Mrs Bracegirdle as the Indian Queen, from a painting by William Vincent. Engraving from a mezzotint by John Smith, originally published ca.1690. Harry Beard Collection.

This engraving is a reproduction of a 17th century original, showing the popular actress Anne Bracegirdle as Semernia, the Indian Queen in Aphra Behn’s tragi-comic play The Widow Ranter (written ca.1688), a fictionalized and much romanticized account of a 1676 rebellion in Virginia. Although in the illustration Semernia appears demure, fashionably bedecked in feathers, the part was a ‘breeches role’. The stage direction for Act 5, scene 3, reads: ‘Enter Queen dress’d like an Indian Man, with a Bow in her Hand’. The play was first staged in 1689, months after the death of its author. Aphra Behn was the first female professional playwright, ranked by Daniel Defoe as among the ‘great wits’ of the era.

Anne Bracegirdle (ca.1663–1748) was one of the first English actresses. Her first recorded stage appearance was at Drury Lane in 1688 when she would have been aged about 25, but she may have acted as a child. She was brought up in the family of Thomas Betterton, the greatest actor of the day, and he is likely to have trained her for the stage. Mrs Bracegirdle (like all Restoration actresses she was addressed as Mrs, although she never married) excelled both as virtuous, suffering tragic heroines and as the sophisticated leading ladies of comedy, and was much admired for her singing voice. William Congreve wrote a succession of roles for her, the most famous being the witty Millamant in The Way of the World (1700).