Liesl Rowe is a student on the Shakespeare Studies MA, a joint programme with King’s College London.
The Knight of theBurning Pestle
famously failed abysmally when it was first performed in 1607 in the
Blackfriars theatre. Subsequently, however, it has seen an upsurge in
popularity: Adele Thomas’s recent production in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (itself
a revival from early 2014) is merely the latest in a series of famous
productions, with notable individuals such as Noel Coward and Timothy Spall having
starred in the principle role of Ralph. The meta-theatrical elements within the
play, where a merchant and his wife who are supposedly audience members comment
upon and influence the action, are probably one of the main reasons for its
current success yet also make it of historical interest for a number of reasons.
The Knight of the Burning Pestle© Marc Brenner, 2014
Theatre historians have speculated in depth as to why the play received so poor a reception on its first performance, but have been unable to agree as to whether there were too many artisans in the playhouse that day for the audience to respond well to such a satirical portrayal of their class or whether there were not enough of that social class to appreciate the jokes at their expense. The more likely option is the latter as other city comedies involving merchants were very successful. From records of playhouse going, Andrew Gurr surmises that although artisans made up a significant portion of 1590s playhouse audiences, the same is not true of indoor theatres such as the Blackfriars. Also, it was very common for gallants (the most common frequenters of indoor playhouses) to be lampooned on stage and such plays were generally popular: The Roaring Girl and the introduction to The Malcontent are but two examples. Gallants, as the bulk of the Blackfriars audience, might have struggled to fully appreciate satire targeting another social class which could have consequently led to the play’s failure.
Whatever the cause of the play’s failure, it is of note as a historical source as it provides a lot of details about the Elizabethan merchant classes and their way of life. For instance, in the opening of the play, the Citizen’s Wife remarks that this is her first experience of play-going: she has been trying to make her husband take her to a play the previous twelve months. This is because it was not respectable for a lady to go alone to the playhouse. In the absence of having their husband as an escort, city wives would take their husband’s apprentice along with them in the same way that court ladies were attended by pages. In his 1642 pamphlet The Compleat Gentleman, Henry Peacham gives a later account of a city wife that bears a great deal of resemblance to the predicament of the Citizen’s Wife. She had been unable to attend the playhouse for seven years and begged her husband to give her leave to go.
The Wife’s comments also provide insight into the environment of the theatre. She and the Citizen sit on stage on stools, along with other members of the audience, and presumably would have interacted with them as the play progressed as occurs in the Globe’s production. These stools were very popular with gallants as Dekker’s The Gull’s Hornbook can testify. One example of such interactions between the Citizen’s Wife and the actual audience of the play is when she rebukes them for smoking tobacco in the playhouse, creating smoke (given the reference to how they “make chimneys a your faces”) and a foul smell (“this stinking tobacco”).
Another interesting feature is the amount of intertextuality within the play. Specific plays are both referenced and in some cases, parodied. For instance, Ralph recites a short speech to prove his capabilities as an actor. This speech is taken directly from Hotspur’s tirade against the king’s treatment of him in Henry IV Part 1, Act 1, Scene 3. Ralph’s death scene at the end of the play has many parallels with the speech Andrea makes at the beginning of Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy: for example both speeches are delivered by ghosts and start with a contemplation of their former mortal existence before going on to describe the circumstances of their death. Whilst Andrea’s speech is a poignant beginning to Kyd’s play, Ralph’s speech is distinctly comical through moments such as his final exhortation: “I die, fly, fly my soul to Grocers Hall.” The Citizen’s wish to see his trade represented on stage could be an allusion to Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, which theatre historians generally conclude to have been so popular due to its exploration of the artisan classes and apprentice system, of which many of the play’s audience would have been a part. Genre is satirised to a degree. The main play, which the Citizen and his Wife interrupt, is a stereotypical city comedy. A merchant’s apprentice is in love with his master’s daughter, but is hindered from marrying her as her father has arranged a marriage between her and a city gallant. The city gallant is shown as being suitably weak-willed and unworthy of his potential bride, fitting in with negative portrayals of gallants which dominate the city comedies. Additional comedy is created through the Citizen and his Wife’s misunderstanding of the subtleties within the play such as the Wife’s failure to pick up on many of the sexual innuendoes within the text. This both allows the audience to feel pleased that they understood the bawdy jokes when she did not and also mocks the citizen classes as lacking the understanding to fully appreciate theatre.
By Liesl Rowe