Calvish young fellows

I've been reading a book about the life of Joseph Emidy, the West African violinist pressed from the Lisbon Opera House into service on the Indefatigable in 1795. The book includes some fascinating background on the cultural life of Lisbon in the late eighteenth century recorded by one William Beckford, who spent much of 1787 in Portugal after having left England "following accusations of scandalous behaviour concerning his relationship with William Courtney, published in the Morning Herald in November 1784."

As women were banned from the stage in Portugal, female roles were taken by male performers, despite this practice falling out of fashion elsewhere in Europe. In his 1834 memoir Beckford records that the female parts...

... are acted by calvish young fellows. Judge what a pleasing effect this metamorphosis must produce, especially in the dancers, where one sees a stout shepherdess in virgin white, with a soft blue beard, and a prominent collar-bone, clenching a nosegay in a fist that would almost have knocked down Goliath, and a train of milk-maids attending her enormous foot-steps, tossing their petticoats over their heads at every step.

Beckford adds:

Such sprawling, jerking, and ogling, I never saw before, and hope never to see again.

But to be honest, I think he protests too much ;)

Beckford, W., (1834), Italy with Sketches of Spain and Portugal, Richard Bentley, London.

McGrady, R., (1991) Music and Musicians in Early Nineteenth Century Cornwall: The world of Joseph Emidy - slave, violinist and composer, University of Exeter Press.