Let him kill a lion with a pestle, husband! - The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont

Innovations in art to tend towards Mannerism. As a form matures it turns on itself, as creators, and some portion of the audience, become more interested in the form itself. So we get more art about art. The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) is young (age 22, 23) Francis Beaumont’s play about plays, where the sophisticated six-penny boys’ company audience gets to indulge in mockery of the vulgar taste of the petty bourgeois one-penny theater-goers. The play is supposed to be The London Merchant, a city comedy about ordinary Londoners where the apprentice ends up with the daughter of the merchant, something like Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday. But a “citizen,” a “real” London merchant, and his wife, seated on the stage, demand a different play, something full of heroic adventures, and while we are changing things why shouldn’t it star the citizen’s apprentice Ralph. WIFE: [below – the play has not started yet, and the characters are not seated] Husband, husband! RALPH:…