Margaret Hughes

Margaret Hughes
(High School)
Killigrew’s Patent: April 25, 1662

Margaret Hughes
Born: 1645
Death: 1719
Rank: Actress

Women on the Stage
Early in January 1661, Samuel Pepys noted in his diary an extraordinary occurrence. After dinner, he went to the theater with a friend and beheld something quite unusual; for the first time in his twenty-eight years, Pepys beheld the sight of a woman upon the English stage. It was a sight that would become familiar to London theater-goers in the 1660’s. Upon the restoration of the monarchy, after the puritanical rule of Cromwell and his cohorts since the dark days of the Civil Wars of the 1640’s, King Charles II issued a royal warrant granting exclusive rights to Thomas Killigrew and Sir William Davenant “to erect two companies of players...two houses or theaters...for the representation of tragedies, comedies, plays, operas, and all other entertainments of that nature…”. This was at the expense of every other London playhouse whom the King ordered closed, due to “the extraordinary licentiousness that has lately used in things of this nature…” Having a duopoly on the London theater, Killigrew and Davenant both hastened to make their respective theaters the superior. As such, in their recruitment of actors for various productions, they had no problem enlisting women to play the onstage females. England had finally gotten ‘round to putting women on the stage. They were rather late in coming.
On the European mainland, by contrast, actresses had been working on the stage professionally for more than eighty years. In Spain, a country often derided as conservative and reactionary - wholly enthralled to the inquisition - a Golden Age of art and literature was in the ascendency. Despite opposition, women openly began to perform in theater as early as 1587, and could likewise pour into the large open-roofed theaters, called Corrales, and enjoy productions alongside the men. A 1599 Royal Decree obliged all professional and amateur actresses to be married to one of the members of the acting troupe to which they belonged, but it is a testament to Spain’s forward-thinking that Lope de Vega - crowned the ‘phoenix of wits’ by no less an author than Don Quixote’s creator, Miguel de Cervantes Saveedra - saw countless women perform in his productions. Whereas Shakespeare, working at the same time in England, never once saw his Desdemona, Olivia, Lady Percy, or Juliet acted by an actual women.
What Pepys saw that January day was something entirely new in English theatrical productions, something solidified into a reality by King Charles in his issuance of the letters patent to Killigrew in 1662. “And we do likewise permit and give leave,” read the Royal warrant, “that all the women’s parts to be acted in either of the said two [theaters] for the time to come may be performed by women.” Charles, having been exiled in France for much of the previous decade, had cultivated a love for theater born of his witnessing French comedies and dramas, performances which naturally featured women. Eager to bring England into a new age alongside the continental powers, he warranted, at last, women a profession in acting. One of these was a twenty-something, named Margaret Hughes.
Enter Pegg
Confidence. In the eyes of Samuel Pepys, the poise of these pioneering actresses was most striking. “But, Lord!” he wrote, in May 1668, “their confidence! And how many men do hover about them...as they come off the stage, and how confident they are in their talk!” Fawned over by an adoring public, these actresses became a mainstay in Restoration London, many rising to share the company of the King and his nobles, who flocked about them with all the glee of modern fanboys. On this same occasion, he was to meet Margaret Hughes: a “pretty women newly come, called Pegg [a nickname] that was Sir Charles Sidley’s mistress, a mighty pretty women, and seems, but is not, modest.”
Contrary to what is written about her elsewhere, it is unlikely that Margaret Hughes appeared on the London stage before 1668, as Pepys’s remark that she was “newly come” suggests. Hence, she could not have been the first Englishwomen to play Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello, as it so often claimed, for nowhere does her name appear in the early list of actresses in either Killigrew’s or Davenant’s employ. Though a latecomer, Margaret had no problem landing roles, nor the attention of courtiers. Actresses were in high demand among the upper crust of London society, for as Joanne Laffler observes, “theater is a fundamentally eroticized enterprise,” especially in the day and age of Charles II. As such, an actress on the London stage could easily ascend to a pinnacle rarely reached by gaining the attention of powerful men. It had been done before; after all Theodora, Empress of Constantinople alongside her husband Justinian, had famously worked as an actress before coming to the attention of the heir to the Empire. ‘Twas no different in the seventeenth century when Charles and his courtiers frequented the theater; they usually dropped by backstage, as is reported by Pepys’s noteworthy example.
Becoming the mistress of a powerful noble was a way to advance oneself, and Margaret Hughes landed one of the biggest fish of them all: Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Cousin to the King, a Royalist hero of the late Civil Wars, Rupert stood as one of the most powerful men in England. Late in the 1660’s, the two began their romance, and by 1673, Margaret had given birth to a daughter named Ruperta. The relationship seems to have been loving, even though it never came to marriage. So much was Rupert’s devotion to Margaret that, towards the end of his life in 1682, he left her and his child with substantial means upon which to subsist. She survived him by over thirty years, though she never returned to the stage after a brief appearance in 1676, turning instead towards raising her daughter and enjoying the domestic bliss of life with Rupert. She passed away well into her seventies.
As for her life, Margaret Hughes was probably not the first Desdemona. That Samuel Pepys does not mention her until 1668 is telling of her arrival to the London stage, for Pepys, a frequent theater goer, was generally up to date on the “who's who” in the playhouses, and so would have known of her before that time, if she had indeed been acting. Moreover, Hughes does not appear among the actresses in the two London playhouses before the end of the decade, and as such, could not have been operating within them at the beginning. Nevertheless, she was among the first generation of professional actresses in England, and from these humble beginnings - through her wit and confidence - rose to become a woman of substantial means, well beyond what she had been born into.

Margaret Hughes (High School Activity) - Shakespeare never saw any of his female roles performed by women; nor did Euripides, or Plautus. Until the mid-seventeenth-century, English stage roles - of both sexes - were played exclusively by men, as was the practice in ancient Greece, Rome, and well beyond, with some exceptions. In the Spain of the Inquisition and Philip II, Spain often portrayed as a backward Catholic Empire, women could both see and perform in theatrical performances (known as Corrales) because they were performed in courtyards, as early as 1587. Controversial in its day, a 1599 Royal decree had it that female performers must be married to one of the actors in their theater company in order to perform; it is a markedly progressive move in a nation often branded conservative and reactionary. Indeed, it was not until 1662 that England officially allowed women to perform female parts on the stage. For this activity, your job is to explore the Spanish Corrales. What plays were involved? How was seating arranged? And how unruly could the audience become? Expose this rather unknown segment of history, one too long overshadowed. For background, look here:

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