The Knight of the Burning Pestle

Title page from a 1635 edition of The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a play in five acts by Francis Beaumont, first performed at Blackfriars Theatre in 1607[1][2][3] and published in a quarto in 1613.[4] It is the earliest whole parody (or pastiche) play in English. The play is a satire on chivalric romances in general, similar to Don Quixote, and a parody of Thomas Heywood's The Four Prentices of London and Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday. It breaks the fourth wall from its outset.

  1. ^ Whitted, Brent E. (2012). "Staging Exchange: Why "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" Flopped at Blackfriars in 1607". Early Theatre. 15 (2): 111–130. JSTOR 43499628.
  2. ^ Smith, Joshua S. (Summer 2012). "Reading Between the Acts: Satire and the Interludes in The Knight of the Burning Pestle". Studies in Philology. 109 (4): 474–495. doi:10.1353/sip.2012.0027. S2CID 162251374. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
  3. ^ Billington, Michael (27 February 2014). "The Knight of the Burning Pestle review". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
  4. ^ Patterson, Michael, ed. (2005). The Oxford Dictionary of Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-19-860417-4.