Separated by almost three hundred years and by significant developments in the construction of childhood as an identity distinct from adulthood, the early seventeenth and late nineteenth centuries stand out as periods of intense and popular activity by child actors, and specifically by companies of child actors who played adult roles and deliberately juxtaposed the age categories of performer and character. While much excellent period-specific work has been accomplished during the last twenty years on early modern boy actors and on the ‘infant phenomena’ of the Victorian stage, there has as yet been no attempt to compare children’s professional performance during these two periods. This article contrasts the repertoire of the boy companies of Jacobean London with that of the children’s opera companies who toured the UK and Ireland throughout the 1880s performing comic operas such as H.M.S. Pinafore and Les Cloches de Corneville. It also explores what it meant for children to perform as adults during these two periods, and what the latter reveals about the historical construction and policing of age categories.

中文翻译：

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“世代变装”：十七世纪和十九世纪英国的全儿童表演

十七世纪初期和十九世纪末期相隔近三百年，并且由于将童年建构为一种不同于成年的身份的重大发展，因此成为儿童演员，特别是儿童演员团体的激烈而受欢迎的活动时期。扮演成人角色，并故意将表演者和角色的年龄类别并列。虽然在过去的二十年里，我们在早期现代男孩演员和维多利亚舞台的“婴儿现象”方面取得了许多出色的特定时期的工作，但迄今为止还没有尝试比较这两个时期儿童的专业表演。英国皇家海军围裙号和科尔内维尔的钟楼。它还探讨了这两个时期的儿童作为成年人的表现意味着什么，以及后者揭示了年龄类别的历史建构和监管。