Female performers

The mid to late eighteenth century was a time of increasing visibility for women in society. However, the growing bourgeois ideal of femininity as passive, private and domestic came up against the popularity of actresses who were anything but. Female performers challenged normative ideals for women and the easy trope of actress as whore, by carefully crafting their public identities.  Actresses such as Mrs Abington (1737-1815) successfully turned the popularity of their performances into a commodity. Her use of imagery enabled a sense of ownership for her admirers, as they followed her activities by purchasing prints of her portraits and reading details of her life in the growing number of gossip journals such as the Town and County Magazine and London Daily Courant.

The status of performers was fluid and ambiguous, based on their protean ability to change character and become like others. How could an actor be trusted to present their true face to the world given their profession? David Garrick (1717-1779), manager of Drury Lane theatre for nearly thirty years, aimed develop acting to the status of a legitimate and manly profession. However, actresses were left to suffer the popular and easy conjunction between their chosen profession and that of a prostitute. Some were happy to play on this impression, such as Anne Catley (1745-1789) who built a reputation for bawdy comedy. Others, such as George Anne Bellamy (1731-1788) and Sarah Siddons (1755-1831), worked to elevate the professional actress to greater respectability alongside the men.