4 CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL AT BLACKFRIARS | 
The Children never on any occasion received fees. Consequently — 
the Clerk of the Cheque has left no record of any sort concerning — 
them, since his official duty seems to have been largely to record rc 
Despite this omission, © 
the Children certainly sang with the men-choristers at all solem- — 
nities and festivals held in the Chapel, as they constituted an- 
such receipts by members of the chapter. 
essential part of the chorus. 
During a part of the reign of Elizabeth the children occasion- . 
ally presented plays in the Chapel,—even on Sundays,—before 
the Queen and her Court. As early as 1569 the first published 
record of feeling that has reached us concerning the Children as 
actors shows a bitter Puritanic opposition to this practice.t 
Children of the Chapel to gratify her pleasure. In her closing 
years she extended their function of acting beyond occasional 
performances in the Chapel, and established them as a permanent 
company at the Blackfriars with requirements to act a play every 
week, With the increase of time, the spirit of Puritanism grew 
an important factor to be reckoned with in the government, and 
Elizabeth’s theatrical predilections diminished none. In her Ma- 
jesty’s fondness for the drama, however, and in her purpose to 
carry out certain theatrical plans rather than in Puritanic oppo- 
sition is to be sought the cause of her removing the performances 
of the Children permanently from the Chapel Royal and estab- 
lishing with them in 1597 the Blackfriars theatre. 
see later, she in effect divided the Children on the basis of func- 
tions, and maintained one body of them at the Chapel Royal as 
choristers, the other at Blackfriars to be taught in music. the 
The — 
Queen, however, was passionately fond of the drama, and be- ~ 
sides patronizing the men’s companies and Paul’s boys at Court, — 
she continued throughout her reign occasionally to use her own — 
As we shall 
*“Plaies will neuer be supprest, 
while her maiesties unfledged min- 
ions flaunt it in silkes and sattens. 
They had as well be at their Popish 
service, in the deuils garments.”— 
The Children of the Chapel stript 
and whipt (1569), quoted in 
Thomas Warton, History of Eng- 
lish Poetry (ed. Hazlitt, 1871), IV, 
217. 
The attack is continued in a later 
page of the same pamphlet thus :— 
“Even in her maiesties chappel do 
these pretty vpstart youthes profane 
the Lordes Day by the lascivious 
writhing of their tender limbs, and 
gorgeous decking of their apparell, 
in feigning bawdie fables gathered 
as idolatrous heathen poets.” 
—lbid. 
118 
