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ACTRESSES AS WORKING WOMEN proceeds, in full sight of the audience, to divest himself of his trousers, unbuttoning them in front and letting them partly fall down He however retires out of sight to take them completely off On returning to the stage it is seen that he is attired in long black drawers I leave these facts to speak for themselves This performance seems to give considerable satisfaction to the audience.43 This male striptease (rendered comic by Carey’s failure to expose anything more at the end than the beginning of the routine) is in an entirely different spirit from Charmion’s ‘Disrobing Act’ performed at the Alhambra: She appears on stage fully dressed in walking costume Accidentally seeing the trapeze net she thinks she will try it She does so & finds that her clothes are an impediment After a little hesitation she disrobes on the trapeze The difficulty that would arise under ordinary circumstances is dispensed with by the artist not wearing chemise or drawer[s] After the outer garments are removed, there is left a long white garment like a bodice & petticoat combined She then hangs by her feet & this drops off over her head, leaving her in ordinary acrobatic costume The whole performance is carried out as decorously as possible.44 In each case, the inspector’s final sentence absolves the authorities from any need to pursue sanctions In 1897, the Holborn Music Hall’s program included a short kinematic projection of ‘a picture of a woman who strips naked in front of the audience’, as if the practice was perfectly mundane.45 Photo Bits spoofed the vogue for disrobing acts in 1898 by suggesting that the scenery could be done away with so nothing should impede the audience’s view of the tiers of dressing rooms.46 FIGURAL COMPOSITION IN THE MISE EN SCÈNE In many cases, the sexual meaning encoded in costumes and gestures was further enhanced by sexual referents in the mise en scène This seems to be especially true of acts of physical prowess—such as dancing and gymnastics—in which adults of both sexes performed together In 1796, when Didelot first introduced simple lifts into a 122