OPENING DOORS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21793, 7 May 1934, Page 3

OPENING DOORS

THE MARLOWE SOCIETY There arc not very many new things left to-day for women to do. But in Cambridge recently, quietly and tinobtrusively, a very jealously guarded masculine preservo was opened to women, states a London writer. The Marlowe Society has never before offered parts to women. It has not even done as tho Oxford University Dramatic Society and invited professional actresses to assist. Therefore, when it was known that parts in last term's production were to be given to students at Newnham and Girton, all Cambridge became interested in the revolutionary step. The Marlowe lias a very distinguished history. Founded in 1907, it had Rupert Brooke as one of its earliest promoters. Hitherto its rule lias excluded women, a practice made much easier by its choice of Elizabethan plays in which originally, of course, the female parts were written for and given to boys. But this year the play chosen was "Antony and Cleopatra," and the problem was to find a possible Cleopatra. Some female parts in Shakespeare are not so difficult. A Regan can stalk about haughtily in stiff brocades and bully her father without much feminine charm. Dignity and vigour will manage Volumnia, as imposing as her name. Even Ophelia could have gawkjness and angularily disguised in whito* draperies. (The Marlowe's " Hamlet " experimented in 1820 costume.) But the infinite variety of " the serpent of Old Nile " and her caprices are more than any man, perhaps, can simulate. A feminine Cleopatra entailed, of course, a feminine Charmian and the rest. So the great stop was taken.