iv PREFACE 
Faculty of Albert-Ludwig University, Freiburg i/Br., where 1 
acquired the degree of Ph.D. in the summer semester of 1906. 
With a larger courtesy than I could have hoped,—a courtesy 
characteristic of the true lover of learning in the German uni- 
versities,—that Faculty voted to grant me the privilege of adding 
results of contemplated further research at a future time. By 
virtue of this grace, the present publication is delayed two years. 
I have accordingly reworked and expanded most of the chapters, 
incorporating such results of my more recent researches as prop- 
erly fall within the scope of this section. Fortunately my latest 
finds have, with but rare and minor exceptions, been mainly in 
the nature of documentary and final substantiation of conclusions 
reached from the more slender evidences first used. 
In coming to the study of the children-companies, their widely — 
ramifying influences on stage and drama, and the characteristics 
of their repertoire in its entirety, every one finds himself, I sup- 
pose, pretty much in the condition I was in when I set about the 
work. We are hindered by lack of knowledge, and conditioned | 
4] = _ 
~— S  — 
by our preconceptions derived from the mass of past error and 
from false perspectives of sectional studies, as the treatment of 
isolated dramas, or isolating topics running through a series of 
dramas, and by special treatises that strain-facts to maintain a 
theme. As for myself, I have been forced to give up one con- 
ception and one supposed fact after another, until now I find 
nearly every essential detail in this history is different from what 
I had supposed from these books and special studies to be the 
truth. 
In the preparation of this work, I have had no theme to main- 
tain, no theory to defend, and none to propose. My sole guide 
has been the simple desire to find the truth. I have told it as I 
found it, in plain and simple fashion, so that others may read it. 
In order that they may judge for themselves, I have given also 
the evidences, usually in foot-notes. These are therefore the most - ~ 
valuable part of the work. The foot-notes, constituting more 
than half of the whole work, may seem sometimes burdensome. 
But, intended for the scholar, they are in fact the only part in 
which I take special pride, for it has been my desire to assemble 
materials and references that may hereafter be cited as reliable. 
106 
