What is the meaning of Rosencrantz and Guildensterns story about that “eyrie of children, little eyases” (Act 2, Scene 2) who have driven the Players out of the city?
Like Hamlet’s lecture on acting (Act III, Scene 2), it’s a reference to Shakespeare’s own experience. Since women were not allowed to appear on stage and all female parts were played by prepubescent boys, with the growing popularity of London’s theatres so, too, grew the demand for child actors (to the point that there were even stories of boys being abducted and forced into membership with a given theatre company). Some such companies, which consisted exclusively of boys, would perform typically – though not exclusively – in “private,” indoor playhouses like the Blackfriars Theatre belonging to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, as opposed to public, outdoor stages like the Globe and virtually all of its competitors. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men did not run a “boys only” outfit themselves, but for a number of reasons (financial and political pressure being chief among those) they were forced to lease their indoors theatre to just such a group; a fact which, if the “eyases” story in “Hamlet” is
