That's a Good Boy! Bravo!

Children in plays make a huge impact on the audience. From today’s movies, such as “Cheaper by the Dozen” to classic ballets like, “The Nutcracker,” to the boy’s companies of the 16th and 17th centuries, children have been depicted in theatrical performances in order to evoke emotions ranging from adoration to complete sadness. “The Knight of the Burning Pestle” uses a boy’s company to evoke the sentiments of cuteness, love, and pride within the audience. During Act One of “The Knight of the Burning Pestle” Nell asks her husband, the citizen, if the gentlemen like Rafe (ln. 280). When he responds in the positive, Nell is filled with a sense of total pride at Rafe’s ability to capture the hearts of the audience. She gets enjoyment from seeing someone she loves and cares about on stage and doing well at it. Indeed, a few lines later, Nell exclaims, “That’s a good boy.—See, the little boy can hit it; by my troth, it’s a fine child” (299-300). This exclamation insinuates that Nell is both proud of what she sees in Rafe’s performance and adoring of his status as “her child.” Beaumont uses children in an especially interesting way here because (just like today when we see children on stage we tend to coo over them and their talents) he’s demonstrating how much approval and love parents feel for their children in the play within the play. More than this, he is also providing examples of how the audience would view children by using Rafe to create a sense of cuteness, love, and pride when Nell comments on how spectacular Rafe is doing in the production; I would venture to say that this is how most members of an audience feels when viewing a child on stage. What’s interesting is that in “The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” the YouTube clip posted on our blog, and in Lyly’s “Galatea” children are all being used to help viewers fall in love with the cuteness and humor of the action. When Galatea and Phillida fall in love, the audience senses a real loss of innocence because they’re seeing real children fall in love. When the child tap-dances and sings in the clip, I laughed at how cute he was. When Nell exclaims over Rafe, we feel the pride and adoration just as much because he is a child, and children are cute as well as easy to exclaim over (in pride). As such, Beaumont’s use of children (and having Nell talk about how cute the children (including Rafe) are in the play) leaves the audience with an impression of adoration for the roles being presented by the children.