ABSTRACT
Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle depicts a number of the elements of what might arguably be described as early modern English youth culture. Performed c. 1607 by the Children of the Revels, one of the early seventeenth-century London-based companies consisting of youthful boy players, this play represents the fantasies of a young apprentice who is promoted to perform the role of the grocer in the drama’s play-within-a-play. In act one he appears on stage reading Palmerin of England, which he draws on, along with other early modern romance fiction including Amadis de Gaule, to fashion his identity throughout the play. He becomes the ‘said knight’; embarks on ‘the quest of this fair lady’, Mistress Merrythought; rescues his fellow knights from the ‘huge giant Barboroso’, the barber-surgeon; seeks the love of Susan, ‘my lady dear / The cobbler’s maid in Milk Street’; participates in London’s May Day celebrations; and finally calls ‘all the youths together in battleray, with drums, and guns, and flags’ to march to ‘Mile End in pompous fashion’. 1 Thus even in his role as grocer-knight Rafe is depicted as the typical early modern youth. He is portrayed via contemporary stereotypes of the youth who is dangerously influenced by romance fiction and stories of apprentices rising to power, who embarks in courtship, who participates in ritual celebrations that permitted juvenile misbehaviour and who instigates a communal youthful protest, mimicking the violent raids against brothels led by youths on Shrove Tuesday in early modern London. As Mark Burnett suggests, The Knight of the Burning Pestle simultaneously flatters apprentice tastes and ironises youthful aspirations. 2 Although it mocks youthful behaviour it demonstrates the possibility that the young might draw on the cultures in which they engage to assert their developing social and aged identities. This depiction of Rafe ‘call[ing] all the youths together’ on the early modern stage points to a pervasive image of youthful behaviour. It indicates the existence of a youth culture, characterised by excessive reading of what has widely been termed ‘popular’ literature and lustful, riotous and disruptive activities. To a certain extent, this concept of youths and their cultural role is, as Paul Griffiths points out is often the case, a ‘social construct of a dominant adult society’. 3 Yet it also raises the potential for youths to forge their own communities and indulge their desires. In this representation of the youthful apprentice who is an avid consumer of romance fiction, The Knight of the Burning Pestle presents one non-elite and subordinate figure, the boy actor, performing the role of another such figure, Rafe, participating in an unofficial and potentially dissident subculture. The play conceptualises the young and their activities in relation to and in similar terms to popular culture. 4 This is common to a number of textual representations of youth in the period.
