To Cast a Woman or Not to Cast a Woman--That is the Question

In Shakespeare’s day, women did not act—even incredible roles such as Rosalind and Lady Macbeth were played by male actors. Now, obviously women play the roles written for them, but the complex part about that is…these roles weren’t really written for them! Shakespeare knew the characters he created would all be played by young boys and men. In Stratford-Upon-Avon, we watched two plays from that era put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company (although the plays we saw were actually written by other people). The Jew of Malta and Love’s Sacrifice both featured women playing women’s roles; in other words, it was not original practice performance. So, does this change what we get out of the play? How does this affect the performance and the characters?

Before even diving in depth into the plays, I have to just voice my opinion on original practice performances in the first place. Virginia Woolf’s fictional Judith (see my bio for background information) experienced her greatest distress when she had the stage closed to her in a way that it was not closed to William Shakespeare, thus ruining her chances to explore her talent, so I love the fact that women are allowed on stage today! That being said, I understand those that do use original practice performances today do not automatically believe that women are inferior and should not be allowed to enjoy what men enjoy. However, by reviving a practice that in the beginning was solely a manifestation of blatant sexism, it might make me a little uncomfortable to enjoy a show like that. I must admit that I have never been to a play with only men performing in women’s roles, so that could completely change my mind if I were to see it done that way. As always, a tactful acknowledgment of former discrimination (as we saw in The Merchant of Venice) can go a long way towards enhancing the play for a modern audience. Furthermore, it is always interesting to see a play performed as similarly as possible to what it was created for; studying this would absolutely reveal new facts and details of the play. So, tangent over; I suppose the jury is still out. Let me know what you think!

We were fortunate enough to get to eat breakfast and have a sit-down with Matthew Needham, an actor who performed in both shows; in Love’s Sacrifice, he was the leading man, Caraffa the Duke of Pavy. During the talk, he mentioned several wonderful things about working with women (he actually prefers to work with women directors), but one thing that stuck out to me was his comment about working in a mostly male show. He mentioned that The Jew of Malta was primarily “a bunch of ol men running around shouting at each other,” (loosely paraphrased, I did not copy down the exact words at the time), but that he enjoyed the dynamic roles available for women in Love’s Sacrifice. He said it well—it’s important to portray women in powerful roles. Are they less powerful when the character is a woman, but the performer is still a man, and the audience knows it?

To answer the way content is affected, it’s important to compare one actress from each show to see the way the play changes. In the Jew of Malta, the one main female character is Abigail. She is used as her father’s pawn to manipulate his enemies; he pits two men against each other by engaging her to both Mathias and Lodowick. I loved the way the actress portrayed Abigail. To begin with, she was beautiful, but she also had an amazing connection with her father Barabas in the opening scenes. I truly bought that they were father and daughter and that she was innocent to the malice that led to Mathias and Lodowick’s deaths because she just wanted to help her distressed father. When he was on his knees shortly after the governor takes away all his money and land, she grips his face in her hands and pleads with him to let her help. When he told her to play nice to get into the abbey in order to get inside, the way she twirled her hair and giggled at the abbots was well done and convincing. In the same way, Colona from Love’s Sacrifice is an innocent girl, believing all the promises of her lover, though he clearly is full of you-know-what. However, she flirts by flapping her fan to hide her blushes and shares secret smiles with Ferentes in the court, so we see even without her having to speak that she is in love with him. In both instances, the internal emotion and motivation of the women are clear by their actions rather than their discussions, which I consider the mark of great actresses. It is also interesting to notice that both women really played up their sexuality in their performances during their interactions with men. Each skirt flip was deliberate and intended to draw attention to the fact that these women were attractive and on a mission.

If this were a man, would it have the same effect? A wig could obviously be used, and the lines and mannerisms would be similar. In the tight corsets and fine dresses that women wore, most men would even get an hour-glass figure once laced up, as our tour guide at the Globe, Ms. McNulty, pointed out. Therefore, I feel that content might not really change too much were it a man playing the role. A truly talented actor pulls off different roles every day; Matt Smith is not really an alien but he certainly appears to be in Doctor Who. The problem is not necessarily who plays the role but why they are allowed to play that role or why they chose it. I’m not sure how the audience might react to a man playing a woman’s role in days when that was common, but now I feel that such a performance would come off much more humorous. Consider all the many movies or plays in which men pretend to be women—Hairspray or Mrs. Doubtfire immediately come to mind. These all get huge laughs because the audience knows that this role is something deviant. In the second row as we were for both performances, we would undoubtedly have noticed that Abigail was a man, and laughed even more when the slimy abbots try to seduce her.

Also, Love’s Sacrifice was such a sexual play. There were make-out scenes where they rolled around on the floor and several moments where men grabbed the women’s crotches. Ferentes, the dirty cad that got three different women pregnant and told each of them how much he despised them, was all over these women. The clutching of a woman’s sexual parts—the way in which she produces children—in each scene was so significant because of the idea of “spoiled virtue,” but also because of the fact that a child was the evidence of their sin. If the women had not gotten pregnant, the world would not have been able to see that they had sex before marriage. In this instance, although I think that men could clearly play the role, it is made more significant because of the fact that each woman did indeed have a womb and was a potential child-bearer. All in all, I believe an audience's mindset correlates with the difference between how the two sexes play the role of a woman more than the actual content changes, although obviously certain innuendos are given a particular meaning when really played by a woman.

Side note: how ironic is it that we are discussing the way gender affects performance when the fuss over Caitlyn Jenner is trending globally, starting all sorts of fuss over who is allowed to step into certain roles and who is not. Obviously, even today, there are clear divides between the sexes and roles that each are allowed to perform, and consumers are not always comfortable when those lines are crossed.