Theatrical Company of Children of Chapel 289

and so many children as he or his sufficient Deputie shall thinke meete,' and to provide 'sufficient lodging for him and the sayd Children, when they for our service shall remove to any place or places'; but the former clause is repeated from earlier commissions, and the latter would never have seemed anything more than a more explicit expression of a similar clause in previous commissions but for the events which ensued. At some unknown date after the issue of this commission, James Robinson and Henry Evans joined with Giles in exploiting the commission. They took up more boys than were needed for the chapel choir, lodged them in Blackfriars and established a regular theatrical company of the children of the chapel.

The highest interest attaches to this professional company of boy actors, but it is at present impossible to determine exactly when their career began. The Blackfriars property was purchased from Sir William More on 4 February 1596 by James Burbage, apparently because of its suitability for a playhouse. In November of the same year, the inhabitants of Blackfriars petitioned the privy council against Burbage, declaring that he 'is now altering it and meaneth very shortly to convert and turne the same into a common playhouse.' How effective this petition was in hindering or delaying the projected playhouse we have no means of knowing1. Burbage died early in the following year, and the next unmistakable evidence we have in regard to the Blackfriars playhouse is that, on 2 September 1600, Richard Burbage, son of James, leased it for twenty-one years to one Henry Evans; but it is certain that, before this date, it had been used as a playhouse by the children of the chapel, and that Evans was already interested in the company. In testimony given in a lawsuit in 1612, Richard Burbage says:

true yt is that this defendant, consideringe with himselfe that, except the said Evans could erect and keepe a companye of Playinge boyes and others to playe playes and interludes in the said Playhouse in such sort as before tyme had bene there used, etc.;

and Evans speaks of the playhouse as 'then or late in the tenure or occupacion of this defendant' (i.e. Evans himself). It is commonly held that the children of the chapel were playing there as early as the end of 1598, and this is probably true.

The evidence we have seems to indicate that Giles was only

1 The order for the suppression of the Blackfriars playhouse, dated 21 January 1619, states, however, that 'their honors then (i.e. in 1596) forbad the use of the said house for playes.'

E. L. VI. CH. XI.

19

passively interested in the project, and that someone else—perhaps Henry Evans-first saw the great possibilities which lay in procuring, under the liberal terms of Giles's commission, a company of boy actors and exploiting them in the private playhouse of the Blackfriars. After about a year and a half of experience, we may suppose, Evans decided to take a long lease of the property, and this was effected on 2 September 1600. It was not very long, however, before he got into trouble about taking up boys. On an ill-fated Saturday, 13 December 1600, James Robinson, acting as deputy for Giles and as agent for Evans, seized Thomas Clifton, a thirteen-year-old boy, as he was on his way to school. Unfortunately, the boy's father, Henry Clifton, esquire, of Toft Trees, Norfolk, not only secured the aid of Sir John Fortescue, one of the privy council, to have his son released, but, about a year later, brought the matter before the court of Star chamber. A decree was rendered censuring Evans for taking up gentlemen's sons and ordering the severance of his connection with the company and playhouse. In anticipation, perhaps, of these proceedings, Evans, in October 1601, transferred all his property to his son-in-law, Alexander Hawkins. After the decree was rendered, Evans, acting through Hawkins, further entered into an agreement with Edward Kirkham, William Rastall and Thomas Kendall, allowing them to share in the management and profits of the playhouse. This is not the place to recite the quarrels between these shareholders; it may suffice to record that the success of the children was very great, that the profits of the undertaking are said to have been very large and that the company continued, with some vicissitudes, to act as the children of the chapel until, at the accession of James, they were re-named the children of the queen's revels, and, finally, were replaced by the company of men to which Shakespeare belonged.

During these years, this professional troupe of boys was served by some of the foremost dramatists of their time. Among the earliest was, doubtless, Chapman, who, perhaps, joined them in 1598, when he left the employ of Henslowe. He appears to have written for them his May-Day, his Sir Gyles Goosecappe, his Gentleman Usher and the extant version of Al Fooles. Another even more notable writer for their stage was Ben Jonson, from whom they received not only The Case is Altered, but, also, Cynthia's Revels, Poetaster and, perhaps, A Tale of a Tub. There is also some reason to believe that some of Marston's plays were written for them. Unfortunately, much of the stage history of the time is

Ages of the Children. Songs and Music 291

purely conjectural, but it seems practically certain that their vogue had become so great by 1601-2 as to draw from Shakespeare the airily satirical lines in Hamlet concerning the 'eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are most tyranically clapped for it.'

The names of some of these boy actors of this later period are known, some from Henry Clifton's bill of complaint and some from the lists in Ben Jonson's plays. One of them, Salathiel Pavy, as is well known, died early, and was celebrated by Jonson in a graceful, if somewhat 'conceited,' epitaph, full of the highest praise for his abilities as an actor. Others became renowned as members of the king's company in later years.

As to the ages of the boys, it is difficult to speak with certainty. Young Clifton was thirteen years old when 'taken up,' and William Hunnis found it necessary, in earlier times (1583), 'to kepe bothe a man servant to attend upon them and lykewyse a woman servant to wash and kepe them cleane.' In the case of the boys of the choir, it was customary, from early times, for the sovereign to provide for their education at one of the universities so soon as their 'breasts (i.e. voices) changed'; but, no doubt, when their principal function was acting they were held longer as children of the chapel, and Philip Gawdy writes in 1601: "Tis sayde my Lady of Leoven hath marryed one of the playing boyes of the chappell.'

The success of the companies of choir boys in both early and later times was, doubtless, due, in no small degree, to the songs scattered through their plays and the instrumental music before the play began and between the acts. Other companies, of course, had incidental songs, but, apparently, not so many of them, and instrumental music seems not to have been given in the public theatres. That it was a prominent feature of the performances given by the boys, notwithstanding Clifton's declaration that his son and other boys taken up by Robinson, Evans and Giles were 'childeren noe way able or fitt for singing, nor by anie of the sayd confederates endevoured to be taught to sing,' we know from passages in several contemporary plays, as well as from the explicit statements of the duke of Stettin, who visited Blackfriars on 18 September 1602.

The special interest felt by queen Elizabeth in the chapel boys at Blackfriars may have been due, in part, at least, to their music. At any rate, there cannot be any doubt of her interest in them. According to a letter from Sir Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, she attended the play at Blackfriars on Tuesday,

29 December 1601. The duke of Stettin speaks, indeed, as if the queen had established the theatre and provided the rich costumes of the plays, but the evidence in the suit of Kirkham vs Evans et als (1612) indicates that the managers, Evans, Kirkham and their fellows, bore all expenses and took all profits. Kirkham was, indeed, yeoman of the revels, and had charge of the costumes and properties provided for the revels at court, but, though he may have been able to borrow from the revels garments for the use of his company, he could not have bought them without special authorisation. There is no evidence that the queen had any active part in the establishment or maintenance of the children of Blackfriars, though, of course, the company could not have been established or maintained without her tacit consent. She was fond of the drama and of music. On 8 April 1600, the privy council addressed a letter to the Middlesex justices expressing the queen's pleasure in the performances of Edward Alleyn and his company, and her desire that he should be allowed to erect the Fortune theatre.

Hasty as this survey of the long and brilliant career of the children of the chapel has, necessarily, been, it can hardly fail to have suggested their very great importance in the history of the drama and the stage. They were pioneers in more than one interesting movement, they produced plays by some of the foremost dramatists of their time, they were prominent in the curious, not to say ludicrous, 'war of the theatres,' and they were finally put down because of the vigorous political satire spoken through their mouths.

CHAPTER XII

UNIVERSITY PLAYS

TUDOR AND EARLY STEWART PERIODS

It has been pointed out earlier in this work that, while the humanist movement at Oxford and Cambridge in the sixteenth century did not result in any important contributions to classical scholarship, it was remarkable for the production of a large number of Latin plays1. In the previous volume2, the rise of the renascence academic drama on the continent was briefly traced, and its influence on early Tudor comedy, especially school plays, illustrated. But, in England, school plays had a comparatively limited vogue. It was at the universities that the humanist drama, written and acted by scholars, found its real home. Originating in didactic tendencies, and encouraged, as has been shown, by the framers of college statutes, its aims, at first, were educational rather than literary or recreative. But, amidst the medley of plastic influences in English university life, it was inevitable that drama at Oxford and Cambridge should not remain purely academic, in the narrower pedagogic sense. The gradually increasing proportion of plays in the vernacular produced on college stages, the ceremonial visits of kings and queens and other royal personages to 'shows' at the two seats of learning, the attractions, for the scholar playwrights and their audiences, of controversies, whether local and personal or of national significance-these were among the factors which speedily enlarged the bounds of university drama, and developed within it that variety of types which the following pages will attempt to sketch. But, to the last, it remained conscious, at least intermittently, of its distinctive origin and mission. Though influencing the popular stage, and being influenced by it in turn, yet, in the main, it followed an independent and diverging track, and it has both merits and limitations which are peculiarly its own. 1 See vol. III, p. 424. 2 See vol. v, chap. v, pp. 100 ff. 3 See ibid. p. 103.