It is true that hand size has no importance with what kind of lute you can play. Roman has quite small hands, as does Paul O'Dette, not to mention that people were generally smaller in the seventeenth century. For various reasons baroque lute and theorbo are generally easier to play in technical terms. First, the curved fingerboard makes barring easier, and the abundance of bass strings takes a lot of stress off the left hand. These are reasons cited by Thomas Mace.
On the other hand, it is probably easier to switch from guitar to renaissance lute because of the tuning (fourths and a third). Better yet, if New Boy is interested in playing in ensembles either professionally or not, he should consider getting a theorbo. It shares many of the easy technical features of the baroque lute, and has the added advantage of being single strung and tuned almost exactly like a guitar. Anybody who has played guitar (any style) for any amount of time will immediately recognize many of the chord shapes and names on the theorbo and can generally learn to play continuo in a few months' time, provided he can read music. This opens up such a vast repertoire of chamber and orchestral music and opera that you could hardly explore it all in a lifetime, not to mention the wonderful and basically neglected (comparatively) solo repertoire. It is quite common for guitarists also to be theorbo players. This was true in de Visee's time and in ours. It is nearly impossible to make a living as a classical guitarist unless you are one of a handful of incredibly talented people. On the other hand, there really aren't enough theorboes to go around these days. Charlie Weaver To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
