Yet
such solecisms were imperative under the theatrical system of the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Men taking women's parts
seem to have worn masks, but that can hardly have improved matters.
Flute, when he complains that it would hardly befit him to play a
woman's part because he had a beard coming, is bidden by his
resourceful manager, Quince, play Thisbe in a "mask." At times actors
who had long lost the roses of youth masqueraded in women's roles.
Thereby the ungainliness, which marked the distribution of the cast in
Elizabethan and Jacobean playhouses, was often forced into stronger
light.
It was not till the seventeenth century was well advanced that women
were permitted to act in public theatres. Then the gracelessness of
the masculine method was acknowledged and deplored. It was the
character of Desdemona which was first undertaken by a woman, and the
absurdity of the old practice was noticed in the prologue written for
this revival of _Othello_, which was made memorable by the innovation.
Some lines in the prologue describe the earlier system thus:--
For to speak truth, men act, that are between
Forty or fifty, wenches of fifteen,
With bone so large and nerve so uncompliant,
When you call Desdemona, enter Giant.
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