Drawing on a comprehensive range of early modern British, German and other European images and texts, this study offers the first interdisciplinary gendered assessment of early modern performing itinerant quacks. The contribution of women is taken as the focus for an investigation of the nature of the links between the theatrical and the medical, in the activities of quack troupes as they went about curing, selling and, above all, performing.

Well illustrated, accessibly presented, and drawing on a comprehensive range of historical documents, including British, German and other European images, and literary as well as non-literary texts (many previously unconsidered in this context), this study offers the first interdisciplinary gendered assessment of early modern performing itinerant healers (mountebanks, charlatans and quacksalvers). As Katritzky shows, quacks, male or female, combined, in widely varying proportions, three elements: the medical, the itinerant and the theatrical. Above all, they were performers. They used theatricality, in its widest possible sense, to attract customers and to promote and advertise their pharmaceuticals and health care services. Katritzky investigates here the performative aspects of quack marketing and healing methods, and their profound links with the rise of Europe’s professional actresses, fields of enquiry which are only now beginning to attract significant attention from historians of medicine, economics or the theatre. Women, Medicine and Theatre also recovers women’s roles in the economy of the itinerant quack stage. Women associated with mountebank troupes were medically and theatrically active at every level from major stage celebrities to humble urine sample collectors, but also included sedentary relatives, non-performing assistants, door- and bookkeepers, wardrobe mistresses, prop and costume loaners, landladies, spectators, patrons and clients. Katritzky’s study of the whole range of women who supported the troupes contextualizes the activities of their male counterparts, and rehabilitates a broad spectrum of diversely occupied women. The strength of this title’s research method lies in its comparative examination of documents that are generally examined from the point of view of either their performative or their medical aspects, by historians of, respectively, the theatre and medicine. Taken as a whole, these handbills, literary descriptions a

Through detailed historicized and interdisciplinary readings of the performances of Anna Denmark in the Scottish and English Jacobean Courts, Women on the Renaissance Stage fundamentally reassesses women's relationship to early modern performance. It investigates the staging conditions, practices, and gendering of Denmark's performances, and brings current critical theorizations of race, class, gender, space, and performance to bear on the female court of the early 17th century.

Exploring diverse human experiences in the US, Poland and Northern Ireland, this book is of interest to practitioners and students of applied theatre, peace and conflict studies, professionals working in conflict resolution, counselors, psychotherapists, professionals in the field of criminal and restorative justice, and spiritual seekers.

A study of the female healers of centuries past, and how they went from respected to reviled. Witch is a powerful word with humble origins. Once used to describe an ancient British tribe known for its unique class of female physicians and priestesses, it grew into something grotesque, diabolical, and dangerous. A History of Women in Medicine reveals the untold story of forgotten female physicians, their lives, practices, and subsequent denomination as witches. Originally held in high esteem in their communities, these women used herbs and ancient psychological processes to relieve the suffering of their patients, often traveling long distances, moving from village to village. Their medical and spiritual knowledge blended the boundaries between physician and priest. These ancient healers were the antithesis of the witch figure of today; instead they were knowledgeable therapists commanding respect, gratitude, and high social status. In this pioneering work, Sinéad Spearing draws on current archeological evidence, literature, folklore, case studies, and original religious documentation to bring to life these forgotten healers. By doing so she also exposes the Church’s efforts to demonize them in the eyes of the world, leading female healers to be labeled witches and persecuted in the ensuing hysteria known today as the European witch craze.

When the French actress Sarah Bernhardt made her first American tour in 1880, the term feminism had not yet entered our national vocabulary. But over the course of the next half-century, a rising generation of daring actresses and comics brought a new kind of woman to center stage. Exploring and exploiting modern fantasies and fears about female roles and gender identity, these performers eschewed theatrical convention and traditional notions of womanly modesty. They created powerful images of themselves as ambitious, independent, and sexually expressive New Women. Female Spectacle reveals the theater to have been a powerful new source of cultural authority and visibility for women. Ironically, theater also provided an arena in which producers and audiences projected the uncertainties and hostilities that accompanied changing gender relations. From Bernhardt's modern methods of self-promotion to Emma Goldman's political theatrics, from the female mimics and Salome dancers to the upwardly striving chorus girl, Glenn shows us how and why theater mattered to women and argues for its pivotal role in the emergence of modern feminism.

Theatre and Medicine offers a tour of this interdisciplinary terrain. Organized into four distinct topics, each represents crucial ways of understanding the theatre-medicine relationship. From discussions on the somatic underpinnings of the body that medicine and theatre take as their subject through to the historical association of theatre and contagion, and the pervasive role of doctors and the practitioners of alternative medicine in Western theatre and role of patients on and off stage. Together, this brief study considers the institutional contexts of theatre's medical performances in the early twenty-first century.