Boys Will Be Boys

The boys company portraying The Knight of the Burning Pestle on stage seems to function to heighten the comedy of the play, as well as call attention to the fact that the play is just a play.  The fact that little boys are putting on this production draws the audience into the action of the play as well as take them out.  There is no doubt about it, children are cute, and when they are on-stage, it is difficult to peel our eyes from them (watching the YouTube clip of Shirley Temple, I rarely found myself watching the men dancing around her, and had to really concentrate in order to do so: my eyes went straight to her).  Watching children dance and sing (like in the interludes and the Morris dance), must have been adorable.  However, one must also remember that "boys will be boys".  When children are concerned, things rarely go as planned, as we see in the clip from "The Parenthood".  Children make mistakes.  Children mess up.  Beaumont seems to account for, and almost plan for this, as "mistakes" are built into the structure of the play.  Nell orders for changes in the play that the actors have to adapt to, such as ordering Mistress Merrythought off the stage and calling for Rafe instead.  Furthermore, one cannot forget some of the scenes these little boys had to play.  Recall the scene with the Barber, a scene rife with jokes and references regarding syphilis, as well as descriptions of pain and violence.  I imagine this made the scene all the more ridiculous, all the more hilarious, but to what degree would these boys have known what they were saying?  It is like the first time a child repeats a profanity they overheard.  You want to punish them, but its difficult to do so as they rarely understand what they are saying and comes out sounding funny.  It seems that the fact that boys are playing these roles further increases the metatheatricality of the production.  One cannot completely be sucked into the scenes presented in this play, because little boys are delivering some of these nasty jokes, and playing some of the serious scenes.  Boys would not be delivering these lines with the comedic timing or passion of a skilled actor.  Instead, the humor seems to come from the cuteness of the children themselves, and the fact that children are playing these adult roles and very adult humor.