This volume explores the links between changing notions of gender and sexuality and changes in the London theatre, by describing: the introduction of new social types (the female undergraduate and the 'effeminate' male aesthete): the career and influence of Oscar Wilde: cross-dressing and gender confusion, for example: Sarah Bernhardt's Prince Hamlet, Charley's Aunt, J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, the music hall turns of Vesta Tilley. It also highlights how playwrights such as G. B. Shaw and Elizabeth Robins used the stage as a platform for debate over women's suffrage, marriage, models of masculinity, and the rights of working women.