Shakespeare wrote every word of his plays with the firm
expectation that the female parts would be acted by men or boys. No female was allowed to act in a public theater. That would be shockingly indecent.
In England, that expectation was dashed in a 1660 production of Othello. We know for sure that Desdemona was played by a woman. We're just not sure which woman it was. This episode explains how English theater came to accept women on the stage.
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