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Examining theatre economics, rhetorical acting, cross-dressing, the staging of ´self´, and the alignment of motherhood and work, this book reveals how actresses drew on changing models of gender to achieve phenomenal levels of success over the eighteenth-century. By doing so it sheds new light on the cultural significance of female performance.

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Introduction 1. Playing for Money: ´This is certainly a large sum but I can assure you I have worked very hard for it´ 2. Playing the Passions: ´All their Force and Judgment in perfection´ 3. Playing Men: ´Half the men in the house take me for one of their own sex´ 4. Playing Her Self: ´It was not as an actress but as herself, that she charmed every one´ 5. Playing Mothers: ´Stand forth ye elves, and plead your mother´s cause´ Bibliography Index

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"This book provides a new focus through a study of how these actresses negotiated and displayed contemporary concepts of gender in order to create themselves as profitable and marketable commodities. ... Brooks offers an impressive contribution to the study of eighteenth-century actresses, appealing to scholars of theatrical history, eighteenth-century drama and women´s history ... ." (Anna Louise Senkiw, The BARS Review, Issue 48, Autumn, 2016)

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Helen E. M. Brooks is Lecturer in Drama at the University of Kent, UK. is Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Kent, UK. She is Associate Editor of the Wiley Encyclopedia of British Literature 1660-1789 and has published articles on eighteenth-century women as actresses and theatre managers, on private theatricals, and on performance historiography.

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