“Never mistake a civic pageant for King Lear” – Child Actors’ Skill in Elizabethan Civic Entertainments

Abstract

This thesis argues that child actors played an important role in the political theatre of Queen Elizabeth I’s civic entertainments because of their function as inherently innocent symbols of the future. Functioning in this way, children were able to counsel the Queen through their performances without causing offence. Unlike adults, children were “agents without interests,” who were able to speak on behalf of the people or city entertaining the Queen. This thesis also argues that as Elizabeth’s reign progressed, children played an increasingly sophisticated role in the entertainments performed for the Queen.

Chapter two analyses the role played by child actors in Elizabeth’s coronation procession, and argues that children were employed by the City of London to counsel their new Queen. Children, who merely explicated meaning and were distinct from the pageants’ dramatic performances, were able to exhort Elizabeth to rule consultatively, to bring religious unity to England, and to produce an heir.

Chapter three analyses the role of child actors in the Bristol progress of 1574 and the royal visit to Norwich in 1578, and argues that the cities were acutely aware of the reason for the Queen’s visit—either an economic or religio-political dispute—and that they used the performances of child actors to influence Elizabeth’s ruling on the dispute. As “agents without interests,” children were positioned as neutral arbitrators whose interpretation of the situation should be the course of action taken by the Queen. This chapter also charts the way that child actors became involved in the actual performance of the entertainments, and how professional entertainment devisers were able to use the children’s sophisticated performances to deliver complex and politically charged counsel.

Chapter four analyses the role of children in counselling Elizabeth on her marriage negotiations. By examining the entertainment performed for Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou in 1581—commonly known as The Four Foster Children of Desire—this chapter argues that children were protected from reprisals for commenting on such a politically contentious decision. Their ability to counsel the Queen was enhanced both by their embodiment of the future—a future that the child actors demonstrated was bleak should Elizabeth marry a Roman Catholic foreigner—and also by the professionally devised content of the show that used highly skilled boys to deliver elaborate prose that masked its implicit political message.

These three chapters not only demonstrate that children were integral to the political counsel that underscored royal entertainments, but also the way that civic drama became part of the professional theatrical landscape. Chapter five concludes this thesis by analysing the decline of the role child actors played in the civic pageantry of Jacobean England. The increasing sophistication of child actors that is charted through this thesis reached its peak during the early years of James I’s reign. The polished performances of professional boy actors, coupled with a monarch who saw little value in childish dramatic displays, meant that instead of counselling the monarch through drama, children became little more than adorable accessories for adult interests.