ACTRESSES AS WORKING WOMEN 189

ACTRESSES AS WORKING WOMEN Cissy, Haydee, and Ethel: You ladies by birth are a curious lot! Though ev’ry advantage you’ve seemingly got, Yet, if we may take you as a sample, You’re exceedingly anxious to trample With the pride of position superior On the girl who’s your social inferior You hunt for a husband—you plot and intrigue, And never exhibit a sign of fatigue, And a fellow with money you rush at In a way that an actress would blush at We would rather be ladies by nature Than mere Upper Ten-nomenclature! Ironically, the situation is sorted out in a fancy dress carnival The disguised young society women manage to break free from their chaperone, Lady Virginia, and trade dominoes with the Gaiety Girls The ‘right’ couples are united, including the Chaplain’s daughter and the Judge’s nephew, and the Gaiety Girl Alma Somerset and an upstanding Life Guards Captain In Town, another popular early musical comedy, also uses masquerading as a means to level the position of society women and actresses, and to institute marital pairs in accordance with the new social order Although the Duke of Duffshire remarks ‘It is harder to get into a green room than to get into parliament,’ the entire dramatis personae manages to wind up backstage at the Ambiguity Theatre, including the Duke’s chaplain, The Rev Samuel Hopkins The theatre’s role in changing moral standards is clear: Duke: It’s very wrong, my reverend sir, For a clergyman or a minister To go behind the scenes at nights And talk to naughty girls in tights! For should your Bishop chance to hear, He must suspend you, so I fear, But if in such disgrace you fall, I shall not mind at all—not at all! In Town and other musical pieces delighted in pointing out clerics’ appreciation of the most questionable aspects of erotic byplay, implicating even the most puritanical sects One of Kate James’ music 160