Martha Green

died  1729

Actress

Martha is only known from the burial entry dated 12 May 1729 in the Little Walsingham Bishop’s Transcripts. The entry reads as follows:-

 1729

Martha Green an Actress from Nor.ch May 12

 Theatre in the seventeenth century was hugely popular and saw the first actresses on the English stage; however this changed with the advent of the Civil War in 1642 culminating in the beheading of Charles I.  In 1649 the puritan parliament closed all theatres; all theatrical activity was illegal until 1660 with the restoration of Charles II.

 Although women performed on the professional stage, the term ‘actress’ to the theatre-goer in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was largely regarded as a prostitute.