Boy player is a common term for the adolescent males employed by Medieval and English Renaissance playing companies. Some boy players worked for the mainstream companies and performed the female roles, as women did not perform on the English stage in this period. Others worked for "children's companies", in which all roles, not just the female ones, were played by boys.
Read more about Boy Player: Boys in Adult Companies, Children's Companies, Responses, Famous Boy Players, In Film, Literature and Theatre
Famous quotes containing the words boy and/or player:
“By school age, many boys experience pressure to reveal inner feelings as humiliating. They think their mothers are saying to them, “You must be hiding something shameful.” And shucking clams is a snap compared to prying secrets out of a boy who’s decided to “clam up.””
—Ron Taffel (20th century)
“Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)