Charlotte Charke, daughter of theatre impresario Colley Cibber, lived a notorious life. Among her occupations she numbered grocer, puppeteer, valet, sausage maker and seller, publican, waiter, gardener, pastry-cook, hog merchant, playwright, novellist and proof reader. But it was as an actress that she was most famous.
Charlotte was known for taking 'travesty parts' - fully male characters, such as Macheath in Gray's Beggar's Opera, as opposed to 'breeches parts,' where women-play-women-pretending-to-be-men; the kind of feisty lady-boy that Shakespeare delighted in creating.
In later life, Charlotte lived openly as a man, Charles Brown; but she first developed her passion for transvesticisim at the age of four. Her autobiography describes how she stole downstairs early one morning before the house was awake and put on her brother’s waistcoat and "an enormous bushy Tie-Wig of my Father’s, which entirely enclos’d my Head and Body"— using "the Help of a long Broom" to get them off their pegs.
To this she added "a monstrous Belt and large Silver-hilted Sword, that I could scarce drag along" and "one of my Father’s large Beaver-hats, laden with Lace, as thick and as broad as a Brickbat".
All dressed up, she left the house and paraded the street near her home, "bowing to all who came by me", until discovered by her family. Though aware that to the onlookers she was a curiosity, Charlotte thoroughly enjoyed the attention: "the Oddity of my Appearance soon assembled a Croud about me; which yielded me no small Joy." She "walk’d myself into a Fever, in the happy Thought of being taken for the 'Squire.'"
Charlotte was known for taking 'travesty parts' - fully male characters, such as Macheath in Gray's Beggar's Opera, as opposed to 'breeches parts,' where women-play-women-pretending-to-be-men; the kind of feisty lady-boy that Shakespeare delighted in creating.
In later life, Charlotte lived openly as a man, Charles Brown; but she first developed her passion for transvesticisim at the age of four. Her autobiography describes how she stole downstairs early one morning before the house was awake and put on her brother’s waistcoat and "an enormous bushy Tie-Wig of my Father’s, which entirely enclos’d my Head and Body"— using "the Help of a long Broom" to get them off their pegs.
To this she added "a monstrous Belt and large Silver-hilted Sword, that I could scarce drag along" and "one of my Father’s large Beaver-hats, laden with Lace, as thick and as broad as a Brickbat".
All dressed up, she left the house and paraded the street near her home, "bowing to all who came by me", until discovered by her family. Though aware that to the onlookers she was a curiosity, Charlotte thoroughly enjoyed the attention: "the Oddity of my Appearance soon assembled a Croud about me; which yielded me no small Joy." She "walk’d myself into a Fever, in the happy Thought of being taken for the 'Squire.'"
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