Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Women didn’t act on London’s professional stages until after the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1661. But Dr. Pamela Allen Brown, author of The Diva’s Gift to the Shakespearean Stage, believes that the movement towards women in the theater actually began in the 1570s, when Italy’s commedia dell’arte troupes first stepped set foot in London. The troupes featured something most English people hadn’t seen at that point: the Divina—a woman who played the Innamorata role, one of the two lovers in plays we’d characterize today as romantic comedies. English diplomats had seen the women who played these parts—who would later be called “divas”—but in the 1570s, divas started coming to England. And, Professor Brown says, their presence began to change attitudes about what theater could be, what plays should be about, and—maybe most importantly—about what kinds of people could play female roles. Pamela Allen Brown is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Pamela Allen Brown is a Professor of English at the Universit