Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface: an outline of approaches taken
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations and editions
- Introduction: Brick, lime, sand, plaster over lath and ‘new oaken boards’: the early modern playhouse
- Case study A Richard III at the Globe
- Case study B An outdoor theatre repertoire: the Rose on Bankside
- Chapter 1 Tragedy
- Case study C Opening scenes
- Case study D Staging violence and the space of the stage
- Chapter 2 Revenge drama
- Case study E ‘Here, in the Friars’: the second Blackfriars indoor playhouse
- Case study F The social life of things: skulls on the stage
- Chapter 3 Histories
- Case study G Title pages and plays in print
- Chapter 4 Comedy, pastoral and romantic
- Case study H The boy actor: body, costume and disguise
- Chapter 5 City comedies
- Case study I The dramaturgy of scenes
- Case study J Collaborative writing or the literary workshop
- Chapter 6 Satire
- Case study K Topical theatre and 1605–6: ‘Remember, remember the fifth of November’
- Case study L ‘Little eyases’: the children's companies and repertoire
- Chapter 7 Tragicomedy
- Case study M The visual rhetoric of dumb show
- Conclusion: The wind and the rain: the wider landscape of early modern performance
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Introductions to . . .
Case study L - ‘Little eyases’: the children's companies and repertoire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface: an outline of approaches taken
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations and editions
- Introduction: Brick, lime, sand, plaster over lath and ‘new oaken boards’: the early modern playhouse
- Case study A Richard III at the Globe
- Case study B An outdoor theatre repertoire: the Rose on Bankside
- Chapter 1 Tragedy
- Case study C Opening scenes
- Case study D Staging violence and the space of the stage
- Chapter 2 Revenge drama
- Case study E ‘Here, in the Friars’: the second Blackfriars indoor playhouse
- Case study F The social life of things: skulls on the stage
- Chapter 3 Histories
- Case study G Title pages and plays in print
- Chapter 4 Comedy, pastoral and romantic
- Case study H The boy actor: body, costume and disguise
- Chapter 5 City comedies
- Case study I The dramaturgy of scenes
- Case study J Collaborative writing or the literary workshop
- Chapter 6 Satire
- Case study K Topical theatre and 1605–6: ‘Remember, remember the fifth of November’
- Case study L ‘Little eyases’: the children's companies and repertoire
- Chapter 7 Tragicomedy
- Case study M The visual rhetoric of dumb show
- Conclusion: The wind and the rain: the wider landscape of early modern performance
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Introductions to . . .
Summary
In the 1623 folio edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet an exchange takes place between Hamlet and ‘Rosincrance’ (sic) on traditions of playing, presumably in the Elsinore of the play's setting, though many have identified a direct allusion to playing practices in Shakespeare's contemporary London:
ROSINCRANCE … there is, sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases that cry out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for't. These are now the fashion and so berattle the common stages…that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.
HAMLET What, are they children? Who maintains ’em? How are they escotted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards if they should grow themselves to common players – as it is most like if their means are no better – their writers do wrong them to make them exclaim against their own succession?
(Hamlet, F 2.2.337–49)This exchange (which does not appear in earlier printed quarto editions of the play) has proved a rich seam of conjecture for theatre scholars. The topical reference (at least in the early years of the play's performances) appears to be to the particular phenomenon of the children-only companies which had their roots in choir schools but which by the time of Hamlet were already becoming more professional and commercialised, and which took up residence at St Paul's and at the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars Theatres, most notably in the first decade of the seventeenth century. The Children of Paul's, the Children of the Chapel and, later, the Children of the Queen's Revels became associated with particular kinds of repertory and particular kinds of playing style that bear more detailed attention in understanding how certain early modern plays might have operated on the stage in their initial performances. This case study builds, then, on important recent work in the area of ‘repertory studies’ which argues for company-based understandings of bodies of plays that were commissioned and authored at this time rather than a single-author focus which tends to extract us from deeper consideration of specific contexts and contingencies that shape the success of certain genres and styles of playing at particular times.
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- The Cambridge Introduction to Early Modern Drama, 1576–1642 , pp. 175 - 178Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014