PREFACE 
s _SomE years ago I undertook to edit an old play of one of the 
a -children-companies, prefaced by a historical introduction. I found 
4 I could not do it conscientiously without finding out the truth 
about the company that played the piece. An examination of 
_ the published works of Europe and America touching the chil- 
_ dren-actors showed a woeful jumble of variegated error as a re- 
sult of the romantic or unfaithful treatment of the meager facts. 
_ Manifestly the truth was not known, and the facts were in chaos. 
_ So the two or three paragraphs into which I had intended to con- 
_ dense the matter for my introduction, I saw vanish into vapor. 
This condition of affairs threw me back on the unpromising 
data, and I began searching archives for new data and investi- 
gating the sources and relations of both old and new. The ad- 
vance has been steady since the first day. I soon found the 
- children’s company in question was related to other children-com- 
4 _ panies, and these in turn to the men-companies, and all of them 
_ to the nature and place of acting, and especially to the spirit and 
=~ form of the drama. My contemplated two or three paragraphs 
now expanded into a chapter, then a section, then a volume, and 
finally I am trying, by excluding the bulkiest and least related 
documents, to confine results within the limits of three volumes. 
_ Meanwhile the contemplated edition of the old play is biding 
its time. So are certain other editions, all of which can consci- 
-entiously and scientifically be undertaken only when this work 
as a proper historical basis is complete. 
b: ~The following introductory chapters constitute the first section 
of volume I. Many of the documents for volume III were as- 
sembled and the MS. for volume I and partly for volume II was 
prepared for the press in 1904-6, during my two-years absence 
_ from the University of Nebraska, with residence and research in 
_ Europe, particularly in Germany, France, and England. This 
_ first section was accepted for the doctorate by the Philosophical 
dE gs sity 
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