Women were never members of professional troupes in early modern England, but literature and drama scholars here show that the royal, aristocratic, common, and foreign women on stage were not exceptions, and that women players were a lively presence on stage whose impact on culture and drama was profound. From a 2000 seminar of the Shakespeare Association of America, 14 essays examine such examples as universal suffrage in Medieval and early modern Lincolnshire, female mountebanks in England and Italy, reading the actress in Commedia imagery, and the theatrical evocation of Elizabeth Tudor in Heywood's If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part I. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)