The Knight of the Burning Pestle

Rarely was the device of the play-within-the-play used to more hilarious satirical effect than in this Jacobean burlesque of romantic knight-errantry, which by the late sixteenth-century had been adopted by London's civic elite to ennoble themselves in literature and spectacle. An upright London citizen and his wife 'interrupt' a performance of 'The London Merchant' at one of London's prestigious indoor playhouses because they assume it will mock the citizenry and its values; instead, they demand to see their apprentice Rafe in the lead role of tales of chivalric derring-do. The introduction to this edition sets Rafe's metamorphosis from prentice-hero to Lord of Misrule into the context of early modern festive culture and argues that the play might even be understood as an endorsement of this culture, persistently attacked by puritans.