I'm not saying that out loud...make the kid do it

The use of children in The Knight of the Burning Pestle makes the playing and innuendo more acceptable to the plays audience. If this play is a celebration of class differences,then what larger class distinction is their between "adults" and children. In my experiences in theater children are generally brought in for scenes that require some aspect of child immaturity. This immaturity can allow certain subjects that may be considered too taboo to talk about into the plays conversation. Rafe and the citizen's wife allow the audience to suspend their preconceived notions of how they are suppose to behave and react to the class distinction being blurred on stage. "The children's companies offered entertainments with more promise of the novel and the naughty, whether in the 'distancing' of serious action through satire, in the exploitation of sex and violence in tragedy, or in the plots embodying the clash of large (and often vague) ideas.(p.13) Rafe and the children can misunderstand the idea of a pestle being associated with a penis and we laugh. We laugh when Rafe continues to "slay" evil and protect the innocent with his fiery "penis". The joke in an adult's mouth is almost too obscene to play.

The idea that it is OK for children to cross these lines where adults are forbidden has not been lost. In Galatea, we don't feel awkward watching the two "young girls" in the woods falling in love with each other. We see them as innocent and pure children, not as women mistaking women for men. The ending of Galatea also shows a certain amount of privilege. Both young "girls" wouldn't mind becoming young men so that they can "be" in love for real. I hardly see how it is possible for a full fledged member of the "adult" society to get away with such a blatant desire to have their sex "exchanged" for the other. We throw fits over this in modern times...are we more prudish now than in Beaumont and Lyly's period? The children are allowed to break societal norms more easily than adults. We still give children this same privilege in modern times. We wouldn't hold a child pretending to be King in the same light as a 32 yr old man claiming to be King. One we think is cute and we encourage, the other we think is crazy and we avoid. The playhouse is traditionally where adults can break the barriers to perform these roles, but children are given the privilege to break the barriers that even adults are afraid to perform on stage.