Scott Oldenburg 325 SEL 57, 2 (Spring 2017): 325–347 ISSN 0039-3657 © 2017 Rice University 325 The Petition on the Early English Stage SCOTT OLDENBURG In one of the many episodes in the anonymous play A Most Pleasant and Merie Nevv Comedie, Intitled, A Knacke to Knowe a Knave (1592), a miller, a smith, and a cobbler debate who should present their petition on behalf of the town of Gotham to King Ed- gar. 1 Although seemingly superfluous to the main plot, the scene was noteworthy enough to be included as part of the extended title of the play: With Kemps Applauded Merrimentes of the Men of Goteham, in Receiuing the King into Goteham. The highlighting of this skit was in part due to the growing celebrity of William Kemp and the popularity of Andrew Boorde’s jest book, Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam (1565). 2 The malapropisms and faulty logic of the townsmen provide comic relief in an otherwise serious play about corruption at Court and in the Commonwealth. The scene is rendered more farcical when it is discovered that the petition itself is aimed not at the pressing socioeconomic and political issues of the play but rather at securing the right to compel trav- elers (beginning presumably with the king and his entourage) to purchase locally brewed ale. Prior to this farcical scene of petitioning is a more serious moment in which the character Honesty takes Piers Plowman to present his petition to the king (E3r). 3 Piers complains that he and his family have been forced to “beg for maintenance” by an “unknown farmer” who is actively amassing land on the coun- tryside (E3r). It is then revealed that the mysterious farmer goes by the name Walter Would-Have-More, an acquisitive farmer Scott Oldenburg’s first book, Alien Albion: Literature and Immigration in Early Modern England (2014), examines the ways in which several early modern texts counter xenophobic tendencies and imagine multicultural communities founded on shared religion or craft. He is working on a book about artisan poets in sixteenth-century England.