INTRODUCTION 5 
: lrama, and other arts. These actor-children were kept at her ex- 
pense, and furnished with rich and abundant stage-apparel. 
_ Out of the original Court-service of the Children of the Chapel 
_ evolved the sort of performance they later presented as actors. 
_ It was not a long step from religious worship, solemnizations, 
i 
and festivities, for the Court to employ their excellent singing 
¥ at other times simply as a rich musical entertainment. 
_ At what time plays were introduced along with the singing, 
or in addition to it, or in place of it, there are no known records 
. by which we can determine. But as far back as the development 
_ can be traced, dialogue and acting seem to have dominated the 
' singing. Near the close of Elizabeth’s reign, the entertainment 
_ at Blackfriars takes the form of a delightful musicale followed 
_ by an acted play containing song and masque. 
The plays themselves in both earlier and later periods were in- 
_ terspersed with songs as specialties. During the Blackfriars 
period under Elizabeth, the Boys exhibited their training and 
_ skill in instrumental music, singing, and dancing, at intervals 
_ through the play. In most of their plays after 1600, and possibly 
in their lost repertoire of the three years before, they combined 
_ these arts into a single exhibition, by putting on the form and 
variegated dress of fairies, nymphs, or other creatures of fancy 
and mingling color, music, and dance into the pleasing harmony 
of the masque. 
During James I the elements of dainty device in music and 
pleasing show are less prominent. We have at any rate no record 
of the combined musical and dramatic entertainment such as the 
Duke of Stettin in 1602 reported was the custom at Blackfriars. 
_ Music between the acts, however, and songs throughout the play 
remained though a diminished yet a prominent feature. But the 
feet of the fairies and nymphs grew clogged with a varied clay, 
and except twice neither their poets found invention nor the 
grown-up boys practice in the care-free, lissome masque. In 
these heavier years, too, the tripping step of comedy gave way 
to the serious tread of tragedy. 
Chiefly out of the Court-performances of the Children in the 
Queen’s Chapel and other royal hallst evolved the private thea- 
*The other influence was the nobility is reflex rather than direct. 
church. The influence of school and A. Albrecht, Das Englische Kin- 
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