This book focuses on the Jacobean career of the company variously known as the Children of the Queen's Revels, the Children of the Revels, the Children of Blackfriars and the Children of Whitefriars. Established as the Children of the Chapel in 1600, the Queen's Revels were the most prominent, politically contentious and dramatically experimental of the early seventeenth-century children's companies. In focusing on the Jacobean period, I potentially create a problematic divide between the careers of the Children of the Chapel and the Children of the Queen's Revels. However, after 1603 the patronage of Queen Anna of Denmark, the appointment of Samuel Daniel as licenser, the involvement of John Marston as shareholder and the increased experience of the performers take the company in new directions. In addition, the repertory of 1600–3 is affected to a large degree by the specific theatrical environment of the ‘War of the Theatres’ or poetomachia, in which the Chapel plays Cynthia's Revels and The Poetaster are usually thought to have been involved. The ‘war of the theatres’ has recently been analysed in detail (with widely divergent approaches and conclusions) by Matthew Steggle, Roslyn Lander Knutson and James P. Bednarz, and I have therefore chosen to focus on other aspects of the Blackfriars repertory. Since it would be impossible to take into account the full complexities of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatrical and cultural milieus in one book, I have (reluctantly) decided to focus on the Jacobean period.