Old finds from the Folger collection and recent buys are on exhibit together in the On Stage case—on view in our Out of the Vault gallery through early August! For this exhibition case, Mei Ann Teo, director of Folger Theatre’s production of Twelfth Night, working with Folger curators, selected collection items featuring American actor Charlotte Cushman (1816–76). Cushman’s queerness and her repertoire of male roles parallels Teo’s staging of the play.
The First American Celebrity
Charlotte Cushman defied 19th-century gender norms on and off the stage. Audiences adored her in Shakespeare, especially her sensual Romeo. Dramatist James Sheridan Knowles was deeply impressed by the realism of Cushman’s performance, and another critic argued that without prior knowledge it would be impossible to tell that Cushman’s Romeo was played by a woman. Over her twenty-year acting career, Cushman would add both masculine and feminine roles from Shakespeare to her repertoire, including Hamlet and Rosalind from As You Like It.
In her personal life, Cushman dressed in masculine clothing and enjoyed numerous love affairs with female artists, including Rosalie Sully, Matilda Hays, and Emma Stebbins. Her ten-year relationship with Hays was publicly recognized and even described as a “female marriage” by Elizabeth Barret Browning.
After retiring from the stage in 1852, Cushman moved to Rome and set up a household of “jolly bachelor women” that included many notable female artists of the time. Cushman used her wealth and her fame to promote the careers of many of these women, including the African American sculptor Edmonia Lewis (1844–1907). It would be here in Rome that Cushman’s romance with Stebbins would blossom.
Attitudes toward lesbianism have changed since Cushman’s life, and scholars today engage with Cushman as a queer performer. Researchers eager to learn more can access almost 100 rare materials in the Folger’s collection that document Cushman’s career and life, including an 1852 Staffordshire porcelain figurine of Charlotte and her younger sister, Susan, in Romeo and Juliet, letters written by Cushman to American theatre producer Augustin Daly (1838–1899), and a photograph of Cushman with her final lover, Emma Stebbins, shown here.
The Cushman items, below, selected by Teo juxtapose a new purchase from this year (2025) alongside an early acquisition by Henry and Emily Folger (1900) that predates the building of the library!
Flowing Between Genders Onstage, 1847
This playbill is from the Theatre Royal in Birmingham. It advertises a double bill of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and the musical play Guy Mannering to be performed by Cushman in a single evening. In Twelfth Night, Cushman performed as Viola and Viola disguised as Cesario, a male page to Orsino, Duke of Illyria. On the same night, she also performed as Meg Merrilies in Guy Mannering, one of her most successful roles. In a single night, Cushman flowed between multiple characters and genders.
Cushman’s Staying Power, approximately 1893
This watercolor depicts Cushman as Viola disguised as Cesario in a production of Twelfth Night at the Haymarket Theatre in London. Although the source image (a wood engraving) from the London illustrated news from July 11, 1846 showed Cesario (Viola) with Olivia in Act I, scene 5, the artist represented only Cushman in this 1893 version. In this scene, Cesario has been sent to woo Olivia for the Duke. Instead, Olivia falls in love with Cesario (Viola). Viola (Cesario) is now caught in a love triangle: Orsino loves Olivia, Viola (Cesario) loves Orsino, and Olivia loves Cesario (Viola). Made decades after the production and years after Cushman’s death, the watercolor on display attests to the longevity of Charlotte Cushman’s gender-bending image.
The watercolor of Cushman is bound into Augustin Daly’s (1831-1899) extra-illustrated edition of his 1893 mounting of Twelfth Night. Daly commemorated his productions by professionally binding together ephemera from historic productions and from his staging of the play. These materials appeared alongside a printed copy of the play text used in his theater’s performance. It is believed that the illustration of Cushman was included as both a costume reference for Daly’s production and as a testimony to Cushman’s powerful legacy. Henry and Emily Folger acquired this extra-illustrated Twelfth Night in 1900 at the “Daly Sale” hosted by the American Art Galleries.
On exhibit and on stage
Out of the Vault
Twelfth Night
Keep exploring
Charlotte Cushman: When Romeo Was a Woman
Charlotte Cushman was a 19th-century theatrical icon, so famous and beloved that, like Beyoncé today, newspapers called her by just her first name. But her fame wasn’t for conventionally Victorian feminine portrayals.
Tana Wojczuk on Charlotte Cushman's Radical Life
Charlotte Cushman was one of the most famous American theater artists of the mid-19th century. And while she was known for her Lady Macbeth and Oliver Twist’s Nancy, she was acclaimed for her performances as Romeo and Hamlet.
Excerpt – ‘Lady Romeo’ by Tana Wojczuk
American actress Charlotte Cushman was a 19th-century theatrical icon, known for playing traditionally male roles like Romeo and Hamlet. She was not the only actress of her time to play these parts, but her style was uniquely assertive and athletic.…
Stay connected
Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.