Editing Restoration comedy (section)

==Actors==
===First actresses===
[[File:Eleanor (Nell) Gwyn di Simon Verelst.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Nell Gwynn]] was one of the first actresses and the mistress of Charles II.]]
Restoration comedy was strongly influenced by the first professional actresses. Before [[London theatre closure 1642|the closing of the theatres]], all female roles had been taken by [[boy player]]s and the predominantly male audiences of the 1660s and 1670s were curious, censorious and delighted at the novelty of seeing real women engage in risqué repartee and take part in physical seduction scenes. [[Samuel Pepys]] refers many times in his diary to visiting the playhouse to watch or re-watch performances by particular actresses and to his enjoyment of these.

Daringly suggestive comedy scenes involving women became especially common, although of course Restoration actresses were, just like male actors, expected to do justice to all kinds and moods of plays. (Their role in the development of Restoration tragedy is also important, compare [[She-tragedy]].)

A speciality introduced almost as early as actresses was the [[breeches role]] – an actress appearing in male clothes (breeches of tight-fitting knee-length pants, the standard male garment of the time), for instance to play a witty heroine who disguises herself as a boy to hide or to engage in escapades disallowed to girls. A quarter of the plays produced on the London stage between 1660 and 1700 contained breeches roles. Women playing them behaved with the freedom society allowed to men. Some feminist critics such as Jacqueline Pearson saw them as subverting conventional [[gender roles]] and empowering female members of the audience. Elizabeth Howe has objected that the male disguise, when studied in relation to play texts, prologues, and epilogues, comes out as "little more than yet another means of displaying the actress as a sexual object" to male patrons, by showing off her body, normally hidden by a skirt, outlined by the male outfit."<ref>See also [[Antitheatricality#Restoration theatre]].</ref>

Successful Restoration actresses included Charles II's mistress [[Nell Gwyn]], the tragedienne [[Elizabeth Barry]], famous for an ability to "move the passions" and make whole audiences cry, the 1690s comedian [[Anne Bracegirdle]], and Susanna Mountfort ([[Susanna Verbruggen]]), who had many roles written specially for her in the 1680s and 1690s. Letters and memoirs of the period show men and women in the audience relishing Mountfort's swaggering, roistering impersonations of young women breeched to enjoy the social and sexual freedom of male [[Rake (character)|Restoration rakes]].

===First celebrity actors===
[[Image:Thomas Betterton.gif|thumb|upright|[[Thomas Betterton]] played the irresistible Dorimant in [[George Etherege]]'s ''[[Man of Mode]].'' Betterton's acting won praise from Pepys, [[Alexander Pope]], and [[Colley Cibber]].]]
Male and female actors on the London stage in the Restoration period became for the first time public [[celebrity|celebrities]]. Documents of the period show audiences attracted to performances by the talents of specific actors as much as by specific plays, and more than by authors (who seem to have been the least important draw, no performance being advertised by an author until 1699). Although playhouses were built for large audiences – the second Drury Lane theatre from 1674 held 2000 patrons – they were compact in design and an actor's charisma could be intimately projected from the [[thrust stage]].

With two companies competing for their services from 1660 to 1682, star actors could negotiate star deals, comprising company shares and [[Benefit concert|benefit nights]] as well as salaries. This advantage changed when the two companies were amalgamated in 1682, but the way the actors rebelled and took command of a new company in 1695 is in itself an illustration of how far their status and power had developed since 1660.

The greatest fixed stars among Restoration actors were Elizabeth Barry ("Famous Mrs Barry" who "forc 'd Tears from the Eyes of her Auditory") and [[Thomas Betterton]], both active in running the actors' revolt in 1695 and both original patent-holders in the resulting actors' cooperative.

Betterton played every great male part there was from 1660 into the 18th century. After watching ''[[Hamlet]]'' in 1661, Pepys reports in his diary that the young beginner Betterton "did the prince's part beyond imagination." Such expressive performances seem to have attracted playgoers as magnetically, as did the novelty of seeing women on the stage. He was soon established as the leading man in the Duke's Company, and played Dorimant, the seminal irresistible [[Rake (character)|Restoration rake]], at the première of [[George Etherege]]'s ''Man of Mode'' (1676). Betterton's position remained unassailed through the 1680s, both as leading man of the United Company and as its stage manager and ''de facto'' day-to-day leader. He remained loyal to Rich longer than many of his co-workers, but eventually it was he who headed an actors' walkout in 1695 and became the acting manager of the new company.