The Children of the Chapel are the boys with unbroken voices, choristers, who form part of the Chapel Royal, the body of singers and priests serving the spiritual needs of their sovereign wherever they were called upon to do so. They were overseen by the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal.
Sometime in the 12th century or earlier, a distinct establishment known as the Chapels Royal [1] was created within the English Royal Court and its musical establishment now claims to be the oldest continuous musical organization in the world. Children sang in church because their high voices were considered closest to the angels and Queen Elizabeth's need for entertainment and care for her “spiritual well being”. Boy groups from grammar and choir school, ages 7–14, were royally patronized to perform songs for the Queen and her court. [2]
The Choir's, now just ten, boys are traditionally known as the Children of the Chapel Royal, and wear the distinctive State uniform introduced at the Restoration. Their special school within St James's Palace no longer operates, having closed in 1923; the boys all attend the City of London School and receive a choral scholarship from The King. In former times when educated within the court they were very much a part of court life and by ancient tradition were entitled to many small special privileges.
The Choir's duties remain to sing the regular services in the chapel of the Monarch's home and to otherwise attend as commanded. It is based in the two chapels of St James's Palace and services are also sung in the chapels of Kensington and Buckingham Palaces. The Choir also takes part in many State and National ceremonies and at private events within the Royal Household. It consists of six Gentlemen in Ordinary and ten choristers and a Sub-Organist. [3]
At the coronation of Charles III and Camilla in 2023, one of the Children was chosen to give a welcoming address to the King. [4]
The Children of the Chapel (if from the establishment of the Chapels Royal also known as the Children of His Majesty's Chapel Royal, the Children of the Chapel Royal, the Children of the Queen's Revels, the Children of the Revels) and the Children of the Blackfriars Theatre or Children of the Blackfriars, and finally the Children of the Whitefriars Theatre or Children of the Whitefriars were troupes of child actors in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. The beginning of court performances dates back to the start of Elizabeth I's reign in England, starting in 1558 and continues through 1603. Elizabeth I was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. She came into power the day that her older sister Mary passed away, and took over rule of England almost immediately after. This became the start of the Elizabethan era and was known for its influx of appreciation and recognition of the arts. The performances themselves started off as mainly choir concerts, until they became more musical, performative and used masks for costumes. The Queen was insistent on making sure the children mastered other skills, such as art, theatre, and various musical instruments to enhance their talent and develop the quality of the performances as time went on.
By the accession of James I in 1603, the Chapels Royal was staffed by a dean, a sub-dean, and 32 gentlemen (both priests and laymen); it also had a choir of 12 boys. The age range for the group was never set in stone. The boys would join around age 6, and would continue in the group up into their mid 20’s. While they were technically no longer children, they did not get kicked out, and instead the number of boys grew in number. William Cornysh, who was Master of the Children from 1509 to 1523, first began the practice of having the boys' choir perform dramatic interludes at Court. William Hunnis was Master of the Children of the Chapel from 1566 to 1597; under his stewardship the boys played repeatedly at Court until 1584.
In 1576 (the same year James Burbage built The Theatre and began the era of popular Elizabethan drama). The land in which the theater was on, was initially owned by Sir William, but was negotiated on by Burbage so that way Chamberlain's Men would have a theater to perform in. The area was founded by the Dominican Friars in 1278 and bordered the river Thames near London. It was known for being a self-governing area, mainly to escape control and power of the mayor. Burbage bought out the first floor hall of the Upper Frater of the theater which would be turned into the Blackfriar Playhouse. Hunnis's deputy Richard Farrant rented space in the old Blackfriars priory, and began public performances by the boys. For unknown reasons, the troupe did not act at Court after 1584 (though they did give some performances outside London). When the Children of Paul's were suppressed in 1590, due to their playwright John Lyly's role in the Marprelate controversy, the fashion for troupes of child actors went into abeyance for the next decade – inevitably affecting the Children of the Chapel.
(When Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage was published in 1594, it was described as "Played by the Children of Her Majesty's Chapel." [5] The uncertainty of that play's date clouds the question of when those performances occurred.)
In 1600 the Children of the Chapel returned to the public stage with regular performances. Nathaniel Giles, their Master from 1597 to 1634, became one of the lessees (with Henry Evans) of the Blackfriars Theatre that James Burbage built in 1596, and brought the Children to play there. The boys performed at Court on 6 January and 22 February 1601. They had a big hit that year with Ben Jonson's The Poetaster . Nathan Field, John Underwood, and William Ostler, all of whom would later join the King's Men, were in the cast.
Even in the early years of this period, the Children of the Chapel were mired in controversy: Giles drafted, and sometimes nearly kidnapped, boys that he wanted in his troupe. (Incredibly enough, he had a legal right to use such techniques – but only for the boys' choir, not for acting.) Solomon Pavy, the young actor eulogized by Ben Jonson upon his premature death in 1603, was one boy "pressed" into service in this high-handed way. So, reportedly, was Nathan Field. In one notorious instance, a man named Henry Clifton brought a complaint before the Star Chamber in December 1601, maintaining that Giles had in fact kidnapped Clifton's young son Thomas while the boy was walking home from grammar school. (Giles was censured; Clifton got his son back.)
The Children of the Chapel performed plays by Jonson, George Chapman, John Marston, Thomas Middleton, and others during the next several years; they specialized in the satirical comedy that appealed to Court wits and a "Gentle" audience, in contrast to the more popularly oriented drama of William Shakespeare, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker, and similar writers. The company experienced popularity and success in the first years of the century; when the House of Stuart inherited the monarchy, the Children of the Chapel, like other troupes of actors, received royal favor – they became the Children of the Queen's Revels (1603–5). They tried tragedies and tragicomedies, but most of their success came from satirical comedies. Company performances became a regular staple for the court and began to be performed by both children and adult companies, so much so that they occurred annually at the winter revelry, which was a large festive gathering full of drinking and loud festivities.
Yet they also experienced the downside of this brand of drama: when the play Eastward Hoe (1605) won official censure and landed two of its authors, Jonson and Chapman, in jail, the actors earned a share of the disapproval. They lost their Royal patent, and became simply the Children of the Revels (1605–6). After another scandal, this one involving The Isle of Gulls by John Day (1606), they were known as the Children of the Blackfriars. They managed to offend the King a third time, in 1608, in regard to their production of George Chapman's two-part play The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron. The double play offended the French Ambassador, who got it banned from the stage. (The Ambassador was particularly bothered by a scene in which the French Queen slaps the face of the King's mistress – a scene that was omitted from the printed texts of the plays.) When the Court was not in London, however, the Children of the Blackfriars performed the plays again, in their original offensive form. The angry James swore that the boys "should never play more but should first beg their bread." [6] Yet the King liked plays too much to maintain this resolve over the long term, and the Children were eventually able to continue. They even performed at Court the following Christmas season.
Also in 1608, the King's Men took over the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre, effectively evicting the previous tenants. The children's company moved to the new Whitefriars Theatre, and became, perforce, the Children of the Whitefriars (1609). In 1610, however, they regained royal favour, due to the influence of Philip Rosseter, lutenist to the Royal household and their new manager; they were the Children of the Queen's Revels once again.
The company performed Jonson's Epicene in 1609; in 1611 they acted Nathan Field's A Woman is a Weathercock , both at Whitefriars and at Court. Field was in the cast of both productions. They played at Court four times in 1612–13, performing plays by Beaumont and Fletcher. For a time around 1613, the boys' troupe was linked with the Lady Elizabeth's Men. After losing their Whitefriars lease at the end of 1614, they moved to Rosseter's short-lived Porter's Hall Theatre (1615). The last play they are known to have acted was Beaumont and Fletcher's The Scornful Lady . The company apparently collapsed around 1616.
A warrant, granted in 1626 to Nathaniel Giles to take up singing boys for the service of the Chapel Royal, contained a proviso that the children so to be taken should not be employed as comedians or stage-players, or act in stage plays, interludes, comedies, or tragedies, "for that it is not fitt or decent that such as sing the praises of God Almighty should be trained or imployed on such lascivious and prophane exercises."
The English Renaissance theatre or Elizabethan theatre was the theatre of England from 1558 to 1642. Its most prominent playwrights were William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson.
Richard Burbage was an English stage actor, widely considered to have been one of the most famous actors of the Globe Theatre and of his time. In addition to being a stage actor, he was also a theatre owner, entrepreneur, and painter. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage. They were both actors in drama. Burbage was a business associate and friend to William Shakespeare.
The King's Men was the acting company to which William Shakespeare (1564–1616) belonged for most of his career. Formerly known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, they became the King's Men in 1603 when King James I ascended the throne and became the company's patron.
The Lord Chamberlain's Men was a company of actors, or a "playing company", for which William Shakespeare wrote during most of his career. Richard Burbage played most of the lead roles, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Formed at the end of a period of flux in the theatrical world of London, it had become, by 1603, one of the two leading companies of the city and was subsequently patronized by James I.
Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The first theatre began as a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal, child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs, and who from 1576 to 1584 staged plays in the vast hall of the former monastery. The second theatre dates from the purchase of the upper part of the priory and another building by James Burbage in 1596, which included the Parliament Chamber on the upper floor that was converted into the playhouse. The Children of the Chapel played in the theatre beginning in the autumn of 1600 until the King's Men took over in 1608. They successfully used it as their winter playhouse until all the theatres were closed in 1642 when the English Civil War began. In 1666, the entire area was destroyed in the Great Fire of London.
Nathan Field was an English dramatist and actor.
In Renaissance-era London, playing company was the usual term for a company of actors. These companies were organised around a group of ten or so shareholders, who performed in the plays but were also responsible for management. The sharers employed "hired men" – that is, the minor actors and the workers behind the scenes. The major companies were based at specific theatres in London; the most successful of them, William Shakespeare's company the King's Men, had the open-air Globe Theatre for summer seasons and the enclosed Blackfriars Theatre in the winters. The Admiral's Men occupied the Rose Theatre in the 1590s, and the Fortune Theatre in the early 17th century.
John Lowin was an English actor.
The Admiral's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in the Elizabethan and Stuart eras. It is generally considered the second most important acting troupe of English Renaissance theatre.
Philip Rosseter was an English composer and musician, as well as a theatrical manager. His family seems to have been from Somerset or Lincolnshire, he may have been employed with the Countess of Sussex by 1596, and he was living in London by 1598. In 1604 Rosseter was appointed a court lutenist for James I of England, a position he held until his death in 1623. Rosseter is best known for A Book of Ayres which was written with Thomas Campion and published in 1601. Some literary critics have held that Campion wrote the poems for Rosseter's songs; however, this seems not to be the case. It is likely that Campion was the author of the book's preface, which criticizes complex counterpoint and "intricate" harmonies that leave the words inaudible. The two men had a close professional and personal relationship; when Campion died in 1620, he had named Rosseter his sole heir.
A boy player was a male child or teenager who performed in Medieval and English Renaissance playing companies. Some boy players worked for adult companies and performed the female roles, since women were not allowed to perform on the English stage during this period. Others worked for children's companies in which all roles, not just the female ones, were played by boys.
The Whitefriars Theatre was a theatre in Jacobean London, in existence from 1608 to the 1620s — about which only limited and sometimes contradictory information survives.
The Children of Paul's was the name of a troupe of boy actors in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. Along with the Children of the Chapel, they were an important component of the companies of boy players that constituted a distinctive feature of English Renaissance theatre.
The Lady Elizabeth's Men, or Princess Elizabeth's Men, was a company of actors in Jacobean London, formed under the patronage of King James I's daughter Princess Elizabeth. From 1618 on, the company was called The Queen of Bohemia's Men, after Elizabeth and her husband the Elector Palatine had their brief and disastrous flirtation with the crown of Bohemia.
The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron, Marshall of France is a Jacobean tragedy by George Chapman, a two-part play or double play first performed and published in 1608. It tells the story of Charles de Gontaut, duc de Biron, executed for treason in 1602.
Cynthia's Revels, or The Fountain of Self-Love is a late Elizabethan stage play, a satire written by Ben Jonson. The play was one element in the Poetomachia or War of the Theatres between Jonson and rival playwrights John Marston and Thomas Dekker.
The Case is Altered is an early comedy by Ben Jonson. First published in 1609, the play presents a range of problems for scholars attempting to understand its place in Jonson's canon of works.
John Underwood was an early 17th-century actor, a member of the King's Men, the theatrics company of William Shakespeare.
Henry Evans was the Welsh scrivener and theatrical producer primarily responsible for organising and co-ordinating the activities of the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Paul's at Blackfriars Theatre for a short period in 1583–84. He later led a consortium of investors who leased the theatre during a much longer second phase, after the property was revived by Richard Burbage and Cuthbert Burbage.
The Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal was the choirmaster of the Chapel Royal of England. They were responsible for the musical direction of the choir, which consisted of the Gentlemen of the Chapel and Children of the Chapel. In some periods regarded as the most prestigious choral directorship in the country, the holder was given power to take boys into service from the leading cathedral choirs.
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