Spotlight on Performing Widowhood on the Early Modern English Stage

The uniqueness of Asuka Kimura's Performing Widowhood on the Early Modern English Stage lies in its interest in the material conditions of early modern theater. Although the dramatic representation of widows has been discussed by many critics, notably Jennifer Panek and Dorothea Kehler, Kimura offers fresh insight into the complexity of widow characters by discussing their costumes, accessories, and gestures, as well as how the physical traits of actors and the characteristics of each theater would have influenced the portrayal of these women. Here Kimura reflects on how she participates in the "perpetual dream of theater historians" through her research.

by Asuka Kimura

It is a perpetual dream of theater historians to recover lost performances from the past. The dream seems hard to achieve, especially for those who are interested in early theater. However, scholars of early modern English theater have made significant progress in the last two decades, excavating a myriad of primary sources and patching them together to recreate the picture of the lost world. Also, relentless effort by theater practitioners to bring forth new interpretations of play-texts has helped us imagine how plays may have been staged in the past, as well as how they can be adapted to our era.

In Performing Widowhood on the Early Modern English Stage, I aim to share with the reader the pleasure of reimagining lost performances by discussing how widows were represented on stage. Widows were perceived as a problematic figure in those days, because they enjoyed social and economic freedom which was otherwise forbidden to women. Although widows had been a popular stock character since the times of Petronius and Chaucer, they reached the zenith of popularity in England before the Civil War. In fact, widows appear in almost one-third of the extant plays that date between 1576 and 1642, with Marlowe, Shakespeare, Chapman, Middleton, Shirley, and Brome all contributing to this trend. Apparently, dramatists were intrigued by widows’ unique ambivalence. Placed between death and life, female submissiveness and male audacity, chastity and sexual awareness, or tragedy and comedy, widows were capable of arousing rich and mixed responses from the audience.

Play-texts and other primary sources, including portraits and woodcuts, enable us to reconstruct how widows might have looked on the early modern stage. For example, widows were often associated with black mourning in both dramatic texts and visual images. Deriving from medieval nuns’ costume, black mourning was regarded as an appropriate dress for widows to signify their piety and chastity. However, this outward sign of sorrow and wifely devotion could turn into a means for widows to seek out a new husband. Not only did mourning dress advertise widows’ marriageability, its black color was also thought to enhance their beauty. Indeed, the famous betrothal portrait of Christina of Denmark sent to Henry VIII shows her in complete black. Also, Katherine Villiers, the widow of George Villiers, sent her portrait in black mourning to her husband-to-be, Randall MacDonnell, as reproduced on my book’s cover. Dramatists were well-aware of this ambivalence inherent in mourning costume and appropriated its visual effects on stage. They used black mourning to signify widows’ sensuality and hypocrisy, as well as their chastity and piety.

Widows’ ambivalence was also materialized through the adolescent body of the boy actor. The fact that widows were impersonated by boy actors deserves special attention, because widows and boy actors were both perceived as liminal figures in terms of gender. While boy actors held a subordinate position analogous to women as apprentices, widows were entitled to some of the male privileges. Interestingly, gender ambiguity was regarded as a source of empowerment and emancipation for widows, while it was associated with subordination and effeminacy in the case of boy actors. What happened, then, when boy actors played widows? If boy actors had a male “cracked” voice or masculine physique, widows’ disruption of the gender hierarchy would have looked even more threatening in the eyes of patriarchy.

As these examples show, my book extends the critical interest in the materiality of early modern theater and offers a fresh reading of both canonical and non-canonical texts from the Elizabethan to the Caroline period. I believe that examining the theatrical representation of widows is an effective way to develop such an interest, because the ambivalence in widow characters raises many questions about stage practice and invites us to imagine lost performances more dynamically and creatively. My book is also informative for those who are interested in feminist and gender studies of early modern drama, as it examines primary sources related to the material lives of widows, including their wills and inventories, along with literary texts.

By Asuka Kimura

Placed between death and life, female submissiveness and male audacity, chastity and sexual awareness, or tragedy and comedy, widows were highly problematic in early modern patriarchal society. They were also popular figures in the theater, arousing both male desire and anxiety. How did Shakespeare and his contemporaries represent them on the stage? What kind of costume, props, and gestures were employed? What influence did actors, spectators, and play-space have? This book offers a fresh and incisive examination of the theatrical representation of widows by discussing the material conditions of the early modern stage. It is also the only comprehensive study of this topic covering all three phases of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline drama.

ISBN: 978-1-50152-020-4 (clothbound), 978-1-50151-389-3 (PDF), 978-1-50151-395-4  (EPUB) © 2023