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From the Restoration through the eighteenth century, the sexuality of actors and actresses was written about in ways that stirred the public imagination. Actors were frequently suspected of heterosexual promiscuity or labeled effeminate or even as 鈥渟odomites,鈥� and actresses were often viewed as prostitutes or sexually ambivalent victims of their profession. Kristina Straub argues that this depiction of players greatly shaped public debates about what made women feminine and men masculine. Considering a wide range of literature by or about players鈥攑amphlets, newspaper reports, theatrical histories, and biographies as well as the public correspondence between Alexander Pope and the famed actor Colley Cibber鈥攕he examines the formation of gender roles and sexual identities during a period crucial to modern thinking on these issues.

Drawing from feminist-materialist and gay and lesbian theories and historiographies, Sexual Suspects analyzes the complex development of spectacle and spectatorship as gendered concepts. She reveals how national, racial, and class differences contributed to the subjection of players as professional spectacles and how images of race, class, and gender combined to create divisions between 鈥渘ormal鈥� and 鈥渄eviant鈥� sexuality.

Awards and Recognition

• Finalist for the 1993 Barnard Hewitt Award, American Society for Theatre Research