In Film, Literature and Theatre
The boy player has been a popular subject in literary, theatrical and cinematic representations of the Elizabethan theatre.
- The film Shakespeare in Love features a boy player (played by Daniel Brocklebank) who performs Juliet in Romeo and Juliet before being ousted by Gwyneth Paltrow's character (who is disguised as a man).
- Nicholas Wright's play Cressida is set in the 1630s and depicts the friendship between an elderly former boy player and the historical boy player Stephen Hammerton.
- The play and film Stage Beauty are about the Restoration boy player Edward Kynaston and the transition to female acting.
- Anthony Burgess's novel about Christopher Marlowe, A Dead Man in Deptford, is narrated by a boy player.
- Tom Stoppard's film of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead features a scene in which the eponymous duo are briefly convinced of the femininity of a boy player.
- Susan Cooper's novel King of Shadows deals with boy actors including Nathan Field.
Read more about this topic: Boy Player
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“Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.”
—P.D. (Phyllis Dorothy)
“To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air; the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.”
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