Outside the cloistered confines of academia, you may never have heard of ‘boys’ companies’. But back in Shakespeare’s day they were all the rage: theatrical troupes made up entirely of eight- to twelve-year-old kids. They had their own plays specially written for them. They were sometimes sponsored by the more established companies like The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. And playwrights like Ben Jonson and John Lyly would even use them to create satirical pieces mocking each other’s work, leading to Elizabethan-style battles of the theatrical bands, played out by lovingly energetic Mini-Mes. They were so popular that, as Professor Laurie Maguire points out, in Hamlet the travelling players actually complain that they can’t compete with these little tykes who ‘cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't: these are now the fashion.’
Like all fashions, boys’ companies didn’t last. By 1615 the fad had passed. But it left a legacy of plays that offer a quirky and fascinating perspective on society and theatre in Elizabethan England.
Edward’s Boys is an astonishing, ongoing project that has been run at King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon (appropriately known as Shakespeare’s own school) ever since 2005. Spearheaded by their inspirational Assistant Head Perry Mills, the boys rediscover, dust off, reinvigorate and perform these nearly-forgotten texts, and (just like the travelling boys in Hamlet) they take their productions on tour all over the UK, as well as Europe.
They have just passed through Oxford, performing The Maid’s Metamorphosis (author unknown), a comedy from 1600, when boys’ companies were at the peak of their popularity. And watching it, rather than being a dry immersion in second-rate sixteenth-century stagecraft, was two hours of complete joy.
As you might guess from the title, the central theme of this play, gender fluidity, has strong resonances with our own society, as the central character Eurymine transitions from female to male and back again, breaking hearts as she goes. But that’s only one aspect of the show. To be honest, it has got a bit of everything: a dictatorial father, star-crossed lovers, comic sidekicks, pastoral idylls, equivocating prophecies, gods, slapstick acorn-throwing, and lots of music. Many instantly recognisable Shakespearean tropes pop up throughout, with the characters wandering around a magical forest, a girl pretending to be dead, comedy yokels, and lots of bawdy double-entendres involving men comparing the size of their sticks. Just watching this one play made me reassess the genres that Shakespeare made use of in plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, and As You Like It. It was his world in miniature.
Using young people to cast a satirical glare on more serious genres is something that does still pop up from time to time. In the cinema, the very first Western, 1903’s The Great Train Robbery, was remade in 1904 as The Little Train Robbery – the same story performed by children on toy trains. And Alan Parker’s musical Bugsy Malone did something similar to The Godfather. Basically, Bugsy Malone is to The Godfather what The Maid’s Metamorphosis is to Shakespearean pastoral comedy.
But all this would count for nothing if the performance itself didn’t capture the audience’s hearts and minds. And on that score Edward’s Boys took us all prisoners. Their verse-speaking was so clear, and delivered with such deep understanding and resonance, that it was hard to believe these were performers for whom GCSEs are still a distant future goal. Their musicianship and singing was so stylish and catchy it was hard not to join in. And they had an impish naughtiness that made the humour, often of a sexual nature, rude and silly, but never, in the modern sense of the word, ‘weird’. It genuinely felt as though the performance we were seeing captured the appeal that the original boys’ companies must have had as they wowed the audiences of 1599.
As a text, The Maid’s Metamorphosis may be mostly of interest to students of early modern theatre. But as a piece of entertainment, performed with verve, intelligence and charisma, it’s – perhaps surprisingly – simply a hugely enjoyable smorgasbord of theatrical fun. Hamlet might not have approved. But it would certainly have cheered him up.