when he saw the comedy of “The Beggar’s Bush” performed; “it being very well done, and was the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage.”  He had seen the same play in the previous November, when it was represented by male performers only.  But even after the introduction of actresses the heroines of the stage were still occasionally impersonated by men.  Thus in January, 1661, Pepys saw Kynaston appear in “The Silent Woman,” and pronounced the young actor “the prettiest woman in the whole house.”  As Cibber states, the stage “could not be so suddenly supplied with women but that there was still a necessity to put the handsomest young men into petticoats.”

Strange to say, the name of the actress who played Desdemona under Killigrew’s management in 1660 has not been discovered.  Who, then, was the first English actress, assuming that she was the Desdemona of the Vere Street Theatre?  She must be looked for in Killigrew’s company.  His “leading lady” was Mrs. Ann Marshall, of whom Pepys makes frequent mention, who is known to have obtained distinction alike in tragedy and in comedy, and to have personated such characters as the heroine of Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Scornful Lady,” Roxana in “Alexander the Great,” Calphurnia in “Julius Caesar,” Evadne in “The Maid’s Tragedy,” and so on; there is no record, however, of her having appeared in the part of Desdemona.  Indeed, this part is not invariably assumed by “leading ladies;” it has occasionally devolved upon the seconda donna of the company.  And in a representation of “Othello” on February 6th, 1669, at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane (to which establishment Killigrew and his troop had removed from Vere Street in April, 1663), it is certain, on the evidence of Downes’s “Roscius Anglicanus,” that a Mrs. Hughes played the part of Desdemona to the Othello of Burt, the Iago of Mohun, and the Cassio of Hart.  Now, was this Mrs. Hughes, who had been a member of Killigrew’s company from the first, the Desdemona on whose behalf, nine years before, Mr. Thomas Jordan wrote his apologetic prologue?  It seems not unlikely.  At the same time it must be stated that there are other claimants to the distinction.  Tradition long pointed to Mrs. Betterton, the wife of the famous tragedian, as the first woman who ever appeared on the English stage.  She was originally known as Mrs. Saunderson—­the title of Mistress being applied alike to maidens and matrons at the time of the Restoration—­and married her illustrious husband about the year 1663.  She was one of four principal actresses whom Sir William Davenant lodged at his own house, and she appeared with great success as Ianthe upon the opening of his theatre with “The Siege of Rhodes.”  Pepys, indeed, repeatedly refers to her by her dramatic name of Ianthe.  Has the belief that she was the first actress arisen from confusing her assumption of Ianthe with the performance of the same part by Mrs. Coleman in 1656, a fact of which mention has