THE QUEEN’S REQUIREMENTS 107 
muss so gut als unserer Miinze acht sundische Schillinge geben, 
und findet sich doch stets viel Volks auch viele ehrbare Frauens, 
weil nutze argumenta und viele schone Lehren, als von andern 
berichtet, sollen tractiret werden; alle bey Lichte agiret, welches 
ein gross Ansehen macht. Eine ganze Stunde vorher horet man 
eine kostliche musicam instrumentalem von Orgeln, Lauten, Pan- 
doren, Mandoren, Geigen und Pfeiffen, wie denn damahlen ein 
Knabe cum voce tremula in einer Basgeigen so lieblich gesungen, 
dass wo es die Nonnen zu Mailand ihnen nicht vorgethan, wir 
seines Gleichen auf der Reise nicht gehoret hatten.” 
This document is here given for the first time in its relation 
to the Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars! and is as new in 
its significance to dramatic and stage history as if it had never 
before been printed. All details so fit into the history of the Chil- 
dren of the Chapel at Blackfriars that any attempt at demon- 
strating the identity would be gratuitous.’ 
Whoever wishes to be a specta- 
tor at one of their performances 
must pay as much as eight shill- 
ings of our [Pomeranian], coinage 
[ca. 12d.].. And yet there is al- 
Ways present a large audience, in- 
cluding many respectable women, 
“because entertaining plot- develop- 
ments and many excellent teach- 
ings, as we were informed by oth- 
ers, are expected to be presented. 
All their performances are acted 
by candle-light, which nroduces a 
fine spectacular effect. 
For a whole hour preceding the 
play one listens to a delightful mu- 
sical entertainment on organs, lutes, 
pandorins, mandolins, violins and 
flutes, as on the present occasion, 
indeed, when a boy cum voce trem- 
ula sang so charmingly to the ac- 
companiment of a bass-viol that un- 
less possibly the nuns at Milan may 
have excelled him, we had not heard 
his. equal on our journey. 
*Dr. A. W. Ward, History 
of English Dramatic Literature 
(1899*), I, 453, discussing the im- 
-pressment of children for the choir 
of St. Paul’s by royal warrant of 
1585 (cf. supra, 677), subjoins 
a translation of this document. 
While admitting he anticipates the 
date rather too much, he neverthe- 
less holds the “curious passage” to 
be illustrative of the Paul’s’ plays 
of 1585!! But Dr. Ward makes 
no special claim to a knowledge of 
stage-history, depending very frank- 
ly in such matters mainly upon the 
Rev. Mr. Fleay, except where, as 
here, Fleay has not written. Had 
he given the subject personal in- 
vestigation, he would have seen that 
this Diary has nothing to do with 
Paul’s even in 1602, much less sev- 
enteen years earlier. 
*Numerous commentators and 
reviewers have seen that this record 
meant the Queen’s Children, for the 
document says thus much. But no 
one of them has recognized that it 
meant the famous organization of 
the Children of the Chapel at Black- 
friars. No analysis of its historical 
relations has hitherto been made, 
and no statement of its significance 
exceeds a single sentence. The rec- 
ognition and analysis of its value 
is confined to the adjectives, “cu- 
221 
