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You must understand this: Shakespeare was not the only guy writing plays when he was writing them. Loads of playwrights were. It didn't matter whether the play was by Marlowe or Dekker or Kyd or Webster or Jonson or Shakespeare or any of the others, when they put the play on (before all plays were made illegal in 1642) the female parts had to be played by a male. As far as they were concerned, having a woman walk around on a stage showing herself off to an audience containing men was a sex show. It was porn. It didn't matter that she was performing a perfectly clean role in a perfectly clean play. It was dirty. This was not a crazy idea held only by some strait-laced churchman or doddering civil servant. Everyone believed it. When a travelling theatre company from France came to play in England they were booed off the stage, because they had an actress in the company.

There is a story that the notorious female transvestite Mary Frith did appear on the stage of the Fortune Theatre playing a lute, but she was arrested for it and forced to do penance. The theatre owners were fortunate that their theatre was not permanently closed down.

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11y ago

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