Many readers' first introduction to the children's companies of early seventeenth-century London are the somewhat jaundiced comments of Rosencrantz in the Folio version of Shakespeare's Hamlet:

In his reference to the rival theatre as a nest of little eyases (untrained hawks), Rosencrantz alludes specifically to the Chapel/Queen's Revels company, the more ‘flauntingly outrageous’ of the children's companies, whose Blackfriars playhouse was located in an area associated with the trade in feathers. His comments seem to set up a division between the ‘common Stages’ – large public theatres such as the Globe, used by adult companies – and the private, indoor theatres, suggesting that the latter are stealing upper-class spectators (swords were traditionally worn only by gentlemen) from the former. This idea of an antagonistic divide between public and private and a polarisation of their audiences was most famously developed by Alfred Harbage in his classic account of the ‘rival traditions’, a critical model based on the assumption that the masses supported a popular drama at the amphitheatres and a decadent aristocratic coterie patronised the private children's theatres.