"Glad am I to say," remarks as stout a Puritan as Prynne, namely, Thomas Brand, in a comment addressed to Laud, "glad am I to say they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage, so that I do not think they will soon be ready to try the same again." Although Brand asserts "that all virtuous and well-disposed persons in this town" were "justly offended" at these women "or monsters rather," as Prynne calls them, "expelled from their own country," adds Brand, yet more sober-thinking people did not fail to see the propriety of Juliet being represented by a girl rather than by a boy. Accordingly, we hear of English actresses even before the Restoration, mingled, however, with boys, who shared with them that "line of business." "The boy's a pretty actor," says Lady Strangelove, in the "Court Beggar," played at the Cockpit, in 1632, "and his mother can play her part. The women now are in great request." Prynne groaned at the "request" becoming general. "They have now," he writes, in 1633, "their female players in Italy and other foreign parts."
Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes" was privately acted[19] by amateurs, including Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell; the parts of Ianthe and Roxalana were played by Mrs. Edward Coleman and another lady. The piece is so stuffed with heroic deeds, heroic love, and heroic generosity, that none more suitable could be found for ladies to appear in. Nevertheless, when Rhodes was permitted to reopen the stage, he could only assemble boys about him for his Evadnes, Aspasias, and the other heroines of ancient tragedy.
Now, the resumption of the old practice of "women's parts being represented by men in the habits of women," gave offence, and this is assigned as a reason in the first patents accorded to Killigrew and Davenant why those managers were authorised to employ actresses to represent all female characters. Killigrew was the first to avail himself of the privilege. It was time. Some of Rhodes's "boys" were men past forty, who frisked it as wenches of fifteen; even real kings were kept waiting because theatrical queens had not yet shaved; when they did appear, they looked like "the guard disguised," and when the prompter called "Desdemona"--"enter GIANT!" _Who_ the lady was who first trod the stage as a professional actress is not known; but that she belonged to Killigrew's Company is certain. The character she assumed was Desdemona, and she was introduced by a prologue written for the occasion by Thomas Jordan. It can hardly be supposed that she was too modest to reveal her name, and that of Anne Marshal has been suggested, as also that of Margaret Hughes. On the 3d of January 1661, Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush" was performed at Killigrew's Theatre, "it being very well done," says Pepys, "and here the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage." Davenant did not bring forward _his_ actresses before the end of June 1661, when he produced the second part of the "Siege of Rhodes," with Mrs. Davenport as Roxalana, and Mrs. Saunderson as Ianthe; both these ladies, with Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Long, boarded in Davenant's house. Killigrew abused his privilege to employ ladies. In 1664, his comedy, the "Parson's Wedding," wherein the plague is made a comic incident of, connected with unexampled profligacy, was acted, "I am _told_," are Pepys's own words, "by nothing but women, at the King's house."