Everyone knows that men played the female parts in Shakespeares day. Young men would take the role of the heroines, meaning that Romeo And Juliet would have looked like a relationship between an older and younger man, rather than the intended passionate love affair between a young man and a 14 year old girl. But the actors went greater lengths for realism than is often thought. Many Shakespearean scholars think that his male actors wore prosthetic breasts when they played women. The evidence is a number of character sketches depicting them, and the fact that such devices were used in previous plays. It seems like Elizabethan-quality fake breasts would detract from the spectacle, but by all accounts the audiences didnt even think of the man beneath the character when they saw such a heroine. Perhaps thats unsurprising because, in Shakespeares time, all children wore female clothes until the age of around seven or eight.
