Shakespeare and Female Playgoers in Renaissance England

Female playgoers in the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline eras watched Shakespeare‟s performances. The paucity of resources about female playgoers in Renaissance England makes it difficult to obtain a sufficient picture of their culture. To overcome this problem, I take two approaches that will be helpful. One is to develop an understanding of female theatre audiences by analyzing contemporary references to them in general; the other is to examine Shakespeare‟s works and contemporary references to him. In this chapter, I first examine primary materials related to female playgoers, especially prologues and epilogues of English Renaissance plays, to elucidate the cultural and social backgrounds of female playgoers and their responses to theatre. The second section investigates the creator-audience relationship between Shakespeare (with his playing company) and female playgoers by looking at paratexts of his plays and records of court performances.