From seduced maidens to adulterous wives, bigamists, courtesans, kept women and streetwalkers, the so-called 'fallen woman' was a ubiquitous and enduring figure on the Victorian and Edwardian stage. Acts of Desire traces the theatrical representation of illicit female sexuality from early nineteenth-century melodramas, through sensation dramas, Ibsenite sex-problem plays and suffrage dramas, to early social realism and the well-made plays of Pinero, Jones, Maugham, and Coward. This study reveals and analyses enduring plot lines and tropes that continue to influence contemporary theatre and...