She prepared for her London debut as Romeo with extraordinary care. She had quietly assayed the part early in her career, the first time in April 1837 while still a stock player in Manhattan (a reviewer for the New York Courier noted that “her love scenes with Juliet were beautifully rendered,” and if she “would give to the impassioned scenes more fire, and to her grief more emphasis, her Romeo would be indeed a faultless performance”). Though records of this are scarce too, it appears that this year she also performed the role in Albany as well as in New Orleans, then took another turn at it in Philadelphia in 1843. These early and brief forays made clear to her the particular hurdles she faced in playing Romeo, both professional and personal.
While reviewers would praise her naturalism as Romeo—“there is no trick in Miss Cushman’s performance”—that effect can also be seen as an accumulation of techniques she had honed over time. She had a particular genius for signaling or disguising the conventional habits of one gender or the other. Experienced actors of the day such as John Coleman marveled at this talent. “As a rule,” Coleman writes, actresses who cross-dressed “betray their female origin by quaint little movements, their lower limbs are apt to cling helplessly together, the knees instinctively bowed inward.” Not Cushman. She didn’t try to disguise her “ample and majestic bust,” he concludes, a bit bizarrely, yet her figure “might have been that of a robust man.” Cushman also understood how critical it was to capture Romeo’s turmoil in the balcony scene as well as in the friar’s cell, so put special effort into them; audiences were thrilled by her “agonized, distracted look” in the latter, “the frantic expression of the face, the deadly determination.” Vandenhoff, who played Mercutio in her Philadelphia performance, lent her his sword, hat, and cloak, taught her some fencing moves, and later took credit for the “masculine and effective style” in which she killed Tybalt and Paris. Yet he never mustered the courage to tell Cushman to her face what he later committed to paper: “Romeo requires a man, to feel his passion, and to express his despair. A woman, in attempting it, ‘unsexes’ herself to no purpose”; there “should be a law against such perversions.”
Cushman borrowed freely from the technique of two stars she had acted alongside, Edwin Forrest and William Macready. Both men were talented and egotistical—but there their resemblance ended. Forrest was America’s first great native-born actor. Barrel-chested and muscular, he cultivated the persona of the brash, hypermasculine American male. Even the New York Times gushed about this, arguing that he was the embodiment of the new type of man the country now needed: “Standing before them in his colossal strength of form, his chiseled and massive features the indices of an iron will, he seems the type of the American man before whose indomitable energy the wilderness of the New World has receded.” Forrest was wildly popular with young, white, working-class men. And he was deeply uncomfortable with strong women (including his English wife, whose divorce settlement he unsuccessfully contested for eighteen years). Forrest had publicly caned a man who criticized him in the newspapers, paid a ridiculous amount for a statue of himself as Coriolanus, and was both a friend and a supporter of President Andrew Jackson, who embodied his sort of masculinity in the political sphere. Forrest’s career was carried along by the swift currents of “Jacksonian democracy”—that catchphrase (and oxymoron) for the political realignments in the 1830s and 1840s that came to be identified with the nation’s seventh president: anti-elitist, racist, manly, expansionist, nationalist, in favor of limited regulation and a more powerful presidency, and mostly good for white men.
Macready was everything Forrest was not. Though no less self-centered (he was the kind of actor who trimmed the lines of others in the cast and demanded that others retreat to the rear of the stage while he hogged the footlights), Macready was also admired by the cultural elites, whose friendship he cultivated. His restrained acting style, which tended to the naturalistic and psychological, capitalized on his expressive features and strong voice. Macready had strongly supported Cushman at the outset of her career, encouraging her to make her fortune in London. While Cushman was likened to Forrest as a brash American, she bore a closer physical resemblance to Macready. The English humorist Gilbert Abbott à Beckett in London made much of this likeness: “What figure is that which appears on the scene? / ’Tis Madame Macready—Miss Cushman, I mean. . . . In the chin, in the voice, ’tis the same to a tittle. / Miss Cushman is Mister Macready in little.” His poem also reveals how much Cushman lifted from Macready, including many of his trademark gestures, the “walk on the toes,” the “bend of the knee, the slight sneer of the lip, / The frown on the forehead, the hand on the hip.” A keen observer of his rivals, Forrest saw the resemblance too, and privately mocked Cushman as “a Macready in petticoats.”
Charlotte Cushman’s decision to make her London debut as Romeo in late 1845 was badly timed: Anglo-American relations had recently begun to fray over rights to the Pacific Northwest, a territorial dispute that since the War of 1812 had remained unresolved; it was agreed that both Americans and British subjects could dwell and trade in the large swath of Oregon Territory that covered present-day Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, and Montana as well as parts of British Columbia. The situation had been heading toward a quietly negotiated diplomatic resolution until James Polk inflamed matters during his presidential run by linking American territorial ambitions in Mexico with those in the Pacific Northwest. He did so to win voting blocks in a hotly contested election: the Oregon Territory—presumably without slaves—would balance out the acquisition of slave states in land carved out from Mexico.
By the time that Polk gave his inaugural address in March 1845, this campaign promise was now policy, as Polk made clear that America’s claim to Oregon was both “clear and unquestionable.” British warships anchored off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, as Polk asked Congress on December 2, 1845, to give the British notice that America was terminating its agreement to jointly occupy this territory, while in the Senate there were calls for war with Britain. It’s unlikely that Polk wanted to embroil the US military on two fronts; but he gambled that war in the Pacific Northwest was the last thing the British needed at this moment. Though powerful, the British Empire had its hands full dealing with armed conflicts with the Maori in newly colonized New Zealand, even as they were embroiled in the First Afghan War, and, closer to home, dealing with famine in Ireland. But whether all this posturing in Washington was a bluff remained unknown in December 1845.
Two weeks before Cushman’s London debut as Romeo, a long editorial ran in the London Times that made clear the British saw (and were not pleased by) what was taking place in the United States: “If then we seek for some more considerable cause of the agitation now raging in the Union, on the subject of Oregon, it may without much difficulty be identified with the popular passion which so recently gratified itself by the annexation of Texas, and which must now be regarded as the predominating principle of the foreign policy of the United States.” The editorial then took a sharper tone, making clear that this change in foreign policy to what we now call “America First” threatened to turn the young republic into an absolutist regime:
By annexing Texas and by laying claim to exclusive sovereignty in Oregon, without submitting to arbitration or compromise, the United States have already done what no state in Europe—no, not the strongest and most unscrupulous of them all, would have dared to attempt, or could have perpetuated with impunity. Such acts belong to a more barbaric time, and they have usually been prompted by the lawless passions of absolute princes.
The problem, then, was a product of both the “popular passion” of the American people and the “lawless passions” of their leaders. The immediate political context in which Cushman took the stage was not conducive to a warm welcome; for any American with a passionate acting style, or playing a passionate role, the dangers of guilt by association were inescapable.
London audiences that had previously applauded E
dwin Forrest now turned against him. And reviewers found it convenient to use Cushman as a stick to beat her fellow countryman. The same critic who eviscerated Forrest for his Othello also said that it was “impossible to speak too highly” of Cushman’s Emilia in the same production (she was also praised for her “boldness,” pronounced the “American Siddons,” and deemed undervalued “on the other side of the Atlantic”). It maddened Forrest that Cushman’s acting style depended on much the same brash American style as his own, yet only she was praised for it. He sniped that Cushman “is not a woman, let alone being womanly.” It would be the last time the two would work together. But it was a great stroke of luck for Cushman that Forrest served as a lightning rod for anti-American sentiment. The appeal of a passionate and distinctively American acting style had not diminished; but it was now only acceptable in a woman, especially when playing a man.
Like every other actress of the day, Cushman knew that the personal lives of women who performed publicly were closely scrutinized, and one who dared embrace another woman onstage even more so. Cushman made sure that she was known as a regular churchgoer and as an unmarried woman secured the reputation as one who was not seen consorting with men. Some must have seen past this, including the female admirer in London who told another after watching Cushman play Romeo—after a pause and with a “light laugh”—that “Miss Cushman is a very dangerous young man.” But had most London playgoers known (and not just subliminally grasped) that she was a woman who loved other women—the term “lesbian” did not even enter the vocabulary until 1890—they may well have repudiated her, so one more thing that Cushman had to do in preparing for her high-risk London debut was restrict familiarity with her sexual orientation to her loyal circle of women friends. When she sailed from America she had to leave behind her lover, Rosalie Sully, with whom she had exchanged vows, and until her stardom was assured, and even thereafter, she was assiduous about managing her public persona.
Knowing how realistically she planned to perform the play’s most erotic scenes, she also chose her Juliet carefully, scraping together enough money to bring her sister to England, hoping that critics would have less to complain about if two sisters shared the stage (though Susan’s domestic situation—her husband having abandoned her and their young child—had not gone down well in Edinburgh, where the sisters had performed together in advance of the London opening). Cushman was no doubt relieved to read in the Morning Advertiser after opening night that her sister’s appearance as Juliet “diminished, in a great degree, any unpleasant feeling that might otherwise have been entertained.” It was only after her success was assured that she turned to other, and younger, Juliets.
Once her fame was secure, Cushman felt freer to dress as she liked, appearing in public in “a man’s hat and coat, a man’s collar and cravat, [and] wellington boots, which, so far from attempting to conceal, she displayed without reticence or restraint,” and “led to speculations which it would be indecorous to repeat.” Back in America, she “astonished” locals (as the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported in 1851) by her “fine appearance” at her hotel dressed from head to toe “in masculine attire—hat, coat, unmentionables and all.” Cushman had a number of long-term lovers, including the English actor Matilda Hays and the American sculptor Emma Stebbins. She called Stebbins “Her Juliet,” and Mary Devlin signed her letters to Cushman as “Your Juliet,” confirming how fully identified Cushman was with this role—one that she preferred above all others.
She retained her manly demeanor even when heckled. There’s a wonderful anecdote of her playing Romeo at the National Theatre in Boston during the 1851–1852 season, with Sarah Anderton as her Juliet, when “in the midst of one of the most romantic passages between the lovers, some person in the house sneezed in such a manner as to attract the attention of the whole audience, and everyone knew that the sneeze was artificial and derisive.” Hearing that man snort, “Cushman instantly stopped the dialogue, and led Miss Anderton off the stage, as a cavalier might lead a lady from the place where an insult had been offered her.” Whether she was still in character or simply being herself at that moment—and it’s probably impossible to draw a sharp distinction—she “then returned to the footlights and said in a clear, firm voice, ‘Some man must put that person out, or I shall be obliged to do it myself.’” The crowd loved it, and as the “fellow was taken away; the audience rose en masse and gave three cheers for Miss Cushman, who recalled her companion and proceeded with the play as if nothing had happened.” Years later Cushman recalled that she “got more cheers for that irregular interpolation than for any of the scenes written for the original Romeo.” It’s not surprising, for in that moment she threaded the needle perfectly, acting gallantly without overstepping the mark, willing to take matters into her own hands if necessary, but positioning the lout who intentionally sneezed as the aggressor whose behavior needed to be publicly and collectively repudiated.
Cushman’s London debut produced an unprecedented outpouring of criticism on both sides of the Atlantic. Most of the reviews were raves; a few were patronizing. All of them returned, obsessively, to what happens to masculinity when a woman can so convincingly play a man. The Athenaeum, while conceding that this was “one of the most extraordinary pieces of acting, perhaps, ever exhibited by a woman,” made clear that this achievement was decidedly not a good thing: “The instances . . . are rare in which the heroes of tragedy have been personated by other than men: but such mistakes have occurred, and will occur again. The interests of Art, however, require that certain limits should be set to this license, which, as we are informed, has already been carried to excess in America.” Others, like the critic for the Morning Chronicle, while acknowledging that what everyone was witnessing was a “delicate, perhaps a dangerous, experiment,” couldn’t quite deal with the fact that he forgot that this Romeo was a woman: “Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of Miss Cushman’s performance was, that the idea that we were looking at a woman never once crossed us. We hardly know whether, in writing this, we are penning down a compliment or not.” No less an authority than Queen Victoria, who went to see Cushman’s Romeo, weighed in: “No one would ever have imagined that she was a woman, her figure and her voice being so masculine.”
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AS IS SO OFTEN the case in the theater, there was a gap between what people saw and what they projected upon the performers or simply imagined seeing. A video clip of Cushman’s performance would no doubt disappoint, failing to capture its allure. The sole surviving photograph, a publicity shot of Cushman dressed as Romeo, taken four or five years after her London debut when she was playing the part in America and wearing the same costume, conveys little of what made her performance so thrilling. And yet as late as 1858 (at age 42) she was still being hailed by American reviewers as “in face, form, and general make-up, a most perfect specimen of the impetuous and yet loving Romeo”:
Charlotte Cushman as Romeo, c. 1854.
Compare this with the illustration of her performance that ran in the Illustrated London News a few days after she first appeared as Romeo on the London stage. This broad-shouldered, smoldering lover whose face Juliet caresses is likely closer to what playgoers imagined that they saw:
Charlotte Cushman as Romeo and Susan Cushman as Juliet at the Haymarket Theatre, January 1846.
For some, Cushman’s performance threatened longstanding notions of propriety. The critic for the Spirit of the Times was not alone in worrying about the effects on Cushman of performing masculinity, the kind of damage that Lady Macbeth had brought on herself: “She is a woman and we cannot but be shocked at the unsexing of the mind and heart which she must undergo at assuming such a character as Romeo.” Even as the planned eight-night run extended to eighty, and toured elsewhere in Britain, and soon, in a triumphant return home, in America’s major cities, a backlash kicked in. The writer most threatened by Cushman’s performance was an Englis
hman, George Fletcher, who hated the idea of that hybrid, a “she-Romeo,” and wrote at length about “the disgustingly monstrous grossness of such a perversion.” It is the erasure of difference in Cushman’s performance, so praised by others, that unnerves Fletcher:
It is idle to talk (as we find certain critics doing at the time) as if there was nothing in the performance itself to remind one’s very physical apprehensions that the soi-disant impassioned hero was a woman. That any male auditors could think so, would surely prove that we live in a time when there are men with so little manhood as to have almost lost all sense of the essentially different manner in which this passion, especially, manifests itself in the two sexes respectively.
Fletcher simply cannot accept that others can forget that Cushman is a woman; for him it must remain an impossibility, or rather something best banished from consciousness. He’s left to argue that Cushman misrepresents Shakespeare’s hero by hypersexualizing Romeo through “the most vulgarly selfish and headlong will and appetite,” a distortion made worse by “the nasal utterance and awkward vowel pronunciation of her country.” The only way to wash away the stain of her “unnatural personation” is for a manly and patriotic Englishman to take up the challenge and expel “the intensely gross misconception of it lately impressed on the minds of so large a portion of the London public.”
Cushman succeeded not only, as her various admirers have argued, because she was a superb actor who captured both Romeo’s tough and feminine sides, but also because she understood her cultural moment and its confused craving for and repudiation of a manly manhood. Upon returning in 1850 to America, where she played Romeo at the Astor Place Opera House, her performance had to be halted in the middle of the second Act because the sustained applause went on for so long. The New York Evening Post noted that “she drew together as large an audience as we have seen at any time in that building,” adding, in way of explanation, that the “part of Romeo is remarkably well adapted to the little more than feminine and little less than masculine qualities of Miss Cushman.” Six months on, newspapers were still reporting that the crowds that came to see her were unprecedented: “We have never before seen such a large assemblage within the walls of the Broadway Theatre.”
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