Captive Kids Forced to Act in Shakespeare's

[Big Bad Voodoo]

"When his father attempted a rescue by turning up at the playhouse he was contemptuously dismissed and told that if his son did not learn his lines he would be whipped," van Es said.

"The playwright Thomas Middleton, for example, described one children's company as a 'nest of boys able to ravish a man,'" said van Es.

http://www.livescience.com/37570-kids-forced-to-act-shakespeares-england.html

[No Censorship]

The story claimed that Elizabeth I approved and aided this crime against humanity. England in the 1600s was like China in 2013 when it came to forced child labor. It was thespian slavery. The child actors must have been under a huge amount of pressure since they were whipped if they flubbed their lines.

[Taun]

While I agree that this was a disgrace and a crime (by todays standards at least)... A much bigger crime was the use of children in the textile mills and coal mines... That frequently lead to dismemberment and death... Much worse than a beating, and affecting many times more children than the boy 'actors'...

[No Censorship]

While I agree that this was a disgrace and a crime (by todays standards at least)... A much bigger crime was the use of children in the textile mills and coal mines... That frequently lead to dismemberment and death... Much worse than a beating, and affecting many times more children than the boy 'actors'...

The horror stories put Marx and Engels in context. I always hated communism. I understood its roots, though. One poison (child abuse) gave us the second one. That was one component of it. Victorian British life was nothing short of a dystopia for both poor children and poor adults. The class system was at its nadir, even worse than the caste system. The record-setting height gap between groups demonstrated this rigid social divide.