Captive children: John Lyly, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and child impressment on the early modern stage

Abstract

AbstractThe story of the stolen Indian Boy who is the subject of the dispute between Oberon and Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream has gained increasing critical scrutiny in recent years. In this article I examine this episode in the light of the practice of child impressment by all‐boy acting companies, which was common in the decade before the play was written. In particular, I explore a connection with John Lyly, whose play Galatea was an influence on A Midsummer Night's Dream. In Galatea Lyly makes a point of drawing attention to his boy actors, whose vulnerability and attractiveness are made conspicuous by means of plot lines about the capture of children. Shakespeare's story of the Indian Boy has much in common with those plot lines. Through it, I suggest, the playwright looks back at Lyly and his repertory and also at the history of child impressment, a practice that would revive before the decade was out. In the Indian Boy's narrative and in the linked episode of Titania's infatuation with Nick Bottom we see the perspective of an adult company shareholder who was threatened by but also implicated in dramatic entertainments in which children were compelled to act.