The actress, as an established element in the theatre, is comparatively modern. The English stage had been a flourishing public institution for something more than a century when, in the first years of the Restoration, veritable women began regularly to replace those lads and beardless men who in Shakespeare’s day enacted stage heroines.

There are, to be sure, fleeting glimpses of women acting in England much earlier in the seventeenth century, while boys were regularly playing women’s parts. King James spent immense sums on his court revels, and his Queen, Anne, was both actress and manager—no doubt with much professional coaching. In 1625—the first year of the reign of Charles I—there was a merry round of plays acted at Hampton Court at Christmas time. “The demoiselles,”—who, as Doran surmises, were probably the maids of honor—“mean to present a French pastoral wherein the Queen is a principal actress.”221 Thus the first actresses in England were amateurs, and among them were two Queens of the Realm! Henrietta Maria was, of course, French, and it was due to this fact, and to her liking for the stage, that actresses from France came to London222—doubtless the first professional actresses to appear there. The fashion—or rather the obvious advantages—of the acting of women’s parts by women appears to have commended itself much earlier on the continent than in England. “They have now,” contemptuously says Prynne,—the author of Histrio-Mastix (1633) and the theatre’s best hater,—“their female players in Italy and other foreign parts.”223

The French actresses who came to act at Blackfriars may have pleased their countrywoman, the Queen. But they seem to have had, on the whole, a rather hard time. “Glad am I to say,” wrote Thomas Brand, another stout Puritan, “they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage, so that I do not think they will soon be ready to try the same again.” Prynne was furiously abusive. He calls the actresses by a variety of names, of which “monsters” is one of the mildest.

But to some extent, the idea had taken root, and during the ten years before the closing of the theatres, in 1642, women occasionally replaced the boys and men who passed for heroines. In The Court Beggar, a play enacted in London in 1632, one of the characters, Lady Strangelove, says: “The boy’s a pretty actor, and his mother can play her part. The women now are in great request.” These early actresses were, however, not regularly employed, their names have not come down to us, and it is correct to say that professional English actresses appear for the first time, when, in 1660, the theatres were reopened, after their eighteen years’ suppression by the Puritans.224

There were two companies, Killigrew’s and D’Avenant’s. Each had its regularly enrolled actresses, whose names are recorded. Among them were Mrs. Corey, Mrs. Hughes, Mrs. Knipp, the Marshall sisters, Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Saunderson, and, a little later, Nell Gwynn.

No one, however, took the trouble to make certain for posterity the name of the first of them to appear. We know that she played Desdemona, in an adaptation of Othello, called The Moor of Venice; that she was of Killigrew’s company; that the date was December 8, 1660, and the place the Red Bull; and that Thomas Jordan wrote for the occasion “A Prologue, to introduce the first woman that came to act on our stage.” But who the actress was is not known. Two names are the likeliest: Margaret Hughes, and Anne Marshall. Mrs. Hughes was “more remarkable for her beauty than for her great ability.” “A mighty pretty woman,” says Pepys of her, “and seems, but is not, modest.” She was married later to Prince Rupert, and brought him to the verge of bankruptcy. Anne Marshall, the other chief claimant, was a competent actress of the day, remarkable chiefly for being the daughter of a prominent Presbyterian clergyman.

At first the old practice of giving the women’s parts to boys threatened to survive, alongside the new custom of employing women. For a few years both played the heroines, but the race of actors who could portray women was fast dying out and, owing to a changed public opinion, was not replenished.225 When, in 1663, the King granted patents to Killigrew and D’Avenant, those managers were virtually instructed to employ none but women to represent female characters: “Whereas”—the royal patents read,—“the women’s parts in plays have hitherto been acted by men in the habits of women, at which some have taken offense, we do give leave that for the time to come all women’s parts be acted by women.” In a year or so the “boy-actresses” had virtually disappeared from the stage.

Our old friend Pepys had the pleasure,—undoubtedly a keen one for him,—of seeing some of the earliest appearances of actresses in London. We have it from him that in 1661 he saw women acting in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Beggar’s Bush. If he was present at the Red Bull on the eighth of the previous December, when the first English actress walked on, he strangely omits to say so.

Something should be said of the changing conditions in the actress’ calling since 1660. As we all know, the complete social recognition of actors and actresses is distinctly modern. Of course, in the nature of things, they were always the objects of acclamation and often admiration; but they were long in attaining real public respect, strange as that seems to an actor-worshiping (or especially actress-worshiping) age.

There was plenty of historical background for the old state of things. The ancients loved their theatre, but their actors did not, as a rule, rank high in public estimation. According to Cicero, at one time any Roman who turned actor was disincorporated and unnaturalized by order of the Censors; and Livy states that players were not thought good enough for common soldiers. The early Christians maintained the same attitude, probably with better reason, for in their day the drama fell into a parlous state. The two councils of Arles excommunicated all players, and in A. D. 424 another church council declared that “the testimony of people of ill-reputation, of players, and others of such scandalous employments, shall not be admitted against any person.”

With the rise of the wonderful Elizabethan drama in England the actors attained a measure of respect, mixed, however, with a certain condescension.226 Later in the seventeenth century, when actresses began regularly to appear on the English stage, the actor’s standing was at least no better. William Mountford, a respectable actor, one of the most accomplished of his day, was killed in a street brawl by Lord Mohun and Captain Hill, two dissolute “gentlemen,” who were attempting to abduct the renowned actress, Anne Bracegirdle. Mohun was tried in 1692 by the House of Lords, and though he was flagrantly guilty, he was acquitted, 69 to 14. During the hearing one nobleman could not understand why so great a fuss should be made about so small a matter and said that “after all, the fellow was but a player, and players are rogues.” And of the period immediately following, John Fyvie says: “In the earlier part of the eighteenth century anybody might insult an actor with impunity; and if an actor were thrashed by a person of quality neither he nor anybody else would have dreamed that he had any right to retaliate.”227

Dr. Johnson’s comments have been quoted as typifying the attitude which even in Garrick’s day, a man of intellect could maintain toward the player’s profession,228 though it is to be noted that not even in the Doctor’s distinguished circle were his prejudices generally shared. And Johnson himself, it will be remembered, felt honored to receive a visit from the celebrated Mrs. Siddons. “At all periods of his life, Johnson used to talk contemptuously of players,” says Boswell, “for which, perhaps there was formerly too much reason from the licentious and dissolute manners of those engaged in that profession. It is but justice to add,” Boswell goes on, “that in our own time such a change has taken place, that there is no longer room for such an unfavorable distinction.”

A century had, indeed, seen a change. In 1660, when actresses invaded the theatre, there was a long road to travel before the actor could be thought of as he is today,—innocent of social stigma until proved guilty. It was then the other way about,—he belonged to an outcast class, until he proved himself deserving of exceptional consideration.

Naturally, when women came to join the actors’ ranks, they shared more than to the full the social disadvantages attaching to the calling, simply because they were women; for, as is well known, it is a queer twist of the ingrained chivalric attitude toward the sex that when a woman ranges herself with men of a doubtful class she is accorded a double portion of the disfavor in which that class may be held. In any event, the first century of English actresses saw them, for the most part, doing their best to justify the stigma. Anne Bracegirdle was notorious in her day, not for lapses from virtue, but actually for leading a measurably pure life. So singular, in her day, was the actress who was not the mistress of some one her social superior that virtuous “Bracey” was hailed as a phenomenon. A number of lords and gentlemen once met round a festive board and pledged a large purse to be offered to her as a tribute to her rare chastity.229 Her sister actresses, and many who were to follow in the eighteenth century, were, in many instances, openly the mistresses of lords and other “fine gentlemen.” It seems superfluous to say of the average nineteenth century actress that her standards of life were, in general, far different from those of her earlier sisters; and the fact is of much importance in its direct bearing on one of the most interesting changes that have occurred in the realm of the theatre: the improvement in the social status of the actor and actress.

For another cause of that change we may look to the general dramatic awakening that characterized the latter part of the nineteenth century,—the vitalization of the theatre as the home of an art worthy the study and appreciation of the best minds. In 1660 and for many years later the English-speaking theatre, at least, was not that.

Until fairly recent times the acting class was recruited mainly from those who were either born to it or who drifted into it more or less as a matter of chance. Here, too, the nineteenth century saw a change. Partly as a cause and partly as a result of the improved social standing of the actor, ambitious men and women of good family in increasing numbers adopted the stage as a profession.

Again, the latter-day recognition of the stage found a significant expression, in England, in the knighting of a succession of distinguished actors and dramatists: Henry Irving, Squire Bancroft, Arthur Wing Pinero, John Hare, Charles Wyndham, George Alexander, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Johnston Forbes-Robertson. In their own country, and, as one may as well admit, in America too, the knighting of actors could not fail further to dignify the calling.

All of these causes have acted and interacted, through the years, to help bring the actor and the actress to a point of public interest and esteem that is reached by few of the world’s “authentic benefactors.” Most important of all, however, as a cause of their progress to something very like adulation has been the increasingly strong position of the theatre as the artistic meeting ground of all the people. The drama of 1660 was the amusement of a restricted class; now it is the universal art. Its skilled exponents, affected by a strong general interest, cannot fail to receive,—unless they willfully reject it—the respect and admiration of their contemporaries.