; 
: 
Me 
INTRODUCTION 15 
_ men-companies, that from one-half to two-thirds of the plays 
named therein have never reached us. How many were played 
by companies of which no diary record was kept we can only 
conjecture. And how many were written and never accepted it 
would be futile to attempt to investigate. We can only get from 
contemporary records that the number of unknown plays was 
very considerable. 
Of the children-companies, we can identify only half of the 
court plays. It is quite probable that more than half of their 
publicly acted plays have reached us, but there is ample evidence 
that we do not have them all. In the case of the Children of the 
King’s Revels at Whitefriars, as we shall see, there were condi- 
tions that practically prevented publishing any of their plays 
while the company existed. It is remarkable that we have any 
of their plays. at all. 
It is impossible to characterize the children’s plays in the gross 
except very generally. Some have literary merit, many fall short. 
With the exception of those by Jonson and Chapman, their com- 
edies and comic situations. of tragedies have generally a low 
moral tone; not differing in that respect, however, very greatly 
from the rest of the plays of the age. On the whole they are 
fuller of personal, political, and local allusions than those of the 
men-companies. Their tragedies contain much rant, bombast, 
and turgidity. Their plays seem to take color not a little from 
the courtly, fashionable, or smart audiences and from the irre- 
sponsible nature of the actors. The irresponsibleness of the 
youthful actors can not but account at least in part for the po- 
litical indiscretions of Eastward Ho, The Isle of Gulls, and the, 
two Biron tragedies. 
By Elizaheth’s favor and patronage of the Blackfriars Boys, 
children-companies, and particularly this company, became the 
fad. It took the genius of Shakespeare to counterbalance their 
influence. From his testimony of how he felt about them, it is 
probable that their competition was one of the factors that en- 
_ tered into the best efforts of his genius. Good plays and geod 
acting by his company were the necessary countervail. 
Thus much for a background. 
A knowledge of the proper place and relation of these chil- 
129 
