GAY ACCENT IN ENGLISH

Wintereis   Sun Jan 10, 2010 9:52 am GMT
Has anyone else heared, and can anyone confirm, that the word drag originates in the Elizabethan theater, as in Dr.A.G. (dressed as girl)
Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Jan 10, 2010 12:04 pm GMT
Well, historically in England, in particular, all actors who appeared on the stage from the period of the late Middle Ages right through the days of Shakespeare up until the early 19th century were male, and men played the parts of females.

On the stage of the famous Globe Theatre, on the south bank of the River Thames in London, in Shakespeare's time all the female parts in his plays were performed by males, to very good effect.

Later on in time a very distinctively British form of entertainment became very popular in this country, especially around Christmas time - pantomime.

Again, some of the main characters in panto were played by actors of the opposite sex, with young females playing the parts of the main male characters, and males playing the part of the less attractive, and often quite "wicked" female ones.

Take just one popular pantomime - Cinderella. Everybody in the UK at least knows the storyline here, and probably people in other countries do as well - young Cinderella (who, in spite of what I have just said, is always played by a young female) unfortunately lives with the two Ugly Sisters - always played by males. But along comes Prince Charming (f) who woos the lovely Cinderella (f) and whoever the golden slipper fits will be taken to the ball in a golden coach - fortunately for Prince Charming (f) the slipper does not fit either of the two Ugly Sisters (m) but fits the tiny foot of Cinderella (f) perfectly, so Cinders (as she is often called - f)) heads for the ball in a pumpkin which has been miraculously turned into a golden coach, leaving the two Ugly Sisters (m) fuming and hissing by the fireside while being booed and hissed at by the audience (m and f) in true traditional style.

Unfortunately for Cinders (f) the golden coach will be turned back into a pumpkin on the stroke of midnight, so she has enough time to dance with Prince Charming (f) before she has to swiftly return home in the golden coach before it reverts to being a humble pumpkin again. That's the bascis of Cinderella, one of the most popular of British pantomimes.

Another one is "Robin Hood" and everybody knows the story of Robin Hood, whether in the UK or elsewhere - probably one of the most romantic of populr tales. Again, the lovely Maid Marian is played by a young female, but Robin, complete with tights and distinctive hat, is again played by a young female, too. The female actor has to perfect the art of thigh slapping as an act of bravado. Most of the other characters are played by males - Little John, Will Scarlet etc, and the "wicked" Sheriff of Nottingham - the character who, like the Ugly Sisters (m), is routinely booed and hissed at by the audience (m and f)-and all pantomime audiences consist of many children accompanied by their parents or guardians.

Other popular pantomimes are "Aladdin", "Puss in Boots" and so on....again with the "trans-gender" requisite in order to keep with tradition.

British pantomime will always ring to the evergreen cries of "He's behind you!" directed at the "good" characters whenever an evil character is sneaking up from behind him or her, and "Oh no it isn't!" (yelled out by the nasty, evil characters) - which invariably meets with the roof raising response "Oh yes it is!" (yelled out even more deafeningly by the audience (m and f).

Pantomimes in the UK usually run from Boxing Day (26 December) until mid January and practically every city, town or village is witness to any of the most popular ones....be they professionally produced and performed in the theatres of all our big cities or by local people in much smaller places.
Charles   Sun Jan 10, 2010 2:37 pm GMT
< Well, historically in England, in particular, all actors who appeared on the stage from the period of the late Middle Ages right through the days of Shakespeare up until the early 19th century were male, and men played the parts of females. >

This is incorrect.

Women appeared on the stage from the 17th century (e.g. Anne Bracegirdle, Elizabeth Barry) onwards.
Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Jan 10, 2010 4:11 pm GMT
***Women appeared on the stage from the 17th century (e.g. Anne Bracegirdle, Elizabeth Barry) onwards***

That is indeed true, but even beyond the mid 17th century in this country females on the stage were still quite a rarity. That old rake and inveterate womaniser King Charles II of England had a hand to play in the limited introduction of females onto the English stage from the 1660s onwards - the King who made Nell Gwynne a "star" in her own right, which really had nothing to do with her skill in selling oranges in Drury Lane - more her buxom bosomy charms and winning smile - the King who, on his death bed whispered the immortal last lines: "Let not poor Nellie starve".

It was not until the Restoration period in 1660 that women came onto the stage. When Charles II, was on the throne, he did not want young men to play women’s parts anymore, he demanded that only women play their own parts. Charles was noted with having relations with several actresses himself........well, what else would you expect from this particular Charlie boy? He was obviously well supplied with the 17th century equivalent of viagra

Many of the women’s parts were called ‘breeches parts’, this was where women played the part of a male. Audiences during this time found this intriguing, daring and quite appealing.

Women in England at that time were aware of the advantage they had by showing their legs on stage. At the end of one play it was noted that a woman by the name of Elizabeth Boutell added these improvised words to lines: “'Tis worth such money that such legs appear and these are not to be seen so cheap elsewhere.”

It seems that on-stage gender bending has been quite a feature of the English theatrical profession all the way down the centuries, and it still goes on at this time of the year in the UK especially in those favourite pantomimes I mentioned, along with "Babes in the Wood", "Snow White" "Robinson Crusoe" "Jack and the Beanstalk" and all the rest of them.......females playing males and males playing females, but....as it always has been and always will be...in the very best of taste and decorum...remember, they are playing to audiences largely made up of children.

The aforementioned Julian Clary is always a major attraction in British Pantomime every year. Increasingly, and this is quite odd really for rerasons I can't really explain - more and more prominent American performers from stage and screen are appearing in UK pantomime. They are getting to know all the perenniel catchphrases and verbal interactions that British audiences have been familar with since the year dot of pantomime over here, such as those two I mentioned earlier.
Wintereis   Sun Jan 10, 2010 7:19 pm GMT
Well, Damian, thanks for that long bit that never approached an answer to my question.
Steak 'n' Chips   Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:22 pm GMT
Commenting on the original post:
I would always describe the theatrical accent you're describing as "camp", which (as clearly explained above) describes the accent used by ony some gay people, and also is not entirely used a subset of the gay community. For example, Benny Hill and David Walliams are two straight people that have camped it up like anyone.

Wintereis,
That was an interesting question. I'm haunted by acronyms at work, and fascinated by them at the same time, amazed at how people are so addictively drawn into using them.

I'd never heard that etymology you mentioned, so I checked a search engine and found a reference to it in the English Wikipedia, which describes the acronym as "folk etymology" from the 20th century, not Elizabethan. I'm not sure if the Elizabethans dabbled much in acronyms; is the current epidemic of acronyms a modern corporate disease or has it been lurking for centuries?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(clothing)

A different etymology from another source refers to the "dragging" of skirt tails around, although this was totally unreferenced.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=drag

I'm a bit of a IT retard, not sure why my links aren't links. Oh well.
Armada   Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:31 pm GMT
Why did the gay Englishmen take Romance words to create the Polari jargoon? Are Romance languages , particularly Italian,appealing for the British gay community or something?
Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Jan 10, 2010 11:06 pm GMT
Wintereis comments:

***Damian, thanks for that long bit that never approached an answer to my question***

Well, try this instead then.....this information is taken from a website concerning the origin of words in the UK - apparently the words "in drag" (meaning cross dressing by both genders but mostly the male to female version) have been in use for quite a long time, in this country anyway.

One of the most famous of British male drag artistes was the very flamboyant, very "glamorous", Danny La Rue, now deceased.

One of the most famous of British female drag artistes, who apparently looked very dapper and "genteely masculine" in her..sorry, his.... outfit was a lady called Vesta Tilley, born in Worcester, England, and became very well known on the London stage in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, always dressed as a man. As you would, expect she, too, is now deceased.

In drag:

[Q] What is the origin of the term in drag? Perhaps it came from some British theatrical production notes of yore, where it stood for ‘DRessed As a Girl’, since primarily men were doing it then, but that sounds like the hogwash about Port Out, Starboard Home (acronym POSH - meaning smartly upper class) and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. (acronym for you know what and meaning what you know it means).

[A] This shows once again how inventive people are when faced with a conundrum. When it first appeared drag referred only to the wearing of female attire by men, the unisex implications are much more recent.

The origin is thought to be from Victorian theatrical usage in England in reference to the dragging sensation of long skirts on the ground, an unfamiliar sensation to men. The usage is not found in print until the 1870s but must surely be older. It has been suggested that the gay implications did not arise until the 1920s, and that all the early citations in the Oxford English Dictionary refer to fancy dress.

There exists a pair of illustrations from a London publication - "The Day’s Doings" dated 20 May 1871 - that showed Frederick William Park, a well-known homosexual of the period whose “camp undertakings and unseemly actions” with another male Ernest Boulton in the exclusive Burlington Arcade, just off Piccadilly, in London, in 1870 had landed them both in court. The drawings are captioned: “Park in mufti” and “Park in ‘drag’ ”. Note the quote marks that indicate a word that was felt to be slang, or at least not quite respectable in Victorian England.

It was suspected that the camp associations of "drag" were present pretty much from the start in certain sections of British society.

Will that satisfy you, Wintereis?
Charles   Sun Jan 10, 2010 11:09 pm GMT
< It was not until the Restoration period in 1660 that women came onto the stage. >

That is a more reasonable statement, Damian; though I'm puzzled as to why, if your sudden access of knowledge didn't post-date my comment, you should previously have said:

<all actors who appeared on the stage from the period of the late Middle Ages right through the days of Shakespeare up until the early 19th century were male, and men played the parts of females. >
Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Jan 10, 2010 11:18 pm GMT
It was only last year 2009 that Danny La Rue died.....here he is being interviewed on British TV. He was a native born Londoner through and through, and he always referred to himself, as a drag artiste, as a "cock in a frock" - that really is a double entendre, as the word "cock" in London Cockney-speak is one used to refer to a male friend in a chirpy, cheery way - a reference to a small bird - the cock sparrow, the London variety of which is a tame, very chirpy and very cheeky wee bird, the cock of course being a male bird, as opposed to the hen sparrow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkbekbfRxOg&feature=related
Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Jan 10, 2010 11:25 pm GMT
And now Danny La Rue's alter ego - the "girl" with that little bit extra which other girls didn't quite have:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGNJPhVxy4Y&feature=related

Apart from his show business career, Danny La Rue also ran a pub and restaurant on the banks of the River Thames in Berkshire, England, not far from Maidenhead.
Charles   Sun Jan 10, 2010 11:31 pm GMT
Ah! The mystery is solved.

Damian said:

< It was not until the Restoration period in 1660 that women came onto the stage. When Charles II, was on the throne, he did not want young men to play women’s parts anymore, he demanded that only women play their own parts. Charles was noted with having relations with several actresses himself...'Tis worth such money that such legs appear and these are not to be seen so cheap elsewhere. >

While the "Women's Lives Surrounding Late 18th Century Theatre" webpage says:

< It was not until the Restoration period in 1660 that women came onto the stage. When Charles II, was on the throne, he did not want young men to play women’s parts anymore, he demanded that only women play their own parts. Charles was noted with having relations with several actresses himself...'Tis worth such money that such legs appear and these are not to be seen so cheap elsewhere. >

See:
http://engl3621mgc.tripod.com/

Plagiarised even down to the comma splice.
Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Jan 10, 2010 11:37 pm GMT
Charles - I should not have used the word "all" in reference to the period from 1660 onwards. Will that do?
disappointed   Sun Jan 10, 2010 11:56 pm GMT
Wow! Damian is just a plagiarist. Even worse than Robin Michael, who at least states where he copy pastes from! I'm so disappointed!
Damian in Edinburgh   Mon Jan 11, 2010 12:44 am GMT
I admit that the following was indeed a copy/paste job in my previous post - I had to respond to your query and I thouht it would be quicker to perform a spot of plagiarising in order to save time and to over tax my brain too much at this time of night trying to find the right words. Offhand right now I can't remember which website I copied it from, and I can't be bothered to find out as now as I'm off to my wee hammock.

Damian's plagiarising consisted only of this:

***It was not until the Restoration period in 1660 that women came onto the stage. When Charles II, was on the throne, he did not want young men to play women’s parts anymore, he demanded that only women play their own parts. Charles was noted with having relations with several actresses himself........
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NB: ( These are MY words added on: {well, what else would you expect from this particular Charlie boy? He was obviously well supplied with the 17th century equivalent of viagra}.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many of the women’s parts were called ‘breeches parts’, this was where women played the part of a male. Audiences during this time found this intriguing, daring and quite appealing.

Women in England at that time were aware of the advantage they had by showing their legs on stage. At the end of one play it was noted that a woman by the name of Elizabeth Boutell added these improvised words to lines: “'Tis worth such money that such legs appear and these are not to be seen so cheap elsewhere.” ***

(Some slight embellishments on my part in the last paragraph).

Anyway, everythig else in my posts were entirely my own work, I guarantee that to be the case. It's late here now, so goodnight.