Charlotte Cushman: When Romeo Was A Woman (rebroadcast)

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2019

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

You probably have a mental image of the Victorian Era. Straitlaced, rigid, and repressed, right? Meet Charlotte Cushman, born 1816. She was an actor known for playing traditionally male roles, like Romeo and Hamlet. She managed her own career and demanded to be paid as much as her male counterparts. She spent her life in a series of romantic relationships with women. And she was an international superstar. She was so famous and beloved that newspapers called her by just her first name, like Madonna or Beyoncé. She was “Our Charlotte.” In this episode, originally broadcast in 2014, we talk about “Our Charlotte” and her remarkable career with Lisa Merrill, a professor in the Department of Performance Studies at Hofstra University and author of When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and her Circle of Female Spectators. Merrill is interviewed by Rebecca Sheir. From our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Originally broadcast October 22, 2014 and rebroadcast with an updated introduction August 6, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, “I Will Assume Thy Part in Some Disguise,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Esther Ferington and Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had help from Larry Josephson and Robert Auld.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You probably think you know what people were like in the past.
0:03.0	You have images in your head, derived through whatever means of, say, the Puritans or the ancient Greeks.
0:11.7	Delve into small corners of the past, though, and you might find things that completely upend those stereotypes that you hold dear.
0:31.3	From the Folger's Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:34.2	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.
0:42.3	Along with those other perceptions you hold, you likely have an image in your head of the Victorians, the straight-laced world with a rigid set of gender roles.
0:46.3	We probably think we know what a society like that would make of an actress who spent
0:51.3	her career playing male roles and in her personal life showing no interest
0:56.8	in men.
0:58.9	She'd be shunned.
1:00.5	She'd be outcast, right?
1:03.7	Well, no, actually, wrong.
1:07.0	We're going to hear now about Charlotte Cushman, among the most renowned American performers of Shakespeare in the Victorian era.
1:14.6	And, as we said when we originally ran this podcast in 2014, if you've never heard of Charlotte Cushman, don't worry.
1:23.6	There's a reason for that, too.
1:25.6	Lisa Merrill is a professor in the Department of Performance Studies at Hofstra University.
1:31.7	She's written a book about Charlotte Cushman called When Romeo was a Woman.
1:37.2	We invited her in for a look at this remarkable story.
1:41.2	We call this podcast, I Will Assume Thy Part in part in some disguise. Lisa Merrill is interviewed by
1:48.1	Rebecca Shear. So I'd like to start actually at the end of this story and then jump back to the
1:52.8	beginning. Can you convey to us just what an enormous star Charlotte Cushman was when she died
1:57.9	in 1876? Sure. It's really remarkable.
	...

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