Women on the Stage in Early Modern France
1540–1750

Scott presents an engaging history of the actress in early modern France, examining their invaluable contributions to French theatre.

Virginia Scott (Author)

9780521896757, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 July 2010

336 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.67 kg

'This enjoyable book combines scholarship with readability and makes a very significant contribution to the field of seventeenth and eighteenth-century theatrical studies.' Restoration and Eighteenth-century Theatre Research

Focusing on actresses in France during the early modern period, Virginia Scott examines how the stereotype of the actress has been constructed. The study then moves beyond that stereotype to detail the reality of the personal and artistic lives of women on the French stage, from the almost unknown Marie Ferré - who signed a contract for 12 livres a year in 1545 to perform the 'antiquailles de Rome or other histories, moralities, farces, and acrobatics' in the provinces - to the queens of the eighteenth-century Paris stage, whose 'adventures' have overshadowed their artistic triumphs. The book also investigates the ways in which actresses made invaluable contributions to the development of the French theatre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and looks at the 'afterlives' of such women as Armande Béjart, Marquise Du Parc, Charlotte Desmares, Adrienne Lecouvreur, and Hippolyte Clairon in biographies, plays, and films.

Preface
1. The actress and the anecdote
2. 'So perverse was her wantonness': antitheatricalism and the actress
3. In the beginning: 'Twelve Livres per year'
4. 'Those diverting little ways': 1630–40
5. 'Mademoiselle L'Étoile': 1640–1700
6. 'Embellished by art': 1680–1720
7. Lives and afterlives: 1700–2010
Works consulted.

Subject Areas: Literature & literary studies [D], Theatre: individual actors & directors [ANB], Theatre studies [AN]