| Description |
1 online resource (xvi, 367 pages) : illustrations |
| Series |
Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama |
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Studies in performance and early modern drama.
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| Contents |
Quack actresses of 1514 -- Literary mountebanks I: sex 'n' shopping on the medieval religious stage -- A quack picture: a key to the appearance of medieval staging? -- Friendship albums and other visual sources -- Containers, stages and venues -- The troupe -- Performative aspects -- Medical and commercial activity -- Women as healers -- Literary mountebanks II: stage quacks of Ben Jonson, Thomas Killigrew, Aphra Behn and Christian Weise -- Quack couples: the male-female partnership -- Tooth-drawers -- Literary mountebanks III: Johann Kuhnau's female tooth-drawer, 1700 -- A French tooth-drawer: on the stage of Europe's first secular theatre? -- The inamorata -- Comici and Buffoni -- Italian mixed-gender troupes: Thomas II Platter and Hyppolytus Guarinonius -- Female stage costume and cross-dressing -- English actresses and the rise of the German professional stage -- Pre-1650 women associated with the English comedians -- The introduction of actresses in German-speaking Europe -- Literary mountebanks IV: Johann Beer's flying quacks and mixed-gender 'English' troupe |
| Summary |
This study offers an interdisciplinary gendered assessment of early modern performing itinerant healers (mountebanks, charlatans and quacksalvers). As Katritzky shows, quacks, male or female, combined, in widely varying proportions, three elements: the medical, the itinerant and the theatrical. Above all, they were performers. They used theatricality, it its widest possible sense, to attract customers and to promote and advertise their pharmaceuticals and health care services. Katritzky investigates here the performative aspects of quack marketing and healing methods, and their profound links with the rise of Europe's professional actresses. Women, Medicine and Theatre also recovers women's roles in the economy of the itinerant quack stage. Women associated with mountebank troupes were medically and theatrically active at every level from major stage celebrities to humble urine sample collectors, but also included sedentary relatives, non-performing assistants, door- and bookkeepers, wardrobe mistresses, prop and costume loaners, landladies, spectators, patrons and clients. Katritzky's study of the whole range of women who supported the troupes contextualizes the activities of their male counterparts and rehabilitates a broad spectrum of diversely occupied women. --From publisher's description |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Traveling theater -- Europe -- History
|
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European drama -- History and criticism
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Women in literature.
|
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Quacks and quackery -- Europe -- History
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Actresses -- Europe -- History
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Actresses
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European drama
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Quacks and quackery
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Traveling theater
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Women in literature
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Europe
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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History
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781351871549 |
|
1351871544 |
|
