Shakespeare's Birthday Lecture: "Unnatural Ornaments” Women Rope-Dancers on Shakespeare's Stages

Elizabeth E. Tavares is an assistant professor at the University of Alabama with the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies. Specializing in early English drama, her research foci include playing companies, theatre history, and Shakespeare in performance. Her award-winning research has appeared in Early Theatre and Shakespeare Quarterly, among others, complemented by her support of theatre-makers as a professional dramaturg and director of research for the Alabama Shakespeare Project.

While Spain and Italy cultivated theatre marketplaces blossoming with women performers, the Renaissance of Shakespeare’s England perpetuated an oddly “all-male” stage. Attending to public playhouses, court masques, regional fairs, and inter-continental touring companies beyond those affiliated with Shakespeare reveals the evolution of a category of woman-player endemic to early modern English stages from Henry VII to Elizabeth I: the rope-dancer.