"We'll Imagine, Madam, you have a Beard": Beards and Early Female Playwrights

TY - CHAP

T1 - "We'll Imagine, Madam, you have a Beard"

T2 - Beards and Early Female Playwrights

AU - Carr, Morwenna

PY - 2018/4/2

Y1 - 2018/4/2

N2 - This chapter explores the use and reinvention of the beard by female playwrights of the early Restoration period. Whilst the role of the beard in relation to the production and reproduction of gender and sex identity on the professional stages of early modern London has come under increasing scrutiny by critics including Will Fisher and Eleanor Rycroft, the ways in which early female playwrights have subsequently utilised the beard has thus far not been the focus of any critical work. This paper will examine beards in works by canonical female playwrights such as Aphra Behn and Susannah Centlivre as well as in plays written by neglected authors such as Frances Boothby and Elizabeth Polwhele. In Polwhele’s The Frolicks (1671), for example, the false beard is a plot enabler in the hands of a female character, thus subverting the relationship between the beard and masculine authority. Clarabell, the spirited protagonist of the play, uses a false beard in order to author her own fate. Determined to marry the rakish Rightwit, despite his abrupt imprisonment as a debtor, she engineers a disguise plot in which she first cross dresses as a boy and then directs a performance of male-to-female impersonation, going on to hoodwink a jailor whilst having her lover steal from prison in a false beard which she provides. Through Clarabell, Polwhele uses the false beard to signify female authorial control and to stake a claim in the Restoration theatre; therefore, the use of the false beard in The Frolicks can be read as a moment in which the existing frameworks of a male-centric professional theatre are challenged. Throughout the works of early professional female playwrights, the beard is visible as a locus of power and autonomy reshaped for a burgeoning theatrical female participation.

AB - This chapter explores the use and reinvention of the beard by female playwrights of the early Restoration period. Whilst the role of the beard in relation to the production and reproduction of gender and sex identity on the professional stages of early modern London has come under increasing scrutiny by critics including Will Fisher and Eleanor Rycroft, the ways in which early female playwrights have subsequently utilised the beard has thus far not been the focus of any critical work. This paper will examine beards in works by canonical female playwrights such as Aphra Behn and Susannah Centlivre as well as in plays written by neglected authors such as Frances Boothby and Elizabeth Polwhele. In Polwhele’s The Frolicks (1671), for example, the false beard is a plot enabler in the hands of a female character, thus subverting the relationship between the beard and masculine authority. Clarabell, the spirited protagonist of the play, uses a false beard in order to author her own fate. Determined to marry the rakish Rightwit, despite his abrupt imprisonment as a debtor, she engineers a disguise plot in which she first cross dresses as a boy and then directs a performance of male-to-female impersonation, going on to hoodwink a jailor whilst having her lover steal from prison in a false beard which she provides. Through Clarabell, Polwhele uses the false beard to signify female authorial control and to stake a claim in the Restoration theatre; therefore, the use of the false beard in The Frolicks can be read as a moment in which the existing frameworks of a male-centric professional theatre are challenged. Throughout the works of early professional female playwrights, the beard is visible as a locus of power and autonomy reshaped for a burgeoning theatrical female participation.

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-73497-2

DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-73497-2

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978-3-319-73496-5

SN - 978-3-030-08800-2

BT - New Perspectives on the History of Facial Hair

A2 - Withey, Alun

A2 - Evans, Jennifer

PB - Routledge

CY - London

ER -