[223] Women acted in Italy as early as 1560, and actresses appeared in France probably not much later. The earliest French actress of whom there is definite record is Marie Vernier, who acted in Paris, in her husband’s company, in 1599. In Spain the practice of substituting boys and men in women’s parts seems never to have obtained. Going back to antiquity, it is to be noted that while the Greeks never tolerated actresses on their stage, in Rome occasional women players were by no means unknown. [224] In the interim D’Avenant had ingeniously circumvented the restrictions placed by Cromwell’s government on the theatres, by devising a species of opera. They were really plays, in the grand style, modeled after Italian pieces, and with a musical accompaniment to take the curse off. In one of these, _The Siege of Rhodes_, performed in 1656, two women, Mrs. Edward Coleman and another, played Ianthe and Roxalana. [225] Thomas Jordan’s prologue shows that the “boys” were now sometimes dangerously near middle age: “Our ‘women’ are defective, and so sized, You’d think they were some of the guard disguised; For, to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen; With bone so large, and nerve so incompliant, When you call DESDEMONA, enter GIANT.” “Old Chetwood tells a story which amply illustrates the absurdity of the ‘men-actresses.’ King Charles II, he says, coming to the theatre to see _Hamlet_ and being kept waiting for some time, sent the Earl of Rochester behind to see what was causing the delay. He returned with the information that ‘the Queen was not quite shaved.’ ‘Odsfish!’ said the King. ‘I beg her Majesty’s pardon. We’ll wait till her barber has done with her.’”--Lowe’s _Betterton_. [226] As seems clear, for instance, from Hamlet’s unusual consideration of them. The often-quoted law enacted in the reigns of Elizabeth and James seems, however, to have been directed not against the established city companies, but against the wandering country players. It reads, quaintly enough: “All bear-wards, common players of interludes, counterfeit Egyptians, etc., shall be taken, adjudged, and deemed Rogues and Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars, and shall sustain all pain and punishment as by this act is in that behalf appointed.” For a résumé of the phases of the actor’s lack of social position see John Fyvie’s “Comedy Queens of the Eighteenth Century.”