The Shakespeare Mummers are back with their Christmas play. Guaranteed to not have a single dull (or dry) moment.
Mummers’ plays were preceded by the Roman holy day of Saturnalia, which featured people masqueraded. When Christianity took over and Saturnalia and Yule became Christmas, the mummers’ became incorporated into it. In 1377, the citizens of London dressed in Mummers’ outfits to amuse King Richard II. Although some people took the Mummers’ to be obnoxious behaviour and was banned by King Henry VIII, who himself likes to disguise himself as Robin Hood!
The Mummer’s plays are related to similar myths and legends world wide, such as the Greek Myth of Persephone. Like these, the Mummers’ play always has a cycle of death, followed by resurrection by magical means. In the Mummers’ plays this cycle involves a fight between the Hero and the Villain in which one (or both) get killed. The corpse is then magically brought to life again by the Doctor.
There then follows some ‘business’ by other characters, mainly as an excuse to extract money from the audience. This money was traditionally spent on drink and was probably one of the main reasons for the preservations of the plays up to the Victorian times, when such goings on started to be looked down up on. The plays were passed down orally and some have became garbled over the years, as each player would only know their own part, not those of the other players. This has lead to some strange lines and names, for example in one play the villain’s name has changed from the Turkish Knight into a ‘Turkey Snipe’.
