‘Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle and the Menace of the Authoring Audience’

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dc.citation.issue1
dc.citation.volume20
dc.contributor.authorAngus W
dc.date.available2018
dc.date.issued2018
dc.description.abstractFrancis Beaumont’s play, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) stages a disjunction between interpretation and legitimate authority, centred around an audience which is empowered partly by the threat of informing. As a contrast, Ben Jonson’s onstage audiences are often allowed only ridiculous or overblown reactions, a kind of instructional dysfunction, while remaining entirely under the control of the author. In The Knight of the Burning Pestle however, the onstage audience are allowed a much more actively intrusive role, as they attempt to hold sway over the writing and production of the play they inhabit. Beaumont’s onstage citizens therefore stage an authorship which feels itself to be under siege by a far more unruly form of audience empowerment and signify the fear of of venal interpretation and misheld authority. The end result is a theatrical form which accurately reproduces the critical atmosphere of the drama and of the material context of its production. In offering this Beaumont reveals the precarious nature of his own authority in relation to that of a potentially informing audience. His metadrama therefore registers, in both form and content, the solid fear that ‘unseemly speeches . . . mistaking the Author’s intention’ by informers may lead not only to ‘unkind reports’, but also ultimately to the horrors of the early modern gaol.
dc.description.confidentialFALSE
dc.edition.edition2018
dc.format.extent? - ? (14)
dc.identifierhttps://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/journal/index.php/emls/article/view/363
dc.identifier.citationEarly Modern Literary Studies, 2018, 2018, 20 (1), pp. ? - ? (14)
dc.identifier.elements-id420298
dc.identifier.harvestedMassey_Dark
dc.identifier.issn1201-2459
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10179/14382
dc.languageEnglish
dc.publisherHumanities Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University
dc.publisher.urihttps://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/journal/index.php/emls/article/view/363
dc.relation.isPartOfEarly Modern Literary Studies
dc.relation.urihttps://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/journal/index.php/emls/issue/view/18
dc.subjectBeaumont
dc.subjectmetadrama
dc.subjectinformer
dc.subjectaudience
dc.subjectauthority
dc.subjectauthor
dc.subject.anzsrc1904 Performing Arts and Creative Writing
dc.subject.anzsrc2005 Literary Studies
dc.subject.anzsrc2103 Historical Studies
dc.title‘Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle and the Menace of the Authoring Audience’
dc.typeJournal article
pubs.notesNot known
pubs.organisational-group/Massey University
pubs.organisational-group/Massey University/College of Humanities and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group/Massey University/College of Humanities and Social Sciences/School of Humanities, Media & Creative Communication
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