...did they have a man to play a woman playing a man?
Phil: I'm gonna be on you like a shadow!
Will: but with you it's more like an eclipse right?
Yes they did. Women were not allowed to become actors/actresses so all roles were played by men
"A place where everything seems possible, but nothing is what it seems"
Not men really ... boys in their early teens, and by all accounts, tremendously skillful, (as they would have to be given the demands of Shakespeare's greatest female roles).
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
It's funnier in As You Like It. They had a man playing Rosalind, a woman, pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.
Why is a raven like a writing desk?