The boy players in this time period seem to be innocent, with a sense of knowingness (though they are innocent, they must be aware that something is going on). For example, when Rafe is speaking soon after Nell has decided he will be a knight. Rafe gives a very short speech about his “new profession” – that is, becoming a knight. Because he was (in the play) once a grocer, he will have a burning pestle placed upon the shield “in remembrance of [his] former trade…and [he] will be called the Knight o’th’Burning Pestle.” (Act I, 266-68) Surely, because of the sort of “joke” this title was in this time period, the audience laughed when the boy player spoke these lines. If the boy was totally unaware of what these lines meant the first time he performed them, he must have at least picked up that there was something humorous about either the situation or what he was actually saying. Depending on the age of the child, he probably wouldn’t understand what a “burning pestle” could also symbolize, though he would recognize that there is something else amusing about it. Similarly, in today’s time, if a very young child repeats a curse word or any other inappropriate phrase, and a nearby adult laughs because of it, the child is likely to gain amusement from saying the curse word and repeating it, though they don’t understand exactly what the curse word means. There’s a parallel between this modern situation and with what was likely occurring with boy players in plays such as KBP or Lyly’s Galatea – the child can see that the audience is gaining a sort of pleasure (or reacting in some way, seeing as the audience might be a bit shocked while watching two boys dressed up as two girls fall in love with each other) from whatever it is the child is doing. The children, though still innocent and unaware of the deeper meaning of their actions, will at least be able to recognize that their behavior is creating a reaction from the audience—and reactions and attention are something children often love to have and create (which leads me to believe that, at least in this aspect, children might enjoy being players for plays such as these over and over).

Showstoppers

In Knight of the Burning Pestle it amazes me at how lost and confused I am when I try to imagine little children running around, singing, fighting, dancing, and especially speaking in this way.  It is one thing to imagine the adults, but young boys doing this?  It blows my mind.  The two videos really helped put the boys company's performances into some kind of organized chaos in my mind.  This makes it really hard for me to focus on one scene as I feel the overall picture is cute and ridiculous.  Imagine watching a young boy playing Venturewell dismiss an even younger boy playing Jasper.  And Jasper replies, "Sir I do liberally confess I am yours...," (p.62) so formal for young boys.  Then Jasper goes to his "love", Venturewell's daughter, another young boy playing a girl, perhaps with a falsetto, and they talk about their love and running away together.  I don't think boys companies could escape from the fact that boys playing adults is a little awkward and boys playing girls is quite funny.  So almost no matter what the show it would turn out with a comic perspective.

Galatea as well to me becomes problematic and awkward to think of children posing and posturing as Greek gods and having two of the more famous goddesses of that canon in drag!!  I wonder if they were as fallible on the stage as our youth today with their clumsy mistakes and improvising (like the second video).  Also, for me, these children's companies also make me think of mock seriousness like the Shirley Temple video.  She's cute and awkward in her importance and dress of a soldier.

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.

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.

The Mask of Innocence

The use of children in performances over the years has often been to create icons of innocence. An audience often connects to their paternal instincts when watching an innocent child perform and thus develop a connection with the performance. It is this innocence that is often used to veil underlying messages or goals. These messages often include issues of gender identification and homoeroticism.

In “Galatea”, we see the development of a love relationship between Galatea and Phillida (two girls disguised as boys). The audience is first manipulated to connect with their paternal instincts through feeling sympathy for the fathers who are trying to protect their daughters. Through this emotion, the audience is easily transitioned into support for the girls’ growing love. The interesting issue is the fact that, outside the scope of the performance, boys are actually playing the two girls. The play goes on to convince the audience that “impossible” love is simply a technicality that can be bypassed if the love is true. This idea is not seen as an atrocity because the two lovers are girls and they are so young. The basis that love generated through the innocence of youth is free from lust or mal-intent plays heavily here. The truth of the matter is, throughout the entire play there are two boys pretending to fall in love with each other. This clear incorporation of the difficulty of sexual identity for children allows the audience to play with the forbidden idea that true and innocent love can be found in homosexuality as well.

Similar arguments can be made for “The Knight of the Burning Pestle.” According to Osbourne, Beaumont makes the paternal qualities of the relationship between Nell and Rafe evident through Nell’s dialogue concerning Rafe. Perhaps Beaumont uses this relationship to critique the actual dynamic between the performers and the audience (keeping in mind that Nell is actually played by a male). If we consider the idea that plays focused primarily on the male audience, we can make a comparison between the male audience and Nell. Nell quite possibly calls into question the sexual identity of the males I the audience. By using a boy to represent Nell (an overzealous member of the “audience”), Beaumont allows the idea that male audience members quite often struggle with emotions reserved for females. However, these ideas are constantly masked by the fact that these roles are played by “innocent” boys who should not be taken seriously when they represent ideas concerning sexual identity.  

Dance Monkey, Dance.

When a child is born, people gather around and “ooh and aww” at the tiny new baby, and shower him or her with praises. As the child grows older, he or she becomes somewhat of a spectacle for family members and friends. A mother may tell her child, “Why don’t you sing the ABCs for the guests” or “Look how he can ride with no training wheels!” Without even realizing it, children are exploited from the time they are born. There is not an extreme difference between children in everyday life and those that graced the stages of many playhouses hundreds of years ago. As I viewed the Shirley Temple video, I began to ask myself..”What is it that makes children such a marvelous spectacle onstage?” If we break down Shirley’s character or ambiance, we automatically just describe her as loveable. She is very small, cute girl that looks even more innocent after being placed into a military suit. She is singing and dancing with her darling little voice, and the audience can’t help but have the same attitude as Nell had while watching the small players onstage. The directors, or play writes had this very thought in mind. They knew that if they put something small, cute, loveable and innocent onstage, the audience would undoubtedly be drawn to this character. It is interesting that Nell takes the boy out of the role he is playing, and comments on him as a player and not necessarily as a character. This is something that would be very interesting to explore further, because this calls into question the directors true intent on having a small child play a part knowing that this separation of character and child would most likely occur. Osborne discusses this notion in great depth, calling attention to Nell’s motherly instincts and her fascination with Rafe. Osborne points out “The most noticeable aspect of Nell’s behavior is that she treats him as a child and frequently associates him with her children”(Osborne 500). The control that Nell constantly tries to put on the players, having it her way, is very similar to the act of many mothers who coerce their children into "performing" for guests. Although much more noticeable and dramatized in this play, the concept is extremely similar.

As has been touched on by previous posters, the spectacle of children on stage possesses inherently fascinating qualities. Whether cute, embarrassing, moving, or satirical, children bring up a well of emotions in the viewer. Beaumont both exploits this fact and comments on it. Beaumont knowingly contrasts the "typical" humor of young boys acting out complicated, "adult" scenes with Nell's overbearing doting, forcing the audience to consider their own reactions to children on stage.
Much attention has been paid to Nell's doting and fawning on the children in the middle of key scenes, and for good reason, as this is Beaumont's most direct satire of audience reaction to child actors; but equally interesting are scenes where Nell actually becomes swept up in the action, forgetting for a moment the actors' age. For instance, during the affair between Rafe and the Giant/Barber Nell enters a violent rage ("Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, Rafe!" (act. III, 351) during the battle, despite the obvious fact that the "battle" consists of two young boys in outlandish dress tussling with each other on the stage. In the aftermath, when Rafe frees the giant's prisoners, Nell becomes overcome with sadness, exclaiming "Alas, poor knight.--Relieve him, Rafe; relieve poor knights while you live" (act. III, 386-7). The prisoners almost all make reference to either humorous bodily functions or sexually transmitted diseases, and yet this is lost on Nell, who instead becomes swept up in their plight and pities them. Beaumont's clever ability to contrast obvious satire with base humor with occaisional seriousness on Nell's part constructs a complicated view of children on stage in this period; both satiring the audience's base interests in such companies while also highlighting the occaisional power they can display.

He is just a boy

When people generally go to a play or theatre production, all sense of the person who is actually portraying the character is thrown away and forgotten. This intense involvement with the characters from the audience is a beautiful piece of theatre, but when a child is performing, play goers sometimes fail to see them as their characters and view them instead as a sweet, innocent child. The social view of a child is often depicted as innocent and inexperienced to the hardships and trails of the real world. People in general, more so mothers, have a natural tendency to protect children from danger and deceit. Readers see this natural motherly care through the character of Nell in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. As the play continues, Nell not only continues to display affection for Rafe, but refers to him as more the person and apprentice he actual is than the character he is trying to portray on stage.

Rafe depicts the character of knight throughout Beaumont’s play, and although his character puts forth many noble efforts to help, like helping Mistress Merrythought find her money or releasing victims from a giant, the Citizen and Nell who reside on the stage as common citizens often refer to him still as the young child they apprentice and raise. They summon him throughout the play to act out what directions they wish him to take, like when they wish him to “march to Mile End” he is summoned by “Rafe, why Rafe, boy!” (Act V, Line 54). He is instantly brought back to his level of a young child by the use of “boy” from his master instead of the virtuous and noble knight he is supposed to be playing. Furthermore, is brought forth to Nell by, “Come hither, Rafe; come to thy mistress, boy.” Although it may seem these two characters are deeply involved in the play and the action taking place, they obviously do not consider the young Rafe as anything but a child and therefore totally disregard his status as "The Knight of the Burning Pestle."

Beaumont perhaps is trying to represent the fact that a child is a child, ignorance is bliss in their world. It’s hard to ignore the vulnerability and “sweetness” a child represents, especially in theatre when they are trying to characterize an adult, or even a woman, for a child is ignorant to what it is truly like to be such people. The citizen and Nell do not refer to Rafe as professional, in that they still claim him as a “boy” and as their apprentice they are allowed to take control over. A child evokes feeling from the audience and like Nell, they have a natural tendency to care for their well-being, but by being so over-protective, it takes away from the character the child is trying to represent and portray.

The Onion Layers of Rafe and Nell

Rafe and Nell have a strange relationship. Nell sees Rafe as a child: "There's some sugar-candy for thee," (2.336). There's an innocence she associates with him, despite his taking the stage, a course of action that if pursued professionally was considered in the eyes of the law tantamount to vagabondage. Her lines indicate that she sees him as a little boy, her adopted child. At the same time, it's important to remember that Nell was probably played by a boy actor whose voice had not yet changed, and was younger than Rafe. Depending on the approach that was used with her lines, the actor could have chosen to present a highly parodic presentation of Nell, rather than the realistic one that might have been used by an older, more experienced actor. If this was done, Nell could have been made a laughingstock and utterly foolish - and, by virtue of her foolish innocence, opened her up for blatant come-ons from Rafe. Alternatively, she could be equally played up, this time in such a manner that she is made to be coming on to Rafe! The text is merely the springboard - how the actor chose to interpret Nell is impossible to know today.

Simply from the text, however, it seems reasonable to suggest that Nell views Rafe as a child. Yet despite this and their somewhat-familial relationship, Rafe certainly seems to see her less as a mother and more of a lover: when Nell speaks about the time when her child wandered off, she says Rafe said: "I'll get you another as good," implying that he would willingly get her with child himself (2.356-357). This is not exactly the sentiment that would be expressed by one's son. Nell, however seems utterly oblivious as to the erotic nature of her comments, as evinced by her earlier line "I prithee, come again quickly, sweet Rafe," (1.308). Yes, this line could have been said in all innocence and with a straight face by the actor who was playing Nell, but coming from the mouth of one who in "real life" was a boy, it doesn't seem possible that the more sexual interpretation of this line wouldn't also be evoked. From Rafe's reply, one could assume that he certainly was aware of the double-entendre: his reply being only, "By and by," which certainly is appropriate for either meaning of the line (1.309). While it seems possible that it could be an entirely literal comment, referring to his return to the stage's action soon, remembering the age of the actor and of Rafe makes the possibility that this line was accompanied by some form of laughter-inspiring gesture on Rafe's part slightly more probable. Boys, after all, will be boys, and lack of sophistication in the acting of young children, might make a bawdier interpretation of The Knight of the Burning Pestle likelier than not.

Exploiting Exploitation

Children on stage are inherently exploitative. Not necessarily exploiting the children, but the audience. Child actors are an easy way to please the audience because they take advantage of the instinctual responses of the audience to children. This potential for syrupy sentimental reactions is so strong that it is easily exploited for mockery.

Beaumont makes full use of the amusing nature of child actors for satiric purposes in KBP. Just as Lyly’s Phillida and Galatea address each other as ‘boy’ in order to acknowledges the acceptance of boy actors playing girls on stage and therefore undermine conventions of gendered love, in Galatea, Beaumont uses the Wife’s reactions to acknowledge the audience’s enjoyment of child actors and challenge clichés of popular theatre. This is most evident when Rafe, who (even in the world of the play) is a boy playing an adult role, begins his part of the play with a lengthy monologue. We can imagine a lilting, disinterested child’s voice delivering the lines: “There are no such courteous and fair well-spoken knights in this age. They will call one ‘the son of a whore’ that Palmerin of England would have called ‘fair sir’; and one that Rosicleer would have called ‘right beauteous damsel’, they will call ‘damned bitch’ (1.244-248). The sweetness of a child reading these crass lines is too much for an audience to resist.

Kids swearing is an easy laugh, but it’s too easy. Of course the audience will enjoy seeing that, just like they’ll naturally love a historic saga about a knight defeating giants or a comedy about an apprentice getting his master’s daughter. These are the ready-mades of the theatre and Beaumont clubs the audience over the head with them, hoping they’ll realize how easy it is to play to their tastes and manipulate them.

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.

Cute Kids Sell Seats (and Ideas)

Having been onstage quite a bit as a young child, I can personally attest to the idea that audiences love seeing children perform.  It doesn't even matter if the children are good at performing or not.  There is something about a cute little kid prancing around onstage that causes audible, "awwwwww's" to be heard throughout a theatre.  Children have an ability to capture an audience's attention, unlike most adult actors.  Even when children make mistakes onstage and cause a ruckus, audiences think they are cute.  When adults make mistakes onstage, however, audiences don't know whether to laugh or hold their breath.  Clearly, children evoke different emotions in audiences than adults do.

What does this mean for the boys companies that would have performed KBP and Galatea?  Quite possibly, a cast of all boys could have helped the audiences of the time buy into the ideas of the plays.  Both plays are unconventional; Galatea presents rather radical ideas about gender and sexual expression, while KBP presents a play within a play that satirizes the way theatre was done at the time.  Both of these plays have the potential to turn off an audience, but perhaps the charming children who played the roes had the power to keep their audiences' attention long enough to get the playwrights' messages across.

In the case of Galatea, two boys playing girls who are dressed up as boys could have had an entire theatre roaring with laughter.  In KBP, the boys playing the citizen and his wife could have had the potential to start the play off in a riotously humorous way.  Imagine a young boy running through the audience, distracting the player onstage and yelling, "Hold your peace, goodman boy" (p56).  Such a scene could really catch an audience off guard.  The continued childish interruptions and the insertion of a boy dressed up like a knight with a burning pestle on his shield into the production could have added to the hilariousness of it all.  Perhaps Beaumont's purpose in having children do such ridiculous things onstage was to soften the audience so that he could get his point across.

Playtime

What is it that children do best above all other things? The answer came quickly to me when I thought back on my childhood. Play of course. Children live to play, have fun, eat fruit-snacks and drink juice boxes. Now, KBP makes sense in light of this idea that children are good at playing. Think about the plot of the play, it amounts to some characters running around and basically just playing, doing what they think might be fun. When I was a child I used to pretend I was a cowboy all the time, only I didn't get to do it in a play. Whereas I used to act as a cowboy, in the play at hand the equivalent is that Rafe pretends he is a knight. Having a child traipsing about the stage pretending to be a knight would not only highlight the overall silliness of what is going on and would, in my opinion, be hilarious, but also just makes sense. On page 86 Beaumont captures fantastically how children are while they play in his depiction of Rafe being a knight. Rafe says, "My trusty dwarf and friend, reach me my shield, and hold it while I swear. First by my knighthood; then by the sould of Amadis de Gaul...then by my sword..." Having a child standing on a stage doing his best to do what he thinks knights are supposed to do, that is swearing by a whole bunch of things to be chivalrous, plays to a child's innocence. A child has the innocence that adults lose in the process of growing up, and that element makes a huge difference in how Rafe would be perceived by an audience. It is just plain cute if a child does it, but would be a little different if it were an adult. It would still be funny, but in a different way. I think I am going to go have a juice box and a PB and J and play with my roommate's dog, and somehow, that seems relevent to this post and productive to my intellectual growth.

Child’s Play: Boys’ Companies and Audience Enjoyment

Pieter Bruegel, Children's Games 1560

Our last post was all about complicating the reception of KBP as “anti-bourgeois” by seeking out affectionate, even celebratory, portrayals of community pride. This week’s mission is to sift the affective cues regarding the figure of the child. That is, your object is to recover the moods, feelings, and attitudes that the play evokes by putting the child onstage.

Boys' Company performance of Jonson’s Poetaster

Let’s take as our jumping-off point Osbourne’s claim that Nell (the Citizen's wife) regards Rafe as a child:

“Indeed, the most noticeable aspect of Nell’s behavior towards Rafe is that she treats him as a child and frequently associates him with her children.” (500)

There are a number of textual indications that Nell takes particular pleasure from the fact that the performance is really a spectacle of children at play (and to get an early modern sense of what such a spectacle could look like, see the Breughel painting). My question to you is, what is the nature of her enjoyment? How does Beaumont play up or even exploit the fact that children play his roles?

To help you to reach some conclusions, consider the following child performances:






In your post, please take up one episode from the play and discuss how it works in relation to the child’s body in performance. What sensibilities are being evoked? Cuteness? Cloyingness? Professionalism? Amateurism? Innocence? Knowingness? Take your cues from the text, then speculate to the best of your ability. Extra credit to those of you who acknowledge Lyly’s Gallatea too.