In 1600, thirteen-year-old Thomas Clifton was kidnapped, snatched off the street on his way home from grammar school.
His kidnappers? Two prominent figures in the world of London entertainment: Nathaniel Giles, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, and Henry Evans, producer at the Blackfriars Theater. With the kidnapping, they intended to draft Thomas into the vibrant world of Elizabethan theater. They promptly handed the boy a script and threatened him with a beating if he didn’t learn his lines.
Giles and Evans didn’t bother to conceal their crime. When Thomas’ father found them, the kidnappers taunted him, claiming they were well within their rights to seize his son.