This paper makes a case for the importance of the notion of care in understanding the relationship between past and present, nineteenth-century and contemporary. It considers how and why we care about the stories of historical female lives, whether we can care for the past in the same way as we care for our contemporaries, and how acts of care for and between historical figures might be imaginatively and dramatically constructed. I pose these questions through an examination of two neo-Victorian plays: Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Marys Seacole (2019) and The Ballad of Maria Marten by Beth Flintoff (2021). These plays seemingly tell the story of an individual historical life, but both playwrights work hard to not only tell us the stories of their individual subjects but to re-situate them within non-familial care communities of other women, and exploring care as relational and professional.