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Jack Drum's Entertainment as Burlesque

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Michael C. Andrews
Michael C. Andrews*
Affiliation:
Old Dominion University
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Extract

It has long been recognized that Jack Drum's Entertainment (1600), a play now acknowledged to be the work of Marston, is indebted to the first part of Sir Philip Sidney's tale of Argalus and Parthenia (Arcadia, Bk. 11, chs. 2, 7); and that this as well as other material from the Arcadia appeared in the roughly contemporaneous The Trial of Chivalry. There has been, however, no effort to explore either the precise nature of Marston's use of the Arcadia, or the relationship between the plays. A study of these questions reinforces the argument that Marston's intention in Jack Drum's Entertainment is unmistakably satiric. The evidence strongly suggests that Marston's play, written for performance at Paul's, should be read in the context of the War of the Theaters: it burlesques the naively romantic crudities of the public theatres in general (what Marston, in his Introduction, calls ‘mouldy fopperies of stale Poetry, / Unpossible drie mustie Fictions'), but is directed specifically at The Trial of Chivalry, which had recently been staged by the Earl of Derby's Men.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Summer 1971 , pp. 226 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1971

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References

1 See Baskervill, C. R., ‘Sidney's Arcadia and The Tryall of Chevalry,’ MP, 10 (1912), 197–201 Google Scholar. The date of The Trial of Chivalry has never been determined with any certainty. Chambers (Elizabethan Stage, rv, 50-51), who cites the divergent opinions of Fleay (1597) and Bullen (1602), dates the play ca. 1600. In Harbage, Alfred, Annals of English Drama, rev. S. Schoenbaum (Philadelphia, 1964)Google Scholar, The Trial is placed in 1601 but with Umits of 1599-1603.

2 Baskervill, though finding the evidence inconclusive, inclines toward the opinion that The Trial is the earlier play, and that it ‘probably’ influenced Jack Drum's Entertainment.

3 See Caputi, Anthony, John Marston, Satirist (Ithaca, N.Y., 1961), pp. 117–123 Google Scholar. Caputi does not mention either the Arcadia or The Trial of Chivalry, but rightly emphasizes Marston's unconventional use of highly conventional romantic materials. The play's most recent editor, Harvey Wood, H., ‘make[s] no profession of knowing … upon what “musty foppery of antiquity” the adaptation is improvised’ (The Plays of John Marston [1939]Google Scholar, in, xxvi).

4 Wood, III, 179. Finkelpearl, Cf. Philip J., John Marston of the Middle Temple (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 125–139 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. After arguing for personal satire at some length, Finkelpearl asserts (p. 135): ‘Like Pigmalion, the satire is not primarily literary; it is concerned with dangerous attitudes which false literary and linguistic practices can engender.’ In ‘John Marston's Histrio-Mastix as an Inns of Court Play: An Hypothesis,’ HLQ, 29 (1966), p. 224, n. 2, Finkelpearl interprets this passage as referring to other Paul's plays (ascription to Lyle is considered ‘credible’).

5 That The Trial is the earlier play seems certain. Marston could have converted romance into burlesque (as he does with the Arcadia); it appears highly unlikely that the author of The Trial reversed the process, and converted burlesque into romance.

6 I omit Brabant Senior's role in the play, since it is unrelated to either the Arcadia or The Trial of Chivalry. It is important, however, in connection with the Poetomachia (as distinct from the War of the Theaters) if Brabant Senior is construed as a satiric portrait of Ben Jonson. See Small, R. A., The Stage-Quarrel Between Benjonson and the so-called Poetasters (Breslau, 1899), pp. 97–100 Google Scholar, and Campbell, O. J., Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (San Marino, 1938), pp. 161–163 Google Scholar. I agree with Finkelpearl (John Marston, pp. 137-138) that this identification is not at all persuasive. See also the general discussion of Enck, John J., ‘The Peace of the Poetomachia,’ PMLA, 77 (1962), 386–396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 The raving Pasquil snatches and rends Mammon's bonds, then word is brought that one of his ships has sunk, and that fire has utterly consumed his house. His exit is preceded by a burst of comic rant.

8 Finkelpearl, , John Marston, p. 135.Google Scholar

9 Baskervill, p. 200.

10 The Historie of the tryall of Chevalry . .. (1605), Tudor Facsimile Texts (1912), H2V.

11 Or should be. In my discussion of Jack Drum in ‘Sidney's Arcadia on the English Stage’ (unpublished diss., Duke University, 1966), p. 70, I did not pause to visualize the action and managed to mistake burlesque for inept dramaturgy. Cf. Caputi, p. 123: ‘The lovers’ transparent simplicity, their magnified conventionality, their absurd conventionality, and their trite extravagance, all qualities that were doubtless heightened by the child actors, deprive them of even routine interest.'

12 Sidney's Helen of Corinth, though courted by Philoxenus, never loves until she meets his friend Amphialus, whom he has sent to woo in his behalf. Philoxenus challenges Amphialus to a duel, and is killed by him.

13 Baskervill also mentions that both plays employ ‘rivalry for the hand of a lady's maid as the comic subplot,’ and notes one verbal parallel which, he acknowledges, ‘may be the result of a similar situation that is conventional’ (p. 200n.).