/u/MorriePoppins asked several months ago (long enough ago that I can't actually post this in response!) how a fifteen-year-old boy actor in Shakespeare's day would have pulled off a role like Lady Macbeth, and I'm physically surrounded in Shakespeare scholarship right now, so I figured I might revisit it.

There were two ways to be a boy actor in Shakespeare's day, either as a full-time boy actor in an all-boy company (with a handful of adult actors around) or as a full-time junior member of an otherwise adult-oriented company of players. Boy actors in companies alongside adult actors would be mentored and directed by the older performers, some of whom had gotten their start playing women's parts as younger men -- they'd be learning tips and tricks of performance and the stylized gestures to denote emotion under the close attention of more experienced performers. Boys joined adult companies as apprentices in late childhood or their early teens, before puberty had the chance to alter their bodies and voices, and they could keep playing young women as long as they were able -- at the end of their period of training as apprentices, they might be passing through puberty and at the end of their useful span playing girls, but they were ready to join up as journeymen players. Some of the most successful and established adult players followed this trajectory into adult performance, like Nathan Field, Richard Burbage, and Ned Alleyn; playing women's parts may have been a chance to show off one's skills and garner attention before leveling up to adult male roles. If you were a really talented actor at 16, really knocking it out of the park playing beautiful, vivacious, appealing young women, the odds were good you could channel that creative ability into your 20s and 30s even once you moved into playing tragic heroes or appealing lovers or old men. We have records of young men playing women's roles as late as 20-24 -- this probably depended on how well they still "looked like girls" (height, features, voice, build, etc.) as well as personal inclination. Boy players also played, well, boys, as well as supernatural characters like the spirits in The Tempest. The one thing you were not likely to see on an Elizabethan or Jacobean stage is one of the most common things to see in modern theater companies that subscribe to all-male casting even under the premise of emulating Shakespeare's original practices -- an adult man in his 30s, 40s, or 50s playing one of Shakespeare's heroines. This would have made the heavy lifting of some of these roles considerably easier by entrusting it to a more experienced performer, but it didn't occur; adult men had less wiggle room than boys for dramatic rather than comedic cross-dressing, and casting boys in these roles allowed Shakespeare to maximize the number of parts for seasoned adult men to play.

How did did boys prepare for the stage? What kind of formal training in acting might a boy who's raring to play Lady Macbeth by 15 undertake? Aspects of acting were common academic exercises in the 16th century, first and foremost public speaking and oratory ability -- much more so than in most modern education for middle-school-aged children. It was in a schoolmaster's interest to make sure his charges would be able to memorize lines and deliver them with the appropriate prescribed intonation and quality of voice, and that they could make appropriate gestures for emphasis. There was a greater emphasis on stylized gesture in drama of this era, which somehow for Elizabethan audiences still added up to a sort of realism -- people still speak in this era of really good clever actors being able to make you believe they were really their characters -- and a de-emphasis on drawing from personal experience. A 13-year-old in any era might have a hard time mining the depths of their personal experience and authentically imagining the nuances of emotion experienced by Rosalind or Juliet, let alone Gertrude or Lady Macbeth -- the kind of stuff that makes up one strain of 20th-century style "good acting" -- but if playing those parts well is a matter of making the correct formalized gestures and conveying the correct formalized with body language and voice, that's a little easier to coach a child performer to replicate.

For boy players their preexisting educational background would have prepared them for stage performance; boys might be recruited from grammar schools where they had already distinguished themselves in classroom drama, and in boy companies they seem to have received some supplementary formal education from their employers. For an apprentice player with the Lord Chamberlain's Men or a boy employed with the Revels Children or the Paul's Boys, theater wasn't a classroom exercise, it was his job more or less full-time; even his supplementary education would be calculated to bolster his performance as an actor. Memorization would have been as big of a hurdle then as now -- the ability to memorize texts was another aspect that got more play in Early Modern education than in modern schooling, but with a brisk production schedule bearing down on the whole cast, boys would have to be seriously committed to learning their lines. With that in mind, boy actors likely weren't plunged in at the deep end, playing Cleopatra or Lady Macbeth on day one -- meatier parts might have been reserved for slightly more experienced or more capable boys, likely closer to 16 years old than a piping-voiced 10-year-old. On the whole, Elizabethan boys would have been better equipped than one might expect an "average" modern 13-year-old to be to take on challenging parts, but their proficiency in these roles probably varied with individual aptitude.

All-boy productions took on challenging and risque material, with adolescent boys playing not only women of all ages but also men of all types, from virile young heroes to creaky old men -- and on top of the novelty value of seeing adult dramas played out by juvenile figures on stage, the young age of the performers seems to have cushioned them a little from accusations that they really did the sort of things they did on stage. Whether audiences were enraptured with their performances… Shakespeare's plays would be a lot more tedious without their female characters, and all-boy stage productions were really, really popular, popular enough to leave traditional companies feeling a little envious. The most famous reference to these all-boy playhouses is probably in Act 2 Scene 2 of Hamlet:

ROSENCRANTZ Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't: these are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages--so they call them--that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.

HAMLET What, are they children? who maintains 'em? how are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players--as it is most like, if their means are no better--their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession?

This is clearly Shakespeare having a bit of a joke as an industry insider. These boys may carry it away like Hercules, garnering public acclaim and massive profits, but Hamlet riffs on these fashionable child actors' inevitable expiration dates and the likelihood that they'll grow up to be the same common players they once bashed onstage, like sad child stars who aren't cute anymore and have to hustle for work like the rest of us slobs. Boy actors of all companies likely had their admirers, individuals who appreciated their acting or saw their presence onstage as anarchic good fun or especially titillating -- there's a lot of scholarship that assumes that the knowing, wink-wink gender play Shakespeare's heroines sometimes engage in was a sop to an audience subculture who were hot for adolescent boys, which is certainly possible but not something I love to dwell on. However, boys likely had too narrow a span of time in which to build and maintain the kind of artistic reputations that made certain actors a hot-ticket item on the Elizabethan stage -- Burbage and Alleyn were one-time boy actors who grew up to be rock stars of the Elizabethan stage, sure, but they didn't achieve that level of financial success while they were still in farthingales and bumrolls waiting for their voices to break. There were no castrati on the Early Modern English stage, both because of how substantially less lucrative acting female parts was relative to aging up into men's roles (playing Desdemona or Ophelia was nothing to sneeze at, but it was far less likely to pay off in clout than playing Hamlet or Othello) and because of differing cultural norms around castration.

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Week 28

 

On May 5^th the Corriere della Sera published a piece by economist Luigi Einaudi discussing the problem of meat supplies for the Italian military and civil markets. It's probably worth following the original piece in detail, as it gives a good overview of the problematics involved with rationing goods that are both meant for general and private consumption; i.e. goods that need to be requisitioned by the state and still sold under traditional fashion.

 

The recent decree [passed by the Undersecretary Silvio Crespi on his way out, before his resignation during the previous week] - that gives to the state control of the distribution of meat to civil population, grants requisition rights to the “requisition committees” already working under the army supervision and distribution rights to the general committee for consumption, the prefects and the majors, forbids the sale of meat from hours 13.00 of Tuesday to Saturday morning, forbids the butchering of animals not supplied by the major and gives the city councils the power to establish a maximum price for sale to the public – is proof of a serious state of things that needs immediate measures to be taken.

This deliberation, well and long meditated accordingly to hon. Crespi's speech to the Chamber […] is the product of a contradictory line of reasoning, and it is quite doubtful that it will solve an issue that appears, to anybody who considers it serenely, fraught with formidable obstacles. Moderate prices and limited consumption are two mutually exclusive facts, in absence of a very strict rationing, with minimum assignments for personal consumption – rationing that for various reasons, that will be addressed below, should likely be excluded for meat. I had begun to speak about limiting consumption through price increase already when almost everybody believed it was possible to keep up with the previous standards of consumption. Now that at least according to their proclamations, the need to limit consumption has become clear for everybody, I fear we must admit to ourselves that, at least for certain goods, we are already too late [...]

It's apparent the prices of the meats have reached fantastic levels: 8 to 14 lire per kilogram to customers; 400 to 700 lire per quintal livestock. A pair of working oxen goes for 5,000 to 8,000 lire according to weight; a young dairy cow from 2,000 to 3,000 lire. The consequences of similar prices are easy to imagine, if one goes back to the times when a pair of oxen could be bought for 1,200 lire and a dairy cow for 400. For small to middle land owners [...] the purchase of working animals becomes a decisive financial concern. […] How can the rise in the prices of animals be reconciled with the instructions to expand the worked land? […]

The rising prices - continued Einaudi - are not, as many seem to believe, the consequence of profiteers alone. One can rise their voice against those, from the newspapers or from the parliament chambers; but the fact is that speculators work along trend lines they don't create by themselves. They sell short, when prices are expected to fall, they hoard […] when the prices are expected to rise from causes non depending on them. Speculation may accelerate a price increase […] but it can't ultimately drive prices beyond the level they were going to reach. […] Without objective causes, a price increase cannot last. […] There are no speculators, no regulations, no rationing that can prevent the ratio [between meat on the market and monetary value] from ending up one kilo to ten lire, if meat is scarce and currency is abundant.

That's precisely what has happened during the war. [Going] from 4.2 billions lire in July 1915 to 8.2 billion lire in October 1917. It's likely that [in May 1918] the 10 million mark has been crossed. One could discuss the numbers, weight the actual effect of the increase in circulation over the prices. But one fact is, broadly speaking, undeniable: that the amount of currency that people carry has on average increased significantly; even public employees have seen a wage increase of 10-30%. […] Even if availability of meat had remained unchanged, the prices would have shown a tendency to increase.

Before the war, general consumption of meat was estimated around 2 million head^1 of cattle. In his recent speech to the Senate hon. Crespi established the Army consumption around 540,000 head in 1916 and 780,000 in 1917. As for more recent data, the Ministry of War estimated it in 78,000 in December, 98,000 in January, 88,000 in February and 116,000 in March […] That's equivalent to around one million quintals per year. Meanwhile civilian population has not stopped consuming meat.

Certain official estimates value the civil consumption around 900,000 head per year; and the new provisions' goal would be to reduce the consumption to 30% of the pre war value. But it's fair to question the official data on the matter. In Milan the butchered head of cattle dropped only from 90,836 in 1915 to 62,139 in 1917; and even more, their weight dropped just from 269,603 to 248,7841 quintals, as more oxen and bulls were butchered in place of calves. Clandestine butchery must have increased significantly through 1917-18 […] as never before were accidental injuries so commonplace, that lead to sudden death and the necessary butchery of the head.

[...] Pending the findings of the ongoing census […] one has to go back to that of 1908, that gave a number of 6,800 head of cattle (1,276,346 bulls and oxen, 128,583 bulls for reproduction, 3,403,377 cows and heifers, 1,390,555 calves). Estimates from Italian zootechnicians give for the time of the intervention an increase to 7,200 head.

In order to safeguard this zootechnic capital, it would have been necessary to immediately reduce civilian consumption to 30% of the pre war levels, i.e. 600,000 head per year. […] Instead, nothing was done to balance consumption with the natural increase of livestock numbers; rather, even the original amount of heads was largely reduced. […] Estimates to 1918 range from 1 to 5 million head […] and many believe a number of 4 millions to be already too large. How is it possible to demand that, with livestock numbers half those of pre war and monetary circulation tripled, the ratio between kilos of meat and value of notes remains constant?

But the worst damage is not the increased prices. […] If consumption continues this way, soon the little milk available would become all necessary for breeding. No milk will be left for human consumption. […] The zootechnical capital will be compromised [and] it will be much harder to reconstitute it during the post war years, when all nations will be hoarding raw materials and [...] working animals.

It is therefore urgent to provide. Ration cards and price regulations are very little help. For sugar and bread a card can work; because those are quite homogeneous goods. But meat is of many different qualities! Worse, the card would increase consumption. As the example of sugar shows, with many nowadays buying it that didn't even think of it before^2 . A card for 100 grams of meat per week per person would give invisible portions for those who now eat it and would look meager even to those who don't and would immediately purchase the whole amount, if only to sell it over. Yet 100 grams per week are equal to 5.2 kilograms per year, which multiplied for 32 million civilians gives 166,400,000 kilograms of meat per year […] 1,200,000 head of cattle. Even adjusting the head weight and the efficiency of the butchering process, it is apparent a 100 gram card would hardly give a 600,000 head consumption per year.

I can't see therefore other effective means than: further reducing civilian consumption […] by limiting availability of meat to Saturday and Sunday morning [with] exceptions only for infirm people and hospitals […] increasing the imports of frozen meat […] overseeing carefully […] the practice of clandestine butchery and the many clever ways of leading bovines to their death.