Comedy and Legacy of Music-Hall Women 1880-1920

Sam Beale teaches solo performance and stand-up comedy on the Theatre Arts programmes at Middlesex University, London. She researches into and writes about comic performance, gender and performance and the history of comedy and popular performance.

• Introduction: ‘reweaving’ women’s comic performance history.- Chapter 1: ‘Sentiments unwomanly and unnatural’: moral ambiguity, censorship and public perceptions of the serio-comic performer.- Chapter 2: ‘A Comfort and Blessing To Man’: performed irony, self-deprecation and comic subversions of gender stereotypes.- Chapter 3: ‘Can We Talk?’: intimacy, ‘gagging’ and comic licence in performer-audience relationships.- Chapter 4 ‘I mustn’t tell you what I mean’ knowing, not knowing and comic innuendo as performed (self) censorship.- Chapter 5 ‘Every Little Movement Has A Meaning of Its Own’: comic gestus and the ironic embodiment of gender.- Conclusion.