Children Children Author Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Childhood Children Parents Gender Boys Girls Published file. Updated metadata proofed Review of article finished. updated author respStmt. updated Public Domain tags in figDesc. swapped the desc and figDescs to be correct. added two figures and an image source. Created File. Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/
Portrait of a young girl from the Prescott or Hewitt family, three-quarter-length, in a red dress holding a carnation in her right hand, c. 1580. Wikimedia Commons. {{PD-US}}.
The Idea of Childhood

In many ways, early modern English children were thought of as miniature adults—notice that the girl in the painting that leads this article wears a large ruff typical of late Elizabethan fashions, rather than clothing suitable for her as a child. This typifies the belief in the early modern period that rather than having different needs and desires, children needed to be molded into adults through strict regimes and expectations about behavior. Children were seen as inferior in terms of reason, spiritual development, and self-control—all of which led to an educational approach that was rigid and focused on obedience.

Similarly, youth was thought of as a separate age (after childhood and before manhood). Its symptoms and behaviors often appear in Shakespeare’s plays. The old shepherd in The Winter’s Tale describes a young man, with complaints about his behavior that seem strikingly modern: I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty or that a youth would sleep out the rest, for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.(3.3.58–62)

A copy of the work of Gerard van Honthrost. This 1628 painting depicts George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, his wife Katherine Manners, later Baroness de Roos, their daughter Mary (later Duchess of Richmond), and son George (later 2nd Duke of Buckingham}, Montacute House. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. National Portrait Gallery. {{PD-US}}.
Parents and Children

Infant and child mortality was high in the period, with children having roughly a 50% chance of living to age five. Common diseases (whooping cough, pneumonia, dysentery), fevers, and influenza killed many young children. Notable outbreaks of the bubonic plague in 1563, 1603, and 1625 killed high numbers of children. Despite their frequent bereavement, early modern parents loved their children, prayed for their survival, and rejoiced when they were born or healed from an illness or injury.

Throughout their lives, children regularly knelt before their parents to receive a blessing, even once they had reached adulthood. Parental responsibility and authority extended into what we would consider early adulthood. Children were expected to obey their parents as subjects were to obey the sovereign. Especially in the gentry and merchant classes, parents were instrumental in arranging marriages for their children. Just as the sovereign had to govern with justice and concern for the welfare of citizens, parents were expected to be responsible in the choice of a spouse for their children. Even girls were expected to consent to the parents’ choice of mate, as Baptista notes regarding Katerina and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew (2.1.128–129).

Social and Economic Training

In noble or wealthy families, after they had been nursed (often by a hired wet-nurse rather than by their mother), children were usually sent to another high-ranking house to be trained in decorum. The effect was rather like sending them to a boarding-school. Middle and lower-class families usually kept their children at home but employed them at an early age in business or household duties. Regardless of class, a large number of families in the period were fragmented because of death and remarriage—resulting in many stepfamilies.

In the households of commoners, children were more likely to be nursed by their mothers; wet nurses were only employed if the mother had died or was too unwell to nurse an infant. As they grew, girls were given lessons in housekeepoing, such as animal care, sewing, and cooking. Boys given rudimentary tasks that may have led them to apprenticeships with one of the guilds of skilled tradesmen.

Children in Shakespeare’s Plays

There are approximately 29 children mentioned in 27 of Shakespeare’s plays, for the most part unnamed and called simply Boy or Page in the list of characters. Most often, they are minor servants. Less often, they are incidental characters who play a minor role in the plot, such as The Winter’s Tale, where the boy Mamillius has a speaking part that helps illuminate Leontes’s growing instability or in Richard III, where young York has a conversation with his grandmother that illustrates Richard’s diabolical character.

In some other instances, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor, a group of unnamed children dress as fairies in Act 5 or in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the changeling boy causes contention between Titania and Oberon. The children portrayed in Shakespeare’s plays are sometimes precocious—or again simply miniature (slightly naive) adults. Lady MacDuff’s son argues wittily with her when she claims that his father is dead, tries to defend her when she is attacked by Macbeth’s murderers, and is stabbed by one who cries out as he attacks, What, you egg! (4.2.79) in a shocking murder that reveals the cruelty of the new king’s ways. Later in the play, Macduff’s palpable grief for the loss of his family is one of the play’s most moving scenes.

Key Print Sources Bailey, Merridee L. Socialising the Child in Late Medieval England, c. 1400–1600. York Medieval Press, 2012. Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford University Press, 1997. Witmore, Michael. Pretty Creatures: Children and Fiction in the English Renaissance. Cornell University Press, 2007.
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. Children. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/family/children.html. Accessed 9 Feb. 2018. Payne, Linda. Health in England (16th–18th c.). Children and Youth in History. https://cyh.rrchnm.org/teaching-modules/166.html. Accessed 9 May 2024. Witmore, Michael. The Early Modern Child. Representing Childhood. University of Pittsburgh, http://www.representingchildhood.pitt.edu/early_modern_child.htm. Accessed 10 May 2024.
Image Source After Honthorst, Gerard van. The Duke of Buckingham and his Family. 1628. Oil on canvas. National Portrait Gallery. Wikimedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George_Villiers_Duke_of_Buckingham_and_Family_1628.jpg. Portrait of a Young Girl from the Prescott or Hewitt family, Three-Quarter-Length, in a Red Dress Holding a Carnation in her Right Hand. 1580–1589. Oil on panel. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:English_School_1580s_Portrait_of_a_Young_Girl.jpg.