'Let him kill a lion with a pestle, husband; let him kill a lion with
a pestle.' So exclaims the Grocer's wife who, with her husband and
servants, is attending one of the London's elite playhouses where a
theatre comany has just begun to perform. Peeved at the fact that all
the plays they see are satires on the lives and values of London's
citizenry, the Grocer and his wife interrupt and demand a play that
instead contains chivalric quests and courtly love. What's more, they
nominate their apprentice Rafe to take on the hero's role of the
knight in this entirely new play. The author, Francis Beaumont, ends
up not just satirising the grocers' naive taste for romance but
parodying his own example of citizen comedy. This play-within-a-play
becomes a pastiche of contemporary plays that scorned those who were
not courtiers or at least gentlemen or ladies. Like Cervantes in Don
Quixote, Beaumont exposes the folly of those that take representations
for realities, but also celebrates their idealism and love of
adventure. The editor, Michael Hattaway, is editor of plays by
Shakespeare and Jonson as well as of several volumes of critical
essays, and author of Elizabethan Popular Theatre, Hamlet: The Critics
Debate, and Renaissance and Reformations: An Introduction to Early
Modern English Literature. He is Professor Emeritus of English
Literature in the University of Sheffield.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781408144107
Publisert
2015
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Methuen Drama
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter