History... All the Good Stuff...

Hello Armadillo!

 

When I was a small I was constantly trying to imagine what life might have been like for an ordinary child like myself in the past. I couldn’t visit a castle or ancient pile of rocks without trying to imagine myself in a costume and living in that space - running through corridors and up and down cold stone steps. When the ‘ruin’ I was visiting once had a roof and walls and even a kitchen. I think all children do this. They live alternate lives in their heads and its brilliant. I would wonder about, talking to myself, fighting battles, climbing trees - re-enacting my version of what that world might have been like. I could almost ‘sense’ it in that regard. I was living in my own movie. History felt very real. Very present. And it's still feels that way. Not facts and dates….but all the good stuff. How did things taste, smell and sound. 

 

As a result the ‘olden days’ were my happy place…as both illustrator and writer. Not in an academic regard (I was not remotely clever) but in an imaginary one. My picture books Escape From Pompeii and The Corinthian Girl both visited different parts of the ancient world and put ordinary children at the centre of the story. Be it an exploding volcano over a roman city or an abandoned baby girl that grows up as a slave in Ancient Athens and eventually becomes a champion at the Heraean games for woman at Olympia. I loved the time spent researching the ‘facts’ that would help me find my story but then I would completely lose myself making the paintings to illustrate that story in as much detail as possible. In my new book The Boy Who Became Queen, I’m taking children to 16th Century England at its grubbiest and my central character is a young boy who’s lost his entire family in the plague and is now singing for scraps of food on the streets of Elizabethan London. But through an extraordinary set of circumstances he ends up learning from the bottom up to be an actor with William Shakespeare at his Globe Theatre. And ultimately is given the opportunity to play the part of a Fairy Queen.

 

I was compelled to write this story for several reasons. Firstly its a story about an actor and acting, it's a story set in the location of one of the most important theatres in history and its a story with Elizabethan London at its core. As a painter I couldn’t wait to explore all that lovely visual costume and architecture from one of the most lavish periods in Englands history. What fun it was going to be to try and recreate that environment and make my initial drawings. They took months and months and the paintings even longer - because I draw and paint everything by hand with tiny brushes and in acres of detail using watercolours and gold ink. However the main reason I was drawn to telling this tale was when I learned about the completely legitimate practise of kidnapping children under the age of eleven -  who had good voices and preferably could also read and recite latin - to perform in the so-called Boys’ Company’s across London. I was stunned to learn of this practice. As early as the reign of King Henry 8th his choirmasters were given permission to capture any ‘well-singing’ child they might find.

 

Children have been acting in plays for as long as anyone can remember and have played a role in the entertainment of others since the middle ages. Whether that was during church rituals, miracle cycles or morality plays. But Queen Elizabeth herself signed a decree that allowed the entrapment and capture of young boys before their voices broke into these companies - and whilst there - they were NOT allowed to leave. Boys were taken directly from grammar schools, cathedral choirs and elsewhere and trained to perform for the wealthiest patrons across the city including the Queen herself in her many courts and palaces. These boy’ companies presented more plays before the Queen during the early years of her reign than any other single adult theatre company. The children were trained rigidly, dressed and robed and rehearsed and then ferried up and down the freezing river Thames to perform nightly, on demand. It was a lucrative industry. And at the beginning of my story this is what happens to my boy Jack until one cold night performing before the Queen herself, the playwright William Shakespeare is also present and asks if Jack be allowed to join him at his Globe Theatre. This is the moment Jack’s future changes as he becomes an apprentice to a company of adult players and begins to lead a very different life. The work would be hard but free, joyful and secure from now on. And of course, since women were not allowed to appear on a public stage, men and young boys played all their parts - despite being at times far too young to fully understand the complex emotions of that character.  

 

When I write a picture book for children I do feel it's important to make it clear that young people in the past were not shielded from the hardships of life, and its unlikely that the theatre-hungry Queen would have concerned herself much with their hardships either.   

 

Just as now, we all yearn  for entertainment and distraction. Of course now we can find it at the touch of a television remote or upon the tiniest of screens in our hands but our  human need for drama and distraction was always there and these young boys were part of that need. I love actors and I cherish and respect their sensitive talent to recreate the human spirit. So this was an irresistible way to broach the story of a young actor on a journey to freedom and his own individual creative life - in one of the most wonderful places on earth in my view….a theatre. To paint that story and bring it to life for young people of Jack’s age. I too was tempted to join a theatre once…so this book in many ways is a culmination of every single thing that I love.  

Christina Balit, The Boy Who Became Queen available from all good bookshops.

My thanks to Christina for such a fantastic Blog and to Tatti De Jersey for making it possible. Louise