Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology

How the suspect sexuality of actors and actresses shaped early modern debates about gender and sexual identity

From the Restoration through the eighteenth century, the sexuality of actors and actresses was written about in ways that stirred the public imagination. Actors were frequently suspected of heterosexual promiscuity or labeled effeminate or even as “sodomites,” and actresses were often viewed as prostitutes or sexually ambivalent victims of their profession. Kristina Straub argues th...