ABSTRACT
The Knight of the Burning Pestle was written for the private Blackfriars Theatre, built by Richard Burbage in 1596, and was performed by a company of boy actors. The play is significant for the information it offers in the Induction and elsewhere about contemporary acting companies and the public taste in theatre, as well as other popular cultural forms, such as the chivalric romance. The enactment of ‘The Knight of the Burning Pestle’ superficially suggests an innocent preoccupation by the citizens with the old stories of chivalric adventure and nobility. They celebrate, and Beaumont parodies, the tales of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton, meshing these with narratives derived from popular Spanish prose romances. The Faerie Queene is referred to in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, but contrast between Spenser’s stately epic and Beaumont’s parody is complete, undermining a project that, more widely accessible forms than Spenser’s, was represented in ballads, pageants and other popular forms of entertainments.
