Women who changed history

In celebration of Women’s History Month, we’re sharing some of our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast interviews and blog posts about women who have changed history, from the early modern world to our own time.

Anne Boleyn and the marriage that shook Europe 
Biographers Julia Fox and John Guy take a scholarly look at the evidence surrounding Anne’s rise and fall. They focus on Anne’s years of training in the courts of Europe, which shaped her into the formidable woman whom Henry VIII came to regard as an intellectual equal and prepared her for the English court’s ruthless politics, where her ambition won her some powerful enemies.

Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance
Scholar Ramie Targoff explores the lives and works of Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer (nee Bassano), Anne Clifford, and Elizabeth Cary, four great women writers from Shakespeare’s time. She makes a forceful argument for their literary merit and the importance of reading these writers alongside their more familiar male contemporaries.

The hidden lives of Tudor women
What was everyday life like for women throughout Tudor society? Elizabeth Norton’s social history The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women introduces us not only to the restrictions, but also to some of the surprising freedoms. Hear the stories of remarkable women who owned businesses, stood up to kings, and lived independently.

How commedia dell ‘arte’s actresses changed the Shakespearean stage
English women didn’t act on London’s professional stages until the 1660s. But Pamela Allen Brown argues that despite this, star actresses from Italy altered both plays and playing in a process that began in the 1570s, when commedia dell’arte troupes first set foot in London.

Women performers in Shakespeare’s time
Think there were no women onstage in Shakespeare’s time? Think again. Scholar Clare McManus tells us where and how women performed in early modern Europe: emerging from mechanical seashells in elaborate court masques, dancing across tightropes, and on the stages of the European Continent.

Mary Sidney, Imperfect alchemist
Scholar Naomi Miller has written a novel about one of early modern England’s most significant literary figures—poet, playwright, translator, and scientist—Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. Learn about Elizabethan England’s female alchemists, Sidney’s friends and beneficiaries, and how class shapes the outlooks of the novel’s characters.

The first English actresses
In 1660, women began playing female roles on the professional English stage. Half a century earlier, in Shakespeare’s time, these roles on England’s professional stage were played by men, with young men or boys acting the female parts. Casting a woman was quite new. Learn more about these early actresses.

Shakespeare’s lady editors
Since the early 19th century, women have labored editing Shakespeare in the shadows of men, sometimes getting no credit at all. Scholar Molly Yarn, while writing her doctoral thesis, discovered almost 70 female editors of Shakespeare, including Elizabeth Inchbald, Laura Valentine, Charlotte Stopes, and their editorial sisters in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Black women Shakespeareans, 1821–1960
Joyce Green MacDonald found records of every Black woman who has been paid to perform or recite Shakespeare in the United States. She shares the stories of four performers who took to the stage in those 139 years: The African Grove Theatre’s “Miss Welsh,” Henrietta Vinton Davis, Adrienne McNeil Herndon, and Jane White.

Lady Romeo, Charlotte Cushman
She was known for her Lady Macbeth and Oliver Twist’s Nancy, but Cushman was acclaimed for her performances as Romeo and Hamlet. Author Tana Wojczuk shares Cushman’s radical and revolutionary story, from playing Shakespeare’s leading men to starting a bohemian artists’ colony in Rome to living publicly as a queer woman in the 19th century.

Asta Nielsen’s uniquely female Hamlet
In 1921, Nielsen, one of the world’s biggest movie stars, decided to make a version of Hamlet where the lead character was born a woman, a fact that was kept secret from nearly all of the play’s characters for her entire life. Pamela Hutchinson, a writer and film historian, shares the film and Nielsen’s remarkable career.