THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE. THIS very admirable performance, which is certainly the most ancient specimen of burlesque comedy in the language, was first published in the year 1613, with a dedication of the bookseller, which fortunately determines the date, though the former editors have all misconceived its writer's meaning; but it leaves us in the dark relative to the question whether Beaumont and Fletcher joined in the composition, or whether it was the work of one of them. Burre, in the beginning of his dedication, speaks of the parents, but afterwards mentions, more than once, the father in the singular case; and it is not improbable that in the former term he includes Robert Keysar, whom he calls the foster-father of the play, which was printed without any author's name. The second edition has, indeed, both names in the title-page; but the address to the reader speaks of a single author, and the last editors say, that the prologue does so likewise. The passage of the latter alluded to, the whole of which is verbally transcribed from a play of Lilly's, runs in the following words :-" We hope you will be * The title-page of this very valuable edition is as follows: "The Knight of The Burning Pestle. Quod si Judicium subtile, videndis artibus illud HORAT. in Epist. ad. Oct. Aug. [Then a round circle, with the motto, In Domino Confido.] London: Printed for Walter Burre, and are to be sold at the Signe of the Crane, in Paul's Church-yard, 1613." free from unkind reports, or mistaking the authors intention." It is evident that authors may either be the genitive case of the plural or of the singular; and hence the authority is totally useless. We must therefore rest uncertain whether this satirical effusion was a joint production, though the authority for ascribing it to a single author, who is most likely to have been Fletcher, seems to be the stronger. With regard to the year in which the play was produced, we are assured by Walter Burre, in very strong terms, that it came into the world above a full year before the publication of Don Quixote, and as the first part of the latter appeared in 1605, the date of the comedy, if we admit the dedicator's authority, as hitherto explained, was 1604. The last editors mention some very reasonable doubts of the truth of this statement, but when they endeavour to prove their point at once, by informing us that we have no account of Heywood's Four Prentices of London, which is alluded to and ridiculed in it, till the year 1612, they only prove that they never condescended to look into that play. In the dedication of that drama "To the honest and high-spirited Prentices, the Readers," Heywood excuses the defect of the play which he published in 1612 in the following words :-" None but to you (as whom this play most especially concerns) I thought good to dedicate this labour; which, though written many years since, inmy infancy of judgment in this kind of poetry, and my first practice, yet understanding (by what means I know not) it was in these more exquisite and refined times to come to the press in such a forwardness ere it came to my knowledge, that it was past prevention; and then knowing withal that it comes short of that accurateness both in plot and stile, that these more censorious days with greater curiosity acquire, I must thus excuse: that as plays were then, some fifteen or sixteen years ago, it was in the fashion." This throws back the date of the production of Heywood's play to the year 1596 or 1597, and indeed the whole tenor of it strongly reminds us of the dramatic performances of Kyd and Marlow, then in vogue. The other plays alluded to in the introduction are all of the more early period of the English stage, and that which bears the latest date (viz. the second part of Heywood's If you know not me you know Nobody) was printed first in 1605, but probably acted some years before. From these circumstances, it will appear, that Walter Burre's assertion, as it was understood by Se ward and the last editors, is so far not improbable; but there are other circumstances which render the precedence of Fletcher's play to Don Quixote in point of time very unlikely. In the first The editors have been guilty of the same mistake respecting the pro logue to the Mad Lover, (see vol. IV. p. 135.) place, the coincidences between the adventures of the hero of our authors and that of Cervantes are too striking to have been accidental, and the supposition of the latter having seen this drama is quite out of the question; whereas our poets, who understood Spanish, then a very fashionable language, probably read Don Quixote within a few years after its appearance. Indeed the very name of the play seems to be taken from the Knight of the Burning Shield, though no doubt our poets may have derived the appellation from some ancient romance, as Shakspeare probably did the epithet of the Knight of the Burning Lamp, which Falstaff bestows on Bardolph. But the following lines in the last act seem to convey so pointed an allusion to Banquo's ghost in Macbeth, that we may conjecture, with strong probability, that the present drama was produced subsequently to that tragedy, which Mr Malone and Mr Chalmers agree in placing in the year 1606, upon very plausible authority: "When thou art at thy table with thy friends, And whisper such a sad tale in thine ear, An attentive consideration of Walter Burre's dedication proves, however, that when he asserted The Knight of the Burning Pestle to be elder than Don Quixote by a full year, he did not allude to the appearance of the original of the latter in Spain, which he was most probably utterly ignorant of, but to the publication of Shelton's translation in 1612. This ascertains the date of our drama to be the year 1611, and accordingly the publisher says that he had retained the copy, which he obtained from his patron soon after the original representation of the play, privately for two years, and this exactly corroborates the date above-mentioned, as he published it in 1613. I am gratified to state, that in this particular I have the satisfaction of coinciding in the opinion of Mr John Kemble, to whom this part of the present work is under pe culiar obligations, as stated in the Introduction. From the dedication to the first quarto, it appears that The Knight of the Burning Pestle was damned on its first appearance. It was probably the rage of the citizens, and particularly of the sturdy London apprentices, which condemned a production in 3 In the first act a quotation occurs from Shakspeare's Henry IV., which supports the conjecture, that the above lines refer to Macbeth. |