Sophie Tomlinson is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has published essays on female performance and women's drama in early modern England, and has edited John Fletcher's comedy The Wild-Goose Chase for the forthcoming Revels Companion Library volume of Three Seventeenth-Century Plays on Women and Performance.

Review of the hardback: 'Sophie Tomlinson enriches the field of women's theatre history with this fascinating study of the 'prehistory' of the actress. A light-hearted reference to the refrain 'sisters are doin' it for themselves' introduces a serious work of revisionist history that uncovers the layers of female influence and action at the early Stuart courts.' Journal of New Theatre Quarterly

• Introduction: shifting sisters; 1. 'Magic in majesty': the poetics of female performance in the Jacobean masque; 2. 'Naked hearts': feminising the Stuart pastoral stage; 3. 'Significant liberty': the actress in Caroline comedy; 4. Sirens of doom and defiance in Caroline tragedy; Interchapter: 'Enter Ianthe, Veiled'; 5. The fancy-stage of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle; 6. Styles of female greatness: Katherine Philips's translations of Corneille; Coda.