Elizabethan Play-Boys in the Adult London Companies

Abstract

In the absence of evidence that a players’ guild formally existed, scholars have tended to assume that the adult acting companies simply copied the guild apprenticeship model as a long-established norm for child labor or that acting company members used their formal guild affiliations to apprentice and train boys as stage players. While some Elizabethan and early Stuart play-boys in the adult London drama companies might have been guild apprentices or been like guild apprentices, others were more like covenant servants or parish apprentices, and while some of these “boys” were children with unbroken voices, others were adults.

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