the new woman, and the new shakespearean actress.

This week I've been reading a book called "Shakespeare and Victorian Women" by Gail Marshall, and in particular, I have been focusing on a chapter on Shakespearean actresses in the 1890s. But before I get too far into what I've found out, I want to set a foundation and explain, briefly, the "new woman" of the 1800s.
Beginning in the very last bit of the 19th century, female education was growing rapidly, and many more female students were getting into secondary education. At the same time this was happening, new technologies were emerging, and although men were still more highly favored for hiring, women, because of their education levels and skills, were also getting jobs and leaving their position as the angel of the home (CSI).
These new womanly ideals had a major affect on the stage, and in particular the Victorian Shakespeare stage. Because Shakespeare in general dealt with gender issues in his plays, it acted as a perfect conduit to express the new ideals of the late 19th century woman. One stage director by the name of William Poel tried to re-create the Elizabethan stage with a twist of adding all-women casts. These travesi performances became a well-established tradition in performing Shakespeare on the Victorian stage (Marshall, 154).
The actress Sarah Bernhardt performed in several traversi productions, in which her most famous role was that of Hamlet in 1899. This was actually a very popular role for actresses to play, and one critic mentioned of Berhardt that "she is not the first Dame to assume the role of the Dane (171)." It has been reported that there were fifty or more sited cases of females taking on the role of Hamlet long before Bernhardt did (171). But while these other actresses were wearing the black cloak of Hamlet, Bernhardt was playing seductive roles such as Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, aiding in her reputation of "serpentine sensuality" (171), which makes it all the more interesting that her new role as a man did not evoke any mention of her gender in reviews of her Hamlet.

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, circa 1899.

I think that the lack of mention of Bernhardt wearing a man's clothes and acting out a man's role on stage coincided with what people were seeing on the streets at the end of the 19th century: because of the invention of the bicycle, women started wearing knickers so that they could ride this new contraption, so seeing a lovely woman in men's clothes was nothing new to the end of the century.
Indeed, Shakespeare is proving to have played a role in the whole feminist movement of the late 19th century, and in my next post I'll mention the more feminine side of Shakespeare's Victorian stage through the actress Ellen Terry.


Sources.
Marshall, Gail. Shakespeare and Victorian Women. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Print.
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/386/newwoman.html