Rebecca Marshall

Rebecca Marshall (fl. 1663 – 1677) was a noted English actress of the Restoration era, one of the first generation of women performers on the public stage in Britain. She was the younger sister of Anne Marshall, another prominent actress of the period.The younger Marshall sister began acting with the Kings Company, under the management of Thomas Killigrew, around 1663; she remained with that troupe for her full career, except for a final year with the rival Dukes Company in 1677. She acted with her sister Anne at least once, in John Drydens The Maiden Queen in 1664; Anne played Candiope, and Rebecca played the Queen. When her older sister retired from the stage (temporarily) in 1668, Rebecca inherited several of her roles, as Aurelia in Drydens An Evenings Love and Nourmahal in Aureng-zebe; she may also have inherited the part of Evadne in Beaumont and Fletchers The Maids Tragedy. Rebecca Marshalls other roles were:— among other parts, including spoken prologues and epilogues for various dramas. She participated in two of Killigrews famous all-female productions, of his own The Parsons Wedding and Beaumont and Fletchers Philaster, both in 1672.Rebecca Marshall formed a remarkable acting combination with fellow performer Elizabeth Boutell, first in William Joyners The Roman Empress in 1670. Their success inspired a fashion for plays of women in conflict, in which Marshall was usually the villainess (or at least the darker half of the pairing), and Boutell the virtuous heroine. They enacted this pattern in The Conquest of Granada, also in 1670: Marshall was Lyndaraxa to Boutells Bezayda. And again, with Marshall as Poppea and Boutell as Cyara in Nathaniel Lees The Tragedy of Nero (1674); as Queen Berenice and Clarona in John Crownes The Destruction of Jerusalem (1677); and as Roxana and Statira in Lees The Rival Queens (also 1677).The women in conflict play reached beyond Marshall and Boutell: the rival Dukes Company competed with its own actress pairing, Mary Betterton and Mary Lee; and Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle repeated the pattern in the 1680s and 90s. In her one season with the Dukes Company, Rebecca Marshall was cast against Barry in a rare comic version of the pattern, in Thomas dUrfeys A Fond Husband, or the Plotting Sisters.Samuel Pepys repeatedly refers to both Marshall sisters in his Diary; he calls the younger Beck Marshall. Rebecca had a reputation as a beauty, which apparently caused her difficulties: she twice petitioned King Charles II for protection from obstreperous men in her audience. And she had a habit of feuding with Nell Gwyn.

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