clothing did not disguise the body's form as much as the dresses traditionally worn by women. Women in tragedy The new focus on women in tragedy may be linked with a growing political disillusion with the old aristocratic ideology and its traditional masculine ideals (see Staves). Other possible explanations for the great interest in she-tragedy are the popularity of Mary II, who often ruled alone in the 1690s while her husband William III was on the Continent, and the publication of The Spectator, the first periodical aimed at women. Elizabeth Howe has argued that the most important explanation for the shift in taste was the emergence of tragic actresses whose popularity made it unavoidable for dramatists to create major roles for them. With the conjunction of the playwright "master of pathos" Thomas Otway and the great tragedienne Elizabeth Barry in The Orphan, the focus shifted decisively from hero to heroine. References Sources Canfield, J. Douglas (2001). "The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Drama". Broadview Press. () Howe, Elizabeth (1992). The First English Actresses: Women and Drama 1660–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. () Staves, Susan (1979). Player's Scepters: Fictions of Authority in the Restoration. Lincoln, Nebraska. () Stewart, Ann Marie (2010). "The Ravishing Restoration: Aphra Behn, Violence, and Comedy". Susquehanna University Press. () Drama Tragedies (dramas)