Jack Drum's Entertainment

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Title page of the first edition of Iacke Drums Entertainment (1601) John Marston, Iacke Drums Entertainment (1601).jpg
Title page of the first edition of Iacke Drums Entertainment (1601)

Jack Drum's Entertainment, or the Comedy of Pasquil and Katherine is a late Elizabethan play written by the dramatist and satirist John Marston in 1600. It was first performed by the Children of Paul's, one of the troupes of boy actors popular in that era.

The play can be dated to 1600 on internal evidence, including a reference to William Kempe's famous morris dance from Norwich to London in the early spring of that year. [1] [2] : 259–260  It was entered into the Stationers' Register by the bookseller Felix Norton on 8 September 1600. On 23 October the rights were transferred to Richard Olive (i.e., Oliff), and the first edition was printed for Oliff in 1601. A second edition, issued by Philip Knight, appeared in 1616, and was reprinted in 1618 by Nathaniel Fosbrooke. [1] [3] All three quartos are anonymous, but the play has long been attributed to Marston on stylistic grounds, and his authorship is explicitly confirmed by extracts quoted in the commonplace book of Edward Pudsey (1573–1613). [2] : 259  [4] : 125  [5]

The play tells the story of the love between Pasquil and Katherine and the trials and tribulations that they face on the way to happiness. The subplot is the story of a collection of fools who attempt to outwit each other while fighting over women. The play satirizes both human folly in general and the madness of being in love, although its harshest criticism is reserved for those who cannot feel love, like the wicked usurer Mamon, or those who believe themselves superior, failing to recognize that all men may be foolish at times, like the self-satisfied critic Brabant Senior.

The play has been described as "a strange mixture of genres", combining elements of mediaeval romance with characteristics of later Jacobean city comedies. [6] Some have emphasized its fundamentally romantic nature, [7] , while others have seen it as a satire of romantic comedy and "gallant" manners, [2] [4] or more specifically as a burlesque of the roughly contemporary play The Tryall of Chevalry, which was based on the same episode from Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia that provided the subject matter for Jack Drum's Entertainment. [8] Still others, seeking to connect the play with the so-called War of the Theatres, which pitted Ben Jonson against John Marston and Thomas Dekker, have suggested that the character of Brabant Senior is meant as a satirical portrait of Jonson, [1] an interpretation that others have rejected as unsubstantiated guesswork. [4] : 137–138  Similarly, the character of Sir Edward Fortune has been seen as allusion to the actor Edward Alleyn, who was building the Fortune Theatre in 1600,[ citation needed ] or as a caricature of Sir William Cornwallis (died 1611), a courtier known for his free spending and lavish entertainments. [4] : 127–128 

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Chambers, E. K. (1923). The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 4. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 21.
  2. 1 2 3 Caputi, Anthony (1961). John Marston, Satirist. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press..
  3. ↑ The three quartos are ESTC S105365, S109943, and S116271.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Finkelpearl, Philip J. (1969). John Marston of the Middle Temple. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. pp. 125–139.
  5. ↑ Pudsey's commonplace book is Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Eng.poet.d.3; see Schurink, Fred (2010). "Manuscript Commonplace Books, Literature, and Reading in Early Modern England". Huntington Library Quarterly. 73 (3): 453–469., at pp. 465–469.
  6. ↑ Steggle, Matthew. "Jack Drum's Entertainment". The Complete Works of John Marston. University of Leeds.
  7. ↑ Geckle, George L. (1980). "Jack Drum's Entertainment: The Title's the Thing". John Marston's Drama: Themes, Images, Sources. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. pp. 51–60.
  8. ↑ Andrews, Michael C. (1971). "Jack Drum's Entertainment as Burlesque". Renaissance Quarterly. 24 (2): 226–231. JSTOR   2859199.


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