Impressment: Managers, Actors and Impressed Boys

In 1597 Queen Elizabeth I signed a Royal warrant giving theatre managers Henry Evans, Nathaniel Giles and their deputy, James Robinson authority to ‘impress’ boys to be actors in the second Blackfriars Theatre. In reality it was kidnapping against which there were no laws in Elizabethan England. As a result two of the greatest boy players of the age, Nathan Field and Salomon Pavy, suffered ‘impressment’. The setting up of the new indoor theatre ushers a cavalcade of characters into the former Dominican Priory.

It takes two more decades for all the mysteries of the ill-fated Blackfriars Theatre to be solved. It is a theatrical traverse through the final years of Elizabeth’s reign and the first part of the 17th century. The history is fascinating, and the tale, which proves both comic and tragic, will seem far more strange than fiction ever could be.