SOURCE: “The Americanization of Beatrice: Nineteenth-Century Style,” Theatre Survey, Vol. 31, No. 1, May, 1990, pp. 67-84.

In the following essay, Carroll examines two nineteenth-century American portrayals of Beatrice and contends that each reflects a different idealization of femininity.

To nineteenth-century theatre managers, who believed in the play as a commercial venture rather than an aesthetic one, portrayal of the modern American woman presented a dilemma. Sophisticated theatre-goers, familiar with the rhetoric of the women's suffrage movement, looked to female role models for direction on how to maintain a delicate balance between independence and subservience: to project strength of convictions without loss of femininity (traditionally measured by male desirability), and to remain dependent on the economic necessity of marriage (Ziff, 278-80). Speculative theatre managers found Shakespeare's comedies especially adaptable to modern audience's tastes because the plays lacked stage directions, required no royalty payments, were exempt from copyright laws, and centered on...