112 CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL AT BLACKFRIARS 
he established as a result, it is clear that this fondness turns not 
upon the public theatres, but upon the Queen’s establishment of 
the Children at Blackfriars. 
There are good grounds for concluding that Elizabeth intended 
the establishment of the Children of her Chapel as actors at Black- 
friars not merely to give the Boys polish of manners, but also to 
pleasure herself and entertain the Court. Her own presence 
there in company with her court-ladies, the testimony from other 
sources that lords attended, and that my fine gentleman took up 
the fashion while the better paying part of the audiences at the 
public theatres correspondingly dwindled, all indicate that this 
was at any rate the result, if not the original intention. I have 
already pointed out that this probably accounts for the Children’s 
not being oftener at Court from 1597 to 1603.* 
The high price of admission also indicates the aristocratic na- 
ture of the audience. If a shilling was, as it seems from the 
Diary, the lowest admission, the prices of the choicer seats, par- 
ticularly in the lords’ rooms, must have been considerable. In 
general, the admission fee so far as known seems to have been 
from two to twelve times as great as at any other theatre of the 
period.’ 
fered also in part among themselves. 
gast, in Jahrbuch der Deutschen : 
It is not a fruitful field, but such 
Shakespeare Gesellschaft (1902), 
XOXOOV ITA 198: 
Supra, 96°. 
*It seems remarkable that con- 
temporary literature offers no state- 
ment of the price of admission at 
Blackfriars for the period in hand. 
No proper study of entrance fees 
to London theatres, however, has 
ever been made. Malone, op. cit., 
III, 73ff., assembled numerous ex- 
amples ranging over about three- 
quarters of a century. Collier, op. 
cit., III, 146ff., reworked these, with 
a few additions and omissions. The 
conclusions of both Malone and 
Collier melt time and individual 
theatres into a single composite. 
But clearly the prices and condi- 
tions of, say, 1640, are not those 
of 1600, much less of 1576. Private 
theatres are all classed together as 
having simply higher prices than 
the public theatres. But they dif- 
as it is it should be reworked for 
what it may yield, with regard to ° 
definite periods and conditions of 
each theatre considered. 
Known examples allow the fol- 
lowing tentative conclusions for - 
1597 to 1608. Admission to the 
yard and upper gallery of the pub- 
lic theatres was one penny. There 
were also two-penny galleries, or 
two-penny rooms, in the Globe, For- 
tune and others. So far as known, 
the best rooms there were a shill- 
ing. .The price at Paul’s was six- 
pence. There are no known rec- 
ords as to Whitefriars fees for the 
period. At Blackfriars the lowest 
price in 1602 was a shilling. But in 
1607 under very different conditions 
during the reign of James I, it 
seems sixpence. The boxes and 
rooms were doubtless dear. Gal- 
lants who sat on the Blackfriars 
226 
