Jack Drum's Entertainment as Burlesque

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.