We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Actresses performing as Irish characters on the eighteenth-century London stage embodied the contradictions of national identity during the Irish Enlightenment. Playwright and actress Kitty Clive was the first to claim an ‘Irish-English’ identity and to turn topsy-turvy the notion of Irish inferiority. The chapter argues that more than their male counterparts, these actresses and the characters they played often served as intermediaries across gender, class, national and religious divides. The various parts for Irish women, largely comic, ranged from peasants and labourers to boisterous widows and would-be aristocrats. The most notable recurrent Irish characters are the cross-dressed and travestied women who perform roles that reveal fixed assumptions about gender and national identity and often expose English hypocrisy. Examples include Ann Barry in Garrick’s Irish Widow cross-dressed as her soldier brother; Margaret Doyle as Patrick in Holcroft’s Seduction; and Maria Macklin’s several roles playing a man or dressed as one, especially in her father Charles Macklin’s The School for Husbands. These women employed popular stereotypes but also attempted on occasion to empty them of their power. They are thus exemplary of the plight of immigrants who seek to assimilate while maintaining a distinct identity.
Actresses performing as Irish characters on the eighteenth-century London stage embodied the contradictions of national identity during the Irish Enlightenment. Playwright and actress Kitty Clive was the first to claim an ‘Irish-English’ identity and to turn topsy-turvy the notion of Irish inferiority. The chapter argues that more than their male counterparts, these actresses and the characters they played often served as intermediaries across gender, class, national and religious divides. The various parts for Irish women, largely comic, ranged from peasants and labourers to boisterous widows and would-be aristocrats. The most notable recurrent Irish characters are the cross-dressed and travestied women who perform roles that reveal fixed assumptions about gender and national identity and often expose English hypocrisy. Examples include Ann Barry in Garrick’s Irish Widow cross-dressed as her soldier brother; Margaret Doyle as Patrick in Holcroft’s Seduction; and Maria Macklin’s several roles playing a man or dressed as one, especially in her father Charles Macklin’s The School for Husbands. These women employed popular stereotypes but also attempted on occasion to empty them of their power. They are thus exemplary of the plight of immigrants who seek to assimilate while maintaining a distinct identity.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.