Jack Drum's Entertainment

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.

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][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).

It is based loosely on the story of Argalus and Parthenia in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, which also provided material for the subplot concerning the love of Camelia and Planet.

[4]: 127–128 The title Jack Drum's Entertainment is derived from an Elizabethan and Jacobean colloquial expression for rough or ill-mannered treatment, especially of an unwanted guest.