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THE ACTOR'S ECONOMICS
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Eton, Westminster, and Merchant Taylors and the song schools of the Chapel Royal, Windsor, St. Paul's and the private chapel of the Earl of Oxford continued, far into Elizabeth's reign, to give their performances at Court side by side with the growing companies of noble and royal servants. It was not until the professionals called upon the university wits and began to mingle literary with popular elements in their productions that the destinies of the drama passed definitely into their hands. The earlier boy companies died out soon after 1590. A decade later the Paul's and Chapel companies were revived, the latter at least under somewhat new economic conditions. Formerly the plays had been managed by schoolmasters and song-masters, as by-activities of institutions primarily established for other objects. For the revived Paul's plays, so far as we know, Edward Pearce, the choirmaster, was similarly responsible. The Chapel children, on the other hand, were placed upon a more regular business footing. The official Master of the Children, Nathaniel Giles, took part in the undertaking; and the royal commission to impress singing boys, which he held, was unscrupulously used to compel the services of boys who could not sing, and were only needed as recruits for the stage. But long before James had come to the decision that on religious grounds the connexion between the Chapel and the plays must be broken, the actual control of the organization had passed from the Master to a financial syndicate, associated much on the principle adopted by the ordinary playing companies, whose members hired a theatre, charged themselves with the maintenance of the boys and of the performances, and divided up the profits as their reward. During the history of the Chapel boys and of the group of Revels companies which succeeded them, several of these syndicates came into existence, and shares in one or other of them were held by Marston, Drayton, Barry, Mason, Daborne, and very possibly also by other dramatists. The articles of association of the King's Revels company in 1608 may perhaps be taken as typical. One of the sharers, Martin Slater the actor, who was evidently a kind of manager, is to have lodgings in the theatre, which was the Whitefriars, and the right to sell refreshments, and is to travel with the children if necessary, in which event he is to enjoy a share and a half in the profits. The children are to be apprenticed to him for three years each, and he is to bind himself in £40 not to transfer the indentures. The 'whole chardges of the howse, the gatherers, the wages, the childrens bourd, musique, booke keeper, tyreman, tyrewoman, lights, the Maister of the revells duties,