Chapter 10 - Boy Parts in Early Shakespeare

Summary

This chapter examines some of the trends that emerge in roles written for child actors in Shakespeare’s early plays. It considers some similarities in types of roles and asks how we might weigh this evidence in complementing recent research on how child actors develop in the period. In surveying the range of smaller child roles in the early plays it raises interesting possibilities for the nature of in-troup pedagogy and/or training. It further raises questions about the relationship between text and performance, and between one text and another, and between Shakespeare and the various companies that he is associated with and the collaborators that he works alongside. It argues that we can learn something about how child actors develop in the period by re-examining the roles that were written for them in this early period of Shakespeare’s career.