Child Actors on the London Stage, Circa 1600

*Child Actors on the London Stage, c 1600 by Julie Ackroyd has been shortlisted for the Society for Theatre Researchs Book prize! Actor and playwright Rory Kinnear (National Theatre, RSC, James Bond franchise) will announce who has won the STR Theatre Book Prize for books published in 2017 and make the presentation at the historic Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on Thursday 21 June 2018.* A legal document dated 1600, for a Star Chamber case titled Clifton vs. Robinson, details how boys were abducted from London streets and forcibly held in order to train them as actors for the Blackfriars theatre. No adults were seen on-stage in this theatre, which was stocked solely by acting boys, resulting in a satirical and scurrilous method of play presentation. Were the boys specifically targeted for skills they may have possessed which would have been applicable to this type of play presentation? And, was this method of 'recruitment' typical or atypical of Elizabethan theatre? Analysis of thebackground of the boy