How do you depict pregnancy onstage when your cast is all-male? That was one of a number of problems that English playwrights and performers faced in the Stuart era, when plays like The Winter’s Tale frequently began to feature pregnancies as major plot points. Dr. Sara BT Thiel has been exploring this subject, and it’s resulted in a chapter entitled “’Cushion Come Forth’: Materializing Pregnancy on the Stuart Stage.” The chapter appears in the new book Stage Matters: Props, Bodies, and Spaces in Shakespearean Performance. Sara joins us to explain how Stuart-era playwrights and theatre companies created the illusion of pregnancy onstage, as well as the significance of her research to how we understand the depiction of women in Shakespeare’s time.
The Theatre History Podcast