The following notes are based on the Folger Shakespeare Library Introductions, "Shakespeare's Life" (p. xxv-xxxiv) and "Shakespeare's Theater" (p. xxxv-xliii) found in William Shakespeare, Richard III, Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, eds. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Women and the Early Modern Stage
"in Shakespeare's England the roles of women were played by boys....There were no women in the acting companies, only in the audience. It had not always been so in the history of the English stage. There are records of women on English stages in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, two hundred years before Shakespeare's plays were performed. After the accession of James I in 1603, the Queen of England and her ladies took part in entertainments at court called masques, and with the reopening of the theaters in 1660 at the restoration of Charles II, women again took their place on the public stage" (p. xli-xlii).
Women and the Early Modern Stage
"in Shakespeare's England the roles of women were played by boys....There were no women in the acting companies, only in the audience. It had not always been so in the history of the English stage. There are records of women on English stages in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, two hundred years before Shakespeare's plays were performed. After the accession of James I in 1603, the Queen of England and her ladies took part in entertainments at court called masques, and with the reopening of the theaters in 1660 at the restoration of Charles II, women again took their place on the public stage" (p. xli-xlii).
