Marlowe’s Boy Actors

Abstract

Christopher Marlowe employed a variety of techniques and strategies when writing for boy actors in the adult companies. His construction of both male and and female roles for boys and contributed to their "enskilment' by inducting them into the highly skilled work environment that was the Elizabethan theatrical system. New research in Distributed Cogniton shows the critical importance of being embedded within a dynamic, cognitively rich working environment. Using evidence from plays written early and late in Marlowe's career, I argue that Marlowe's construction of boy's parts uses a variety of techniques helpful to the novice, while at the same time allowing scope for an impressive display of skill on the part of the young actor. In particular, Marlowe uses 'scaffolding' techniques to build prompts for successful performance within the fiction of the play. Young actors are often 'shepherded' or accompanied by older and more experienced actors. Other techniques include attentional devices, echoing devices, explicit embedded instruction and dialogue constructed to maximze memory and attention. Scaffolded scenes provide a structure that constrains and thus prompts the novice actor's activity. I demonstrate how Marlowe, through these scaffolding techniques, layers a character's trajectory over the young actor's move from scaffolded and restricted scenes to independent command of the stage.

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