 3) in referring to the London sights he had visited, "but all was nothing to the wench that turnd round and thred needles." Plotwell in The City Match (III, i) says of his "strange fish" which he plans to exhibit:

Roseclap shall have a patent of him. The birds
Brought from Peru, the hairy wench," the camel,
The elephant, dromedaries, or Windsor Castle,
The woman with dead flesh, or she that washes,

20 Withington, Robert, English Pageantry, 1, 8.

" Ibid., pp. 27-31.

* 1 Henry IV, III, iii.

"Cf. Withington, op. cit., pp. 128-129, 136, 170, 178-9, 184, 192, 216, 224 Nova Solyma, ed. Begley, 1, 80, п, 227; Trans-Royal Historical Soc., 2 Series, IX, 253. Of course it is sometimes impossible to be certain that female rôles were not taken by male children.

"Cf. the "hairy wench," by name Barbara Vanbeck (born in 1832), whom Evelyn (Diary, Aug. 15, 1657) said he saw when he was a child.

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