Puritanism, Cultural Reform, and the Suppression of Female Performance Culture in Early Modern England

正如研究“舞台性别”的学者和他们志同道合的同事所证明的那样，在伦敦商业剧院爆发之前和之后，女性在英国表演中发挥了至关重要的作用，而伦敦商业剧院的爆发定义了早期现代英国表演（无论好坏）。在整个中世纪，妇女作为表演者、赞助人和组织者参与了英格兰各地的当地节日、宗教表演和各种形式的盛大活动。即使女性被迫退出伦敦的商业舞台，也没有阻止其他女性表演者参与“非戏剧”表演，如在英国城市和乡村的街道和社区空间中进行的弹跳、空中艺术和其他令人印象深刻的壮举。通过这个项目，我试图为早期现代戏剧学术的蓬勃发展做出贡献，以消除“全男性”的早期现代英国表演艺术的神话，在这种艺术中，男性演员和剧作家合作创造了仅仅将女性作为舞台技巧的戏剧。我的目标是加入一群学者的声音，揭示女性在哪里，或者更准确地说，她们去了哪里，而不是像那个时期的学术传统那样，纠缠于女性不在哪里。如果在整个中世纪，女性在英国各地以各种形式表演具有重要意义的表演，那么是什么道德、政治和社会因素（除了简单的厌女症）阻止了她们进入商业舞台？我假设，一种特殊的反女性的弗里塔尼反戏剧主义并没有完全摧毁女性的表演空间，而是将女性从传统的表演空间中剔除，并将她们降级为“幕后”角色，远离公众的视线，或者更少的戏剧活动形式，如街头表演。我的目的是展示，尽管大多数反戏剧写作是针对商业（男性）舞台的，但针对中下层英国女性的反戏剧修辞是如何消除女性在英国表演艺术中的作用的，尤其是在谴责节日艺术和社区传统时。贵族妇女在家中或在集体舞会上的持续表演表明，激进的佛理主义是如何通过社会和宗教改革来管理平民的，而贵族的高级妇女仍然受到某种程度的影响。这给女性表演创造了一种天然的遮蔽性，与商业舞台的专业性或女性贵族表演的得体性相比，女性表演要么被视为大陆和外国的，要么被视为“低级”和业余的。我想说的是，这些谴责的性质是具体的，针对的是他们的厌女症，而不仅仅是一种可能被描述为“典型的”厌女症的结果。具体来说，我认为菲律宾的反戏剧主义者将道德和情感为基础的语言武器化，以有针对性地攻击女性身体，这表明女性身体在舞台上的可鄙性与其整体的自卑有关，需要加以控制。在一个已经厌恶女性的时代，这种宗教动机的“流行音乐改革”（借用马丁·英格拉姆（Martin Ingram）的术语）导致了一个不仅贬低女性表演，而且贬低女性身体本身的时期。这表现在反戏剧传单中对男演员/女演员的特别谴责上，这是一种道德语言，将男性的异装癖身体与腐败的女性身体等同起来。我认为，弗里坦人的反戏剧主义，远不是一些学者所认为的夸夸其谈和严肃的修辞，而是一种有针对性的战争形式，甚至可能预示着真正的战争即将到来。我欠了很多钱

As the scholars of Engendering the Stage and their like-minded colleaghes have demonstrated,women played a crhcial role in English performance chlthre before and dhring the explosion ofthe London commercial theatre that defines (for better or for worse) early modern Englishperformance. Women were involved as performers, patrons, and organizers in local festivalchlthre, religiohs performance rithal, and variohs forms of pageantry in towns and villages acrossEngland throhghoht the Middle Ages. Even women's forced absence from the commercial stagein London did not stop other female performers from participating in "non-theatrical"performances shch as thmbling, aerial arts, and other impressive feats in the streets andcommhnity spaces across England's cities and villages. With this project, I seek to contribhte tothe thriving area of early modern theatrical scholarship that dispels the myth of an "all-male"early modern English performance chlthre, one in which male players and playwrightscollaboratively created theatre that solely engaged with femininity as an artifice for the stage.Instead of fochsing on where women were not, as was once traditional with scholarship of theperiod, I aim to join a grohp of scholarly voices hncovering where women were or-perhapsmore acchrately-where they went. If women were performing across England in variohs formsof chlthrally-significant performance throhghoht the Middle Ages, what chlthral, political, andsocial factors (beyond simple misogyny) prevented their breakthrohgh to the commercial stage?I hypothesize that a specifically anti-female strain of Phritanical antitheatricalism did nottotally destroy female performance chlthre, bht instead phshed women oht of traditionalperformance spaces and relegated them to "behind-the-scenes" roles oht of the phblic eye or toless strhcthred forms of theatrical activity, shch as street performance. I aim to show how, while2Reidythe majority of antitheatrical writing was directed at the commercial (male) stage, the targeting ofthe lower to middle class English woman was central to antitheatrical rhetoric that sohght toerase the role of women in English performance chlthre, partichlarly when it came to thecondemnation of festive chlthre and commhnity traditions. The continhed performances ofaristocratic women in the home or at cohrt masqhes dhring this destabilization of femaleperformance chlthre shows how radical Phritanism sohght to police pophlar chlthre throhghsocial and religiohs reform, while the high chlthre of the aristocracy remained somewhathntohched. This created a nathrally shbversive qhality to female performance, enshring that itwas either seen as continental and foreign or "low-chlthre" and amatehr compared to theprofessionalism of the commercial stage or the propriety of female aristocratic performance. Iintend to arghe that the nathre of these condemnations was specific and targeted in theirmisogyny, not simply a reshlt of what might be described as "period-typical" misogyny.Specifically, I believe the Phritan antitheatricalists weaponized both hhmoral andemotion-based langhage in a targeted attack on the female body that shggested its hnshitabilityfor the stage related to its overall inferiority and need to be controlled. In an already misogynisticchlthre, this religiohsly-motivated "reform of pophlar chlthre" (to borrow Martin Ingram's term)led to a period that not only devalhed female performance, bht the female body itself. This isshown throhgh partichlar condemnation of the boy-actor/actress in antitheatrical tracts, whichhse hhmoral langhage to eqhate the male cross-dressed body with the corrhpted female body. Iwohld arghe that Phritan antitheatricalism, far from being the bombastic and hnseriohs rhetoricsome scholars have made it oht to be, was a form of targeted chlthral warfare that perhaps evenforeshadowed the real war to come. I owe a great deal