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‘A Kind of Woman’: The Elizabethan Boy-Actor and the Kabuki Onnagata

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Peter Hyland
Peter Hyland
Affiliation:
Peter Hyland isSenior Lecturer in English at the National University of Singapore
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Extract

When in 1932 M. C. Bradbrook put forward the view that the Elizabethan style of acting was probably formalistic, she initiated a debate that has not yet ended, between those who accept her view and those who, like Marvin Rosenberg, believe that Elizabethan acting style was probably realistic, akin to modern style. She wrote: ‘There would be comparatively little business, and gesture would be formalised. Conventional movement and heightened delivery would be necessary to carry off dramatic illusion.’ There is no real conclusion to be drawn, and those who take a middle way, arguing for a more complex fusion of the formalistic and the naturalistic, are probably close to the truth. The reason why the argument cannot be resolved is that there is virtually no contemporary evidence about acting styles in general or about particular performances, so that discussion rests less on scholarship than on conjecture based upon the few hints that can be gleaned from the plays and elsewhere. In this paper I want to consider the ways in which female roles might have been acted by boys and young men, taking my perspective from the performance of the onnagata, or female impersonator, in the Japanese Kabuki theatre.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Spring 1987 , pp. 1 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1987

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References

Notes

1. Bradbrook, M. C., Elizabethan Stage Conventions (Cambridge, 1933), p. 109.Google Scholar It is hardly necessary to review the arguments here. Apart from Miss Bradbrook's works, the most thorough statement of the formalist case is in Harbage, Alfred, ‘Elizabethan Acting’, PMLA, Vol. 54, 1939, pp. 685–708.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The strongest opposition to this is to be found in Rosenberg, Marvin, ‘Elizabethan Actors: Men or Marionettes?’ PMLA, Vol. 69, 1954, pp. 915–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarDowner, Alan S., ‘Prolegomena to the Study of Elizabethan acting’, Maske und Kothurn, Vol. 10, 1964, pp. 625–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that a style which combined naturalism with formalism was probably used. See also Joseph, B. L., Elizabethan Acting (Oxford, 1951)Google Scholar; Brown, John Russell, ‘On the Acting of Shakespeare's Plays’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 39, 1953, pp. 477–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seltzer, Daniel, ‘The Actors and Staging’, A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. Muir, Kenneth and Schoenbaum, S. (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 35–54Google Scholar; Shapiro, Michael, ‘Children's Troupes: Dramatic Illusion and Acting Styles’, Comparative Drama, Vol. 3, 1967, pp. 42–53Google Scholar; Bevington, David, Action Is Eloquence: Shakespeare's Language of Gesture (Cambridge, Mass., 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gruber, William E., ‘The Actor in the Script: Affective Strategies in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra’, Comparative Drama, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1985, pp. 30–48.Google Scholar

2. There are numerous accounts in English of the Kabuki theatre. See Miyake, Shutaro, Kabuki Drama (Tokyo, 1938)Google Scholar; Bowers, Faubion, Japanese Theatre (1952; rpt. Tokyo and Rutland, 1974)Google Scholar; Scott, A. C., The Kabuki Theatre of Japan (London, 1955)Google Scholar; A. and Halford, G., The Kabuki Handbook (Tokyo and Rutland, 1956)Google Scholar; Pronko, Leonard, Guide to Japanese Drama (Boston, 1974)Google Scholar; Leiter, Samuel L., Kabuki Encyclopedia (Westport and London, 1979).Google ScholarYoshida, Chiaki, Kabuki: The Resplendent Japanese Theatre (Tokyo, 1977)Google Scholar gives a good photographic account of Kabuki, and has some interesting photographs of onnagata.

3. Kabuki actually originated with a girl, O-Kuni, in 1586, and was at first a woman's theatre. However, in 1629, for reasons of morality, the government banned women from the stage, and female roles were taken by young boys. This, apparently, led to what the government must have considered to be even worse immorality, for in 1652 boys too were banned, and all parts were played by adult males. The particular kind of woman developed by the onnagata is now so important to Kabuki that even when it became no longer illegal for women to appear on the stage convention kept them out of Kabuki.

4. Jameson, Michael, ‘Shakespeare's Celibate Stage’, Papers Mainly Shakespearian, ed. Duthie, G. I. (Edinburgh, 1964), pp. 21–39.Google Scholar

5. All quotations from Shakespeare's plays are from The Complete Works, ed. Alexander, Peter (London, 1951).Google Scholar

6. Rosenberg, , p. 962.Google Scholar

7. Baldwin, T. W., The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton, 1927), p. 36.Google Scholar

8. Ingleby, C. M. et al. , The Shakespeare Allusion Book, rev. Munro, J. (London, 1909), II, 87.Google Scholar

9. Epicoene, ed. Bearline, L. A. (Lincoln, 1966), I, 1, 110–12.Google Scholar

10. Gurr, Andrew, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642 (1970; rpt. Cambridge, 1973), p. 76.Google Scholar

11. Miyake, , p. 30.Google Scholar

12. Dusinberre, Juliet, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women (London, 1975), p. 252.Google Scholar There has recently been a good deal of critical interest in androgyny and transexual disguise and acting on the Renaissance Stage. See, for example, Heilbrun, Carolyn G., Towards Androgyny: Aspects of Male and Female in Literature (London, 1973), pp. 28–34Google Scholar; Hyland, Peter, ‘Shakespeare's Heroines: Disguise in the Romantic Comedies’, Ariel, Vol. 9, 1978, pp. 23–39Google Scholar; French, Marilyn, Shakespeare's Division of Experience (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Kimbrough, Robert, ‘Androgyny Seen Through Shakespeare's Disguise’, Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 33, 1982, pp. 17–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jardine, Lisa, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Brighton, 1983).Google Scholar

13. Rosenberg, , p. 918.Google Scholar

14. Bowers, , p. 192.Google Scholar

15. Rosenberg, , p. 918.Google Scholar The quotation is from Downes, John, Roscius Anglicanus, ed. Summers, Montague (London, 1927), p. 19.Google Scholar

16. Bowers, , p. 194.Google Scholar

17. Bowers, , p. 194.Google Scholar