Francis Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle

Sandra Clark (Birkbeck, University of London)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1613

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

The Knight of the Burning Pestle, published in 1613, was probably first performed in 1607 by the Children of the Revels, the most successful children’s company of the time. Although ascribed to both Beaumont and Fletcher in three of the four seventeenth-century editions, it is now generally accepted as the work of Beaumont alone, though the love-test imposed on Luce by Jasper in Act III is curiously similar to scenes in other plays ascribed to both writers or specifically to Fletcher. The publisher’s epistle calls the play an “unfortunate child” rejected by its first audience, who failed to appreciate the “privy mark of irony about it”. Though it was not one of the more popular plays associated with the Beaumont and …

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995 words

Citation: Clark, Sandra. "The Knight of the Burning Pestle". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 September 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=436, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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