In Brome's comedy of "The Court Beggar," acted at the Cockpit Theatre, in 1632, one of the characters observed: "If you have a short speech or two, the boy's a pretty actor, and his mother can play her part; women-actors now grow in request." Was this an allusion merely to the French actresses that had been seen in London some few years before, or were English actresses referred to?
Had these really appeared, if not at the public theatres, why, then, at more private dramatic entertainments?
Upon such points doubt must still prevail.

It seems certain, however, that a Mrs.Coleman had presented herself upon the stage in 1656, playing a part in Sir William Davenant's tragedy of "The Siege of Rhodes"-- a work produced somehow in evasion of the Puritanical ordinance of 1647, which closed the theatres and forbade dramatic exhibitions of every kind; for "The Siege of Rhodes," although it consisted in a great measure of songs with recitative, explained or illustrated by painted scenery, did not differ much from an ordinary play.

Ianthe, the heroine, was personated by Mrs.Coleman, whose share in the performance was confined to the delivery of recitative.

Ten years later the lady was entertained at his house by Mr.Pepys, who speaks in high terms both of her musical abilities and of herself, pronouncing her voice "decayed as to strength, but mighty sweet, though soft, and a pleasant jolly woman, and in mighty good humour." If this Mrs.Coleman may be classed rather as a singer than an actress, and if we may view Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes" more as a musical entertainment than as a regular play, then no doubt the claim of the Desdemona of Clare Market to be, as Mr.Thomas Jordan described her, "the first woman that came to act on the stage," is much improved.

And here we may say something more relative to the Vere Street Theatre.