Albion's “Chaste Lucrece”: Chastity, Resistance, and the Glorious Revolution in the Career of Anne Bracegirdle

Extract

By all indications, the public persona of the late Restoration actress Anne Bracegirdle was built on the speculative foundation of maidenhead. A leading ingénue of multiple talents, Bracegirdle played significant roles in comedy, tragedy, and music-drama from her debut in 1688 to her retirement in 1707. In comedy, Bracegirdle specialized in marriageable young women of rank, wit, and fortune. In serious drama, Bracegirdle often played the pathetic heroine, a virtuous woman stalked by a predatory man. Though primarily an actress, Bracegirdle also called upon her impressive soprano voice in many entr'actes and the occasional musical part. A first-rank player and hardworking company member from very early in her career, Bracegirdle played some eighty roles over a nineteen-year span that kept her consistently before the public eye. Despite Bracegirdle's constant appearances on the stages of Drury Lane, Dorset Garden, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, few extant sources identify the qualities that typified her playing; commentators rarely discuss her acting as a discrete set of practices, aptitudes, or characterizations. Rather, prodigious evidence attests to the public's obsession with Bracegirdle's reputation for virginity. Called the “Romantick Virgin,” the actress was thought to be chaste, and many writers focused attention on her sexual virtue. Indeed, Bracegirdle's chastity seems to have been the cornerstone of her fame. As Colley Cibber wrote, her star status rose in conjunction with her reputation for purity: