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Excerpt from Roscius Anglicanus, or an Historical Review of the Stage From 1660 to 1706
In The Ball of Shirley and Chapman, 1639, Jack Freshwater, a pretended traveller, asserts that in Paris the women are the best actors, they play their own parts, a thing much desired in England by some ladies, inns o' court gentlemen, and It may safely then, be assumed that the women whose performances Downes chronicles, were the first English actresses who appeared upon the stage to speak the words of a play. In Davenant's patent it is expressly said, that Whereas the women's parts in plays have hitherto been acted by men in the habits of women, at which some have taken offence, we do permit and give leave for the time to come that all womens parts be acted by women.i The discussion of the question, abundantly ventilated, whether the women mentioned by classical writers as appearing on the stage, were actresses or dancers, is outside the present subject.
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