principal boy

noun

1. the leading male role in a pantomime, played by a woman

Example Sentences

A young woman plays the “principal boy.”

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Tall and elegant in a herringbone jacket and shiny black knee boots, she looks like a cross between the headteacher of a private girls’ school and the principal boy in the school pantomime.

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According to pantomime historian Professor Jeffrey Richards, “the reason for Principal Boy being female was entirely due to Victorian randiness. It gave the fathers in the stalls a chance to ogle a lovely girl with a wasp waist and shapely thighs.”

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Principal boy of a panto meets Pocahontas imagined by Robert Louis Stevenson.

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Flimsy non-speaking role as adjunct to principal boy?

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