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

正如造就舞台的学者和他们志同道合的同事们所证明的那样，女性在以前的英语表演中扮演了关键角色，并遏制了伦敦商业剧院的爆炸，伦敦商业剧院定义了(无论是好是坏)早期的现代英语表演。中世纪时期，妇女作为表演者、赞助人和组织者参加当地的节日、宗教表演和各种形式的盛大庆典。即使是女性被迫离开伦敦的商业舞台，也没有阻止其他女性表演者在英国城市和乡村的街道和公共空间参加雷鸣、空中艺术和其他令人印象深刻的表演。通过这个项目，我试图建立一个繁荣的早期现代戏剧学术领域，它驱散了早期现代英语表演chlthre的神话，在这个领域，男性演员和剧作家合作创作戏剧，完全将女性气质作为舞台上的一种技巧。我的目标不是像那个时代的学术传统那样，预测哪里没有女性，而是加入一个学术声音的群体，报道女性去了哪里，或者更确切地说，她们去了哪里。如果英国各地的女性在中世纪以各种形式的、具有重大意义的表演形式表演，那么是什么文化、政治和社会因素(除了简单的厌女症)阻止了她们走向商业舞台？我假设，一种特别反对女性的现实主义反戏剧主义并没有完全摧毁女性的表演文化，而是将女性从传统的表演空间中剥离出来，并将她们降级到显眼的幕后角色，或者像街头表演一样被赋予更多的戏剧活动形式。我的目标是展示，尽管大多数反戏剧写作是针对商业(男性)阶段的，但针对英国中下层女性的反戏剧修辞是反戏剧言论的核心，这些言论大大削弱了女性在英语表演中的作用，尤其是在节日节日和礼节传统的需求方面。贵族妇女在家中或在伪装下的持续表现，表明了激进的宗教教义如何猛烈地推动了社会和宗教改革，而贵族的高尚精神仍然存在。这给女性的表演创造了一种粗俗的品质，表明与商业舞台的专业性或女性贵族表演的得体相比，女性表演要么被视为大陆和外国的，要么被视为“低俗”和业余的。我想强调的是，这些谴责是具体的、有针对性的，是在他们对女性的厌恶中，而不是简单地再现可能被描述为“时代典型的”厌女症。具体地说，我认为，布里坦反戏剧主义者将基于道德和情感的语言武器化，有针对性地攻击女性身体，在与其整体劣势相关的舞台上摆脱其不稳定性，需要加以控制。在一场已经存在的厌女症中，这种出于宗教动机的“大众宗教改革”(借用马丁·英格拉姆的术语)导致了这样一个时期：不仅贬低了女性的表演，还贬低了女性的身体本身。这是在反戏剧性的大片中展示了对男演员/女演员的片面谴责，这是一种道德语言，将男性变装的身体与正确的女性身体等同起来。布里坦的反戏剧主义，远不是一些学者所说的夸张和夸张的修辞，而是一种有针对性的和平战，甚至可能预示着真正的战争即将到来。我欠了很多

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