thou ever," cries the wife, talking of one of the actors, "see a prettier child? How it behaves itself, I warrant ye, and speaks and looks and perts up the head;" and then the worthy couple stop the action of the play by incessantly calling upon Ralph the apprentice to do some brave deeds. "Why, sir, you do not think of our plot," cry the distracted players. "Why, sir, I care not what become on't," answers the sturdy old citizen. So accordingly deeds of valour have to be invented for Ralph, which come in as a sort of interlude, and considerably hinder the development of the plot. Between the acts it was often the custom for a boy to dance, and the citizen's wife says, "Hark! hark! husband, hark! fiddles, fiddles [music]. Look, look! here's a youth dances!"

In 1622 the players of the Revels, who it seems were now acknowledged to be grown up, appear to have performed chiefly at the Red Bull Theatre. They obtained a license to bring up a younger generation of actors, still under the name of "Children of the Revels;" soon after this, however, the child-company's name was altered to "The Queen of Bohemia's Servants." In 1627, two years after the accession of Charles I., Shakespeare's old company procured the following in hibition, an entry of which is to be found in Sir Henry Herbert's office-book: "From Mr. Heminge, in their company's name, to forbid the playinge of any of Shakespeare's playes, to the Red Bull Company, this 11th of April, 1627,--5:0:0," but whether this company consisted of the children, or of the players of the Revels, is extremely uncertain. In the previous year, 1626, In the previous year, 1626, Charles I. had issued the usual warrant for the impressing of children into the choir of the Royal Chapel, but, probably owing to the strong influence of the clergy, a clause was inserted containing the following words: "Provided always, and we straightly charge and command, that none of the said choristers or children of the Chappell, soe to be taken by force of this Commission, shalbe used or employed as Comedians or Stage Players, or to exercise or acte any stage plaies, interludes, comedies, or tragedies; for that it is not fitt or desent that such as should sing the praises of God Almighty should be trained or imployed in such profane exercises."

From this time, therefore, we must entirely separate in our ideas the children of the chapel from the childplayers. In 1637 Christopher Beeston, the head of the Queen's Players," was commanded to make a company of boys, and began to play at the Cockpit with them the same day." We can only conjecture whether the play thus suddenly performed was impromptu, or whether rehearsals had been previously conducted under Beeston's supervision. The company thus formed is often spoken of as "Beeston's Boys," though its official title seems to have been "The King's and Queen's Young Company." Three years after, Christopher Beeston was succeeded in his post by William Beeston, who was extremely anxious to preserve for his company the sole right of performing the Cockpit plays, which he feared might be infringed now the Queen's Players had left the theatre. William Beeston accordingly procured an order from the Lord

Chamberlain, proclaiming that the plays "do all and every of them properly and of right belong to the said. house, and consequently that they are all in his property. And to the end that any other company of actors, in or about London, shall not presume to act any of them to the prejudice of him the said William Beeston and his company." Among the plays of which the children had the monopoly were- Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge, and Knight of the Burning Pestle; Massinger's New Way to Pay Old Debts, Fatal Dowry, Maid of Honour, and The Bondman; Ford's Love's Sacrifice, and several of his other plays, and many other less important works, such as The Grateful Servant, The School of Compliment, The World, The Sun's Darling, The Cunning Lovers, A City Night Cap, and Cupid's Vagaries.

In 1640, William Beeston's company acted a new play "without any license from the Master of His Majesty's Revels." This piece contained unpleasing allusions to the Scotch-possibly the boy-company was paying off the old grudge of the child-players against that nation. Their offence was punished by a short imprisonment though whether of William Beeston only or of the whole company is uncertain. A month after this, William Beeston, who seems to have greatly mismanaged the company, was supplanted in his office by William Davenant. In the Christmas of 1641-42 The Scornfull Lady was acted at the Cockpit; it was "the only play acted at Court in the whole Christmas," and it is the last performance by the child-players of which we have any record, for in the autumn of the year the war began, and players old and young were alike suppressed. We can gather plenty of facts as to the child-players, but we can nowhere discover what was the peculiar fascination of their acting which made them hold the stage for a period of nearly two hundred years, and during part of that time obtain an exclusive acting monopoly of some of the best works of the Elizabethan dramatists. The very names of the plays which the children acted prove that their performance was by no means regarded as a burlesque to be laughed at, not sympathised with, for the most grave and serious dramas were represented by these baby-tragedians, and they were entrusted with the first production of some of the most important plays of the time. We can hardly imagine that the children actually acted better than the older players, and yet it is possible that the Infant Roscius was not the first child who has developed an extraordinary dramatic genius in early youth. Children have an immense advantage over their elders in their utter absence of self-consciousness, and in the natural grace of their movements. They always know what to do with their hands.

Probably the child-players' performance suffered greatly from the absence of girls among their number; for, on an average, little girls act better than little boys, although a child-prodigy-always excepting the "Infant Phenomenon "-is generally a boy. Shakespeare's evidence is unfortunately not in favour of the children, and ill-natured persons interpret Rosencrantz's description of their "crying out on the top of question" to mean that the little actors declaimed the whole

of their parts on a high monotone. Let us hope that this was not the case, and that a simple allusion is meant to the natural shrillness of children's voices, which the audience would hardly notice by the end of the first scene, when their ears had become attuned to it. Possibly, it was the jealousy of the actor which prompted Shakespeare's attack on the "aiery of children," for at the time that Hamlet was produced, the Children of the Revels were performing alternately with Shakespeare's company at the Blackfriars Theatre. If, as is very probable, the children's acting, being more the fashion, attracted larger audiences than that of Shakespeare's company, any amount of bitterness against them would be accounted for in the poet. We find no mention of any company of children having acted Shakespeare's plays, but that might be used as an argument on either side. For it might be said that Shakespeare as an author was anxious to preserve his plays from being murdered by the children's acting, or that Shakespeare as an actor, jealous of the great popularity of their performances, was determined that at any rate they should not be allowed to add to their successes by acting his plays.

In an old play called Jack Drum's Entertainment, which was published in 1601, we find the following account of the actors and audience at one of the performances of the company at St. Paul's :-

"Sir E. Fortune. I saw the children of Powles last night, And, troth, they pleased me pretty, pretty well; The apes in time will do it handsomely.

"Planet. I' faith, I like the audience that frequenteth there With much applause; a man shall not be choked With the stench of garlick, nor be pasted

To the barmy jacket of a beer brewer.

"Brabant, Jun. "Tis a good gentle audience, and I hope the boys

Will come one day into the Court of Requests."

It will be seen from this quotation that the audience at St. Paul's was of a better class than that at the ordinary playhouses. Whether this is a sign that the performances were also of a better class is doubtful -it was very likely a mere matter of fashion; but a fashion which lasted so long cannot have been altogether a bad one. The child-players were always very carefully taught by their master, or, in the case of the Children of the Revels, by five, or at any rate four masters; for it is possible that Samuel Daniell was merely responsible for the choice of their plays. That the children were taught not only their parts, but their gestures, we learn from a list of charges made after a performance at Hampton Court by the children of the Merchant Taylors' School under Richard Mulcaster, in the year 1574. Among the items of expense on that occasion we find the two following:-"To an Italian woman and her daughter, who lent and dressed the

hair of the children;" and "Diets for children while learning their parts and their gestures." Perhaps, however, Richard Mulcaster may have taken special pains with his young company, for when, in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, the citizen's wife specially commends one of the actors, she asks him, "Were you never none of Master Moncaster's scholars?"

It is, of course, impossible that children could ever have reached the highest level of the art of acting. The vivid imagination which must grasp the minutest details of actions and gestures; the power of concentrated hard work, which enables the actor to rehearse the mechanical side of his part over and over again; and, in the moment of impersonation, the utter self-abnegation with which he merges himself in the character he is representing, forgetting his own personality, his own life waiting for him as he leaves the stage-all this is far beyond the power of children. But if it is true, as some great actors have affirmed, that acting is merely the art of feigning to feign-that the stage life is only to be taught and never felt then there is no reason why children's acting should not equal that of their elders. A child's mind is more receptive than that of a grown-up person, and if acting is only the mechanical producing of words and gestures learnt by rote, the actor meanwhile retaining full possession of his own individuality, and criticising the performance which he has taught himself, it must come to much the same thing whether the original inventor of the action is the performer or merely the teacher of the performer. In this case the only attributes essential to the actor are a power of mimicry and a retentive memory, both of which many children possess. The sort of double consciousness which under these circumstances the children must have felt is well described by Marston in Antonio's Revenge :

"Like to some boy that acts a tragedy,

Speaks burly words, and raves out passion;
But when he thinks upon his infant weakness
He droops his eye."

If it is possible for even a stupid grown-up person to be taught to act, or rather to mimic, in this way, we may conclude that the children's representations were to a certain extent artistically correct, for an average child is at least as easy to teach as-let us say, the Fotheringay. And, considering the plays which they performed, it is horrible and unnatural to think they acted in any other way. They could not have understood the motives of the characters they played, so as to represent them in an intelligent manner, but, like the workmen in a sculptor's studio, they simply executed the idea which their teachers had modelled, and it therefore seems reasonable to trace the great success of the performances of the child-players to their perfect mastery of the art of mimicry. AMY STRACHEY.

A

HE clock has struck three. In the little low Salle d'Étude of the Archives Nationales the light is growing dim. few students have already placed their yellow manuscripts in their cardboard boxes, and have closed their note-books for to-day. There is a pushing back of chairs, a crackle of parchment, a rattle of the heavy seals that dangle from treaties and marriage contracts. But half a dozen more studious spirits bend desperately over their work, reading the dim and difficult letters with a sort of fury, for they know it is three o'clock, the closing time, and that these last dear illegal minutes are all that is worth having till ten o'clock to-morrow morning, when their interrupted life begins again. You smile, but it is a very natural point of view. Come and work here, and you will find it is impossible to live

in two centuries at once. In one or the other you must be content to be a ghost. Those charming ladies tying their bonnet-strings, that delightful officer who has mislaid his sword, are ghosts, I have no doubt, in their studies; even as these other passionate students, and I myself perhaps, are ghosts outside.

Will you walk home with me as far as the Louvre ? It is a long walk for me, but the streets are interesting, and your dress, you tell me, will not be ready before dusk at the great Magasins in the Rue de Rivoli. Give me your arm, then, and we will go together. How fresh the air strikes out of doors!

But do not go so quickly! Stop a moment and look at this beautiful old Palace before we leave it. Is it not a fit home for the archives of a nation? 'Tis an epitome of history in itself. Those two spiked turrets and the gate up the Rue des Archives are all that is left of the