Armed with these written "assurances," and with the royal commission to take up children, Evans and Giles began to form their company. This explains the language used by Heminges and Burbage: "let the said playhouse unto Henry Evans ... who intended then presently to erect or set up a company of boys."[316] Their method of recruiting players may best be told by Henry Clifton, in his complaint to the Queen:
But so it is, most excellent Sovereign, that the said Nathaniel Giles, confederating himself with one James Robinson, Henry Evans, and others,[317] yet unto Your Majesty's said subject unknown how [many], by color of Your Majesty's said letters patents, and the trust by Your Highness thereby to him, the said Nathaniel Giles, committed, endeavoring, conspiring, and complotting how to oppress diverse of Your Majesty's humble and faithful subjects, and thereby to make unto themselves an unlawful gain and benefit, they, the said confederates, devised, conspired, and concluded, for their own corrupt gain and lucre, to erect, set up, furnish, and maintain a playhouse, or place in the Blackfriars, within Your Majesty's city of London; and to the end they might the better furnish their said plays and interludes with children, whom they thought most fittest to act and furnish the said plays, they, the said confederates, abusing the authority and trust by Your Highness to him, the said Nathaniel Giles, and his deputy or deputies, by Your Highness's said letters patents given and reposed, hath, sithence Your Majesty's last free and general pardon, most wrongfully, unduly, and unjustly taken diverse and several children from diverse and sundry schools of learning and other places, and apprentices to men of trade from their masters, no way fitting for Your Majesty's service in or for your Chapel Royal, but the children have so taken and employed in acting and furnishing of the said plays and interludes, so by them complotted and agreed to be erected, furnished, and maintained, against the wills of the said children, their parents, tutors, masters, and governors, and to the no small grief and oppressions [of] Your Majesty's true and faithful subjects. Amongst which numbers, so by the persons aforesaid and their agents so unjustly taken, used and employed, they have unduly taken and so employed one John Chappell, a grammar school scholar of one Mr. Spykes School near Cripplegate, London; John Motteram, a grammar scholar in the free school at Westminster; Nathaniel Field, a scholar of a grammar school in London kept by one Mr. Monkaster;[318] Alvery Trussell, an apprentice to one Thomas Gyles; one Phillipp Pykman and [one] Thomas Grymes, apprentices to Richard and George Chambers; Salmon Pavy,[319] apprentice to one Peerce; being children no way able or fit for singing, nor by any the said confederates endeavoured to be taught to sing, but by them, the said confederates, abusively employed, as aforesaid, only in plays and interludes.[320]
In spite of the obvious animosity inspiring Clifton's words, we get from his complaint a clear notion of how Evans and Giles supplemented the Children of the Chapel proper with actors. In a short time they brought together at Blackfriars a remarkable troupe of boy-players, who, with Jonson and Chapman as their poets, began to astonish London. For, in spite of certain limitations, "the children" could act with a charm and a grace that often made them more attractive than their grown-up rivals. Middleton advises the London gallant "to call in at the Blackfriars, where he should see a nest of boys able to ravish a man."[321] Jonson gives eloquent testimony to the power of little Salathiel Pavy to portray the character of old age:
Years he numbered scarce thirteen
When Fates turned cruel,
Yet three filled zodiacs had he been
The stage's jewel;
And did act, what now we moan,
Old men so duly,
As, sooth, the Parcae thought him one,
He played so truly.[322]
And Samuel Pepys records the effectiveness of a child-actor in the rôle of women: "One Kinaston, a boy, acted the Duke's sister, but made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life."[323]
Moreover, to expert acting these Boys of the Chapel Royal added the charms of vocal and instrumental music, for which many of them had been specially trained. The Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, who upon his grand tour of the European countries in 1602 attended a play at Blackfriars, bears eloquent testimony to the musical powers of the children: "For a whole hour before the play begins, one listens to charming [köstliche] instrumental music played on organs, lutes, pandorins, mandolins, violins, and flutes; as, indeed, on this occasion, a boy sang cum voce tremula to the accompaniment of a bass-viol, so delightfully [lieblich] that, if the Nuns at Milan did not excel him, we had not heard his equal in our travels."[324] In addition, the Children were provided with splendid apparel—though not at the cost of the Queen, as Mr. Wallace contends.[325] Naturally they became popular. On January 6, 1601, they were summoned to Court to entertain Her Majesty—the first recorded performance of the Children of the Chapel at Court since the year 1584, when Sir William More closed the first Blackfriars.
Perhaps the most interesting testimony to the success of the Chapel Children in their new playhouse is that uttered by Shakespeare in Hamlet (1601), in which he speaks of the performances by the "little eyases" as a "late innovation." The success of the "innovation" had driven Shakespeare and his troupe of grown-up actors to close the Globe and travel in the country, even though they had Hamlet as an attraction. The good-natured way in which Shakespeare treats the situation is worthy of special observation:
Ham. What players are they?
Ros. Even those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians of the city.[326]
Ham. How chances it they travel? their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.[327]