HowlRound Theatre Commons: How do you depict pregnancy onstage when your cast is all-male? That was one of a number of problems that English playwrights and performers faced in the Stuart era, when plays like The Winter’s Tale frequently began to feature pregnancies as major plot points. Dr. Sara BT Thiel has been exploring this subject, and it’s resulted in a chapter entitled “’Cushion Come Forth’: Materializing Pregnancy on the Stuart Stage.” The chapter appears in the new book Stage Matters: Props, Bodies, and Spaces in Shakespearean Performance.
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I never knew that there was ever a wave of on-stage pregnancies in this time period, and I find it interesting that it has ties to Queen Anne of Denmark’s pregnancies after Queen Elizabeth I’s childless reign. Visible pregnancy on stage seemed to only stop being taboo when the Queen started having children again. I think this may speak to how conscious people were of potentially offending the monarchy and their situation. I find it somewhat admirable that playwrights were careful of including pregnancy in plays, for it may have been a touchy subject considering how important it was to produce an heir during a royal’s reign. In terms of how the pregnancies were depicted after this “baby boom,” as the author calls it, it is unique how many times the playwrights would use dialogue or narration to describe it before showing it. I think the sneak peak at that information through descriptors of a character could really get an audience on the edge of their seat anticipating a number of outcomes.
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