chapbooks and traditional plays: communication and performance

Chapbooks and Traditional Plays: Communication and PerformanceAuthor(s): Georgina SmithSource: Folklore, Vol. 92, No. 2 (1981), pp. 208-218Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1259475 .

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Folklore, vol. 92:ii, 1981 208

Chapbooks and Traditional Plays: Communication and Performance

GEORGINA SMITH

STUDIES of the methods of transmission of traditional plays have been limited both in number and approach. Until comparatively recently, few scholars concerned themselves with the processes by which plays were communicated- the majority of studies of traditional drama concentrating almost exclusively on the implications of the customs' presumed origin in the rituals of prehistory. The means and processes by which such performances could have been main- tained from this distant time to the present were, however, rarely discussed.

In such brief examinations of the transmission of traditional plays as were attempted, two primary means of communication were treated as antipathetic. Almost all studies of traditional drama propose that oral transmission is the sole authentic mode of communication for the plays. Further, it is widely suggested that the use of printed versions of play texts can only have a deleterious effect upon resulting performances.

This discussion of the relationship between chapbook versions of traditional play texts and performed traditional plays has two main aims. Firstly, it is intended to examine the theories of oral and literary transmission of traditional plays put forward by past scholars in the field. Subsequently, using the results of recent researches, an alternative view of the effects of chapbook play texts and their inter-relationship with other forms of transmission in performed plays will be demonstrated. Thus, it is hoped that a more balanced approach to the study of the processes and effects of the transmission of traditional plays will be achieved.

The existence of chapbook' texts of traditional Hero Combat plays has long been known. Probably the earliest reference to their publication is that by John Brand, the antiquarian, who reported seeing a copy of a chapbook containing a 'mummers' play in the office of Thomas Saint, the Newcastle printer, in approximately 1777:

In the Office where this Work is printed, there is preserved an hereditary Collection of Ballads, numerous almost as the celebrated one of Pepys.-Among these (the greatest Part of which is worse than Trash) I find several Carrols for this Season; for the Nativity, St. Steven's Day, Childer- mass Day, &c. with Alexander and the King of Egypt, a mock Play, usually acted about this Time by Mummers. 2

Antiquarians continued to collect and comment on tie appearance of different versions of the chapbook plays throughout the rest of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.3 With the development of evolutionary theory and the growth of comparative methodology,4 however, folklorists concentrated their attention on the origins of traditions. This emphasis on the 'ritual' sources of customs brought about an altered attitude to folk plays. Henceforth, they



CHAPBOOKS AND TRADITIONAL PLAYS 209

were seen as consisting of 'significant' actions derived from pre-Christian ceremonies and 'degenerate' (and thus less important) later accretions of text and other attributes. 5

Amongst the sources of 'corruption' of traditional plays, chapbooks were frequently treated as pre-eminent. Cawte, Helm and Peacock, for example, commented:

The H/[Hero-Combat] play, ... has been modernised and bowdlerised to a great extent, and this is no doubt due to the prevalence of chapbooks and the acceptance of this type in the Victorian nurseries....

Two main forms of textual degeneration were proposed to result from the widespread use of chapbooks. Printed texts, it was suggested, were aesthetic- ally inferior to traditional texts, in that they 'lack spontaneity and life, the lines are dull, and there is none of the verve which even the most nonsensical traditional versions have.'7 Thus, when 'imposed' on traditional performed plays, chapbook texts were believed to lead to a diminution of the quality of the language. It was further proposed that chapbooks produced standardisation among performed plays. Alex Helm saw this as a process of rationalisation and stereotyping:

All surviving texts seem to be late attempts to provide an acceptable verbal accompaniment for ... a traditional revitalisation ceremony whose purpose had long been forgotten by performers and audience alike, but which was deep-rooted because it survived from primitive times, resilient enough to adapt itself to growing sophistication as the centuries passed, and tenacious enough to have persisted into modern times unchanged in action though altered by being given a stereotyped text. The country-wide similarity of these texts argues a common archetype, usually assumed to be an early chapbook, now lost, which enjoyed wide distribution and set the pattern now familiar. 8

These two proposals do, however, involve a number of problematic implications. The conventional definition of a 'traditional' play, reflecting folkloristics preoccupations with the origin of such customs, is that acted by 'mummers whose performance did not depend on the printed chapbook versions, but who passed on their local variant by word of mouth.' 9 As Helm himself came to realise after a more detailed examination of chapbook and traditional plays in the north-west of England,10 however, it is very difficult to separate those elements of the texts of performed plays which can be directly attributed to one or the other form of source. Now that the influence of chapbooks on all versions of performed Hero Combat plays is being examined systematically,1 moreover, it emerges that very few plays can, with certainty, be said to have been un- affected by print, and thus be 'traditional' in folkloristic terms. It is clear, therefore, that a realistic definition of 'traditional plays' cannot simplistically be based on the issue of an oral or printed source for the text. The view that tradition is invalidated if it is found to have been affected by printed forms is illogical, since it is based on the purely fortuitous discovery of literary states of some items. The chance survival of a chapbook which is the source or modifier of any particular text is hardly a criterion for determining the validity of a traditional play, since it takes no account of the whole range of non-textual aspects of the drama and the social context of its performance.'12

A further difficulty regarding the process by which proponents of origin theory suggest that vital and deep-rooted traditions became rationalised and



210 GEORGINA SMITH

'degraded' by the use of chapbook texts is that of dating. In spite of the widely- expressed view that traditional plays are 'survivals' from prehistory, the first references to what is recognisably traditional drama occur during the eighteenth century.13 A four line fragment from 'the Exeter play' dates from approximately 1737,14 the literary and traditional amalgam performed at Revesby is dated 20th October, 1779,15 and a full text of a play from Islip, Oxfordshire, is dated 1780.'6 The copy of the 'Newcastle' Alexander and the King qf Egypt chapbook held in the Hornel Library, however, is almost certainly from the press of John White, a printer active between 1711 and 1769, the type and ornaments used limiting its production to the period 1746 to 1769.17

This 'Newcastle' chapbook, which is specifically designated 'A Mock Play, As it is Acted by The Mummers every Christmas,' represents the earliest full text of any version of the folk play. This fact, together with the similarity to chapbook versions of the St. George speech in the 1737 'Exeter' fragment, renders all discussion of 'traditional' and 'chapbook' texts problematic. There is no information on the form, greatest part of the text, or characters occurring in folk drama in Britain before the earliest known date that chapbooks containing play texts are known to have been printed. Any discussion of 'traditional' aspects of performance, as distinct from those in chapbook plays, must therefore contain a large element of speculation. To provide this analysis of the relationship between chapbooks and hero-combat plays with a less problematic base, therefore, the existing categories of 'traditional' and 'chapbook' plays will be abandoned. Other than in discussions of earlier writings, the term 'chapbook play' will henceforth by used to refer solely to printed texts published in chapbooks. This category represents the physical items and has no connotation of their use in performance. All forms of texts which have been collected from mummers will be described as 'performed plays.' This definition subsumes both the existing definition of 'chapbook' and 'traditional' texts, in that some performances in the 'performed play' category may have been derived wholly or in part from chapbooks, whilst others have a presumed 'traditional' source for some or all of their text. It is, however, the existence of texts as an element of performance which is, in this case, the defining feature.

The question of the literary quality of the chapbook plays has a number of implications beyond the simple application of aesthetics. As has already been established, the basis of Alex Helm's distinction between 'traditional' and 'chapbook' versions of the play is weak. If it is accepted, however, that some elements of 'traditional' plays are not derived from lost or entirely unknown chapbooks, on what criteria should the texts of plays be examined?

It is difficult to state with any certainty the evidence underlying the position of those scholars who propose that the language of 'traditional' plays surpasses that of the 'chapbook' versions. Helm never expanded his single statement on the dichotomy of language between the 'two types' of plays. This would seem to have arisen because of his (and most of his theoretical predecessors') belief that the importance of the plays resided in their action rather than the texts.18 All forms of textual examination, whether it consisted of a discussion of the source of lines and speeches or the quality of the language in the plays, were thus seen as redundant. Helm, indeed, seemed to feel that such activities were indicative of the 'purely literary approach' which was 'completely inade- quate' for interpreting traditional drama.'9 The qualitative distinction between




'chapbook' and 'traditional' texts was thus generally treated as self-evident. Some scholars, however, provide a little enlightenment. Reginald Tiddy was

the only major writer to attempt a relatively extended discussion of the linguistic qualities of traditional plays. In his comments on the forms of humour found in the texts, he suggested:

The one other form of humour to be noted, which may be called topsy-turvey patter, is perhaps the unique thing in the Mummers' Play. It is very difficult to suggest either a parallel or a source. I have heard village boys doing something of the sort when they were playing the fool together; but I cannot say that I have heard anything clearly like it. Possibly it should be regarded as an 'art form' of magical incantations, like saying the Lord's Prayer backwards. 2 0

This 'art form', 'unique' to the traditional play did not, however, find favour with Sir Edmund Chambers, who referred to it as 'dross':

. . most of the patter is such as appeals solely to the unlettered. It is purely verbal jesting, without salt of mind. It may take the form of an incongrous juxtaposition of contradictories:

I went up a straight crooked lane ...

Or there may be a simple inversion of ideas:

I met a bark and he dogged at me ,...

All this comes straight from the village. It is the folk at its worst. 21

The linguistic feature which was the source of Tiddy's interest and the cause of Chambers' polemic was 'Tangletalk', a type of verbal play. This form, which depends on jumbled syntactic co-occurence rules, can be found in traditional game rhymes22 and pre-eminently in 'traditional' as opposed to 'chapbook' speeches in performed plays. In the Antrobus Souling play, for example, much of the contemporary text can be found in the corpus of material common to northern chapbooks. Amongst the speeches which cannot be accounted for in such sources, however, is that of Beelzebub, who, to his version of the generally occurring introductory rhyming couplets:

In comes I, Beelzebub On my shoulder I carries my clog In my hand, my dripping pon And I reckon mesen a jolly owd mon

has the added lines:

'Twere early Monday morning Or were it late a Sat'day night I stood ten thousand mile ahead And saw a house just out o' sight The walls projected back'ards And front be round at back It stood alone between two more And walls was whitewashed black 23

In her thesis on the Antrobus tradition, Susan Pattison notes that these lines are not associated with other Cheshire versions of the Souling play, and suggests



212 GEORGINA SMITH

that they were introduced at the behest of the Antrobus team's patron, A. W. Boyd: Wilf Isherwood [a former member of the Antrobus Souling team] claims that he has added sections to the play, in keeping with Cheshire dialect and custom, at the instigation of Major Boyd who thought the play was too short. In the late 1920s Wilf was Beelzebub and it was then that he added the lines. 24

This example of the occurrence of 'tangletalk' can there be equally well charac- terised as 'purely verbal jesting' coming 'straight from the village' or a lively form of speech play, full of the 'verve' of traditional versions of the text.

The only extended example of discussion by literary scholars of the qualitative aspects of a 'traditional' form in performed plays is, therefore, somewhat inconclusive. The study of oral literature of all types has, of course, undergone extensive development and refinement since the period of Tiddy's and Chambers' research, and it is unlikely that scholars would now express themselves in such terms. Despite the greater depth and volume of studies, however, comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of creativity in traditional genres involving groups of performers and relatively fixed texts has not yet been undertaken. Agreement on the exact nature of this aspect of tradition is, therefore, still unlikely to be found among contemporary scholars.

Examination of large numbers of texts of performed plays can, however, provide some insight into the question of the relative qualities of their 'traditional' and 'chapbook' elements. In general, 'chapbook' texts approximate more closely to the widespread stylistic usages of contemporary popular culture. 'Traditional' texts, however, show greater regional variation, although certain regularities of linguistic form, such as 'Tangletalk,' occur commonly. In that they represent the normal form of language occurring in popular dramatic texts more closely than 'traditional' versions, scholars might well consider 'chapbooks' as dull in comparison with the unfamiliarity of the regional and historical usages in 'traditional' texts. A fully objective comparison could, therefore, perhaps only be achieved by ethnographic means. In an attempt to reach such a better understanding of the traditional play in its own terms, that is, largely through the perceptions of its performers, an examination of a body of empirical data will now be made. It should now be clear that chapbooks do not represent the monolithic stultifying influence on performed play texts that early researchers proposed. On an immediate level, for example, in spite of the approximately one hundred and sixty year known printing history of the Alexander and the King of Egypt chapbooks,25 'Alexander', as a character name, occurs in only a handful of performed plays. Also, although printers in geographically disparate areas produced similar types of play-texts of The Peace Egg printed in Preston in the mid-nineteenth century by John Harkness are, for instance, very like those published at the same time in Glasgow by Gage and Gray and James Kay and Sons-,26 differences deriving from local forms of tradition can be found. The Lancashire texts refer to Christmas as the time of performance of the plays, whilst those from Glasgow set the action at New Year, a traditional timing for such customs in Scotland.27 Similarly, the Easter tradition of Pace Egging plays is also recognised in the wording of Edwards and Bryning's Rochdale editions of The Peace Egg.

The Pace Egging tradition in Rochdale is a notable example of the interaction between traditional and chapbook elements in performed play texts.




In their excellent study of traditional plays in this area, Peter Stevenson and Geoff Buckley describe the form of such performances:

... most teams used the chapbook. ... New members of the team learnt it by heart from those who already knew it. Other ex-pace eggers have said that the text stuck in the mind once it had been learned, suggesting that it was learnt by any means available, whether from the chapbook or another performer ....

Towards the end of the performances, two elements occurred which do not appear in the chapbook. After the third and final sword fight, Dirty Bet enters and speaks some or all of the lines attributed to Beelzebub and Devil Doubt in the chapbook. After these, he adds his own speech-one recorded example of which is:

I've got a basket for my eggs and a pocket for my brass And two bonnie lips to kiss a bonnie lass If there's any one who wants to kiss me They'd better be sharp before they miss me

After these lines, several rhymes are sung, again none of these appear in the chapbook. 28

These lines, collected by Peter Stevenson from Mr. Frank Rothwell, are only one of numerous examples of speeches and 'ditties' (songs) not included in chapbook plays, but occurring in local performed plays.

Although the Rochdale tradition is, as yet, the only one to have been examined in detail, it is clearly not an isolated case of interaction between chapbooks and tradition. In an interview with Mr. Arthur Kelsey of Sheffield, for example, Dr. John Widdowson collected what would, under earlier theory, be regarded as a classic 'chapbook' play. Mr. Kelsey remembered his team buying a chapbook and using its text as a basis for Christmas performances in the courtyards of terraced houses in the east end of Sheffield in the 1890s:

It were passed round . . one used to teach another, d'ya see: With doing it so often, it comes automatically. 29

Even with this heavy reliance on the chapbook as a source of the text, however, one speech deriving from tradition was also included in the performed play. At the end of the performance, an appeal for money was made by one of the supernumerary characters, Little Devil Doubt. His usual begging couplets were, however, extended with material apparently drawn from a variant of the verses used with similar intent in Wassailing and Soul Caking songs:

Here comes Little Devil Doubt If you don't give me money, I'll sweep you all out Money I want and money I crave If you con't give me money, I'll sweep you to your grave I have a little box under my left arm A few of your coppers will do it no harm A bit of your silver will do it some good Because it is made of the very best wood 30

Although no overall analysis of the relationships between chapbook texts and performed plays has yet been undertaken, from research in progress and completed micro-studies, an interesting correlation seems to be emerging. If



214 GEORGINA SMITH

one recurrent element of performed plays can be proposed as deriving from pre-chapbook, 'traditional' forms, it is the occurence of the supernumeraries. These characters usually have no part in the action of the drama, but consistently appear, usually at the end of the play. Since it is most unlikely that printers would introduce largely functionless characters unless they were an expected part of such performances, it seems reasonable to suggest that the inclusion of supernumeraries in printed and performed plays reflects a tradition which, in some areas at least, predates the known chapbooks.

Further, there appears to be a frequent association between supernumerary characters and significantly variant or non-chapbook speeches. At the area level, the majority of the variant, non-chapbook speeches in the texts collected by Stevenson and Buckley in their Rochdale study are associated with the supernumerary character, Dirty Bet. Mr. Kelsey, in his interview on the tradition in the Brighside area of Sheffield, having given the speech of the supernumerary, Little Devil Doubt, with its oikotypal four-line extension, then commented:

Sometimes we used to vary 'the very best wood', by 'the best mahogany wood'.

This was the only part of the play for which he put forward any form of textual variation. It is also perhaps significant that in our own researches, in the one copy of a chapbook we have traced which was certainly used as a basis for a performed play, an additional speech, again of a supernumerary, has been added in pencil to the last page of the text. 31

Present research therefore appears to suggest that there is a correlation between the characters which may be drawn from pre-existing traditions32 and traditional, variant speeches. Confirmation of this possible association must, however, wait on further analysis of the texts of performed and chapbook plays.

In this comparison of interpretations and research on the relationship between chapbook and performed plays, various points have been raised. The basis of earlier discussions of the processes of standardisations and degeneration associated with the use of chapbooks was re-examined in the light of findings of recent research on the earliest date of chapbook printing and the known performances of Hero Combat plays. Here, it was suggested that the earlier dichotomy between 'traditional' and 'chapbook' plays was difficult to maintain, since there was no information on the overall form of performed plays which pre-dated the publication of chapbooks. There is, therefore, no yardstick of 'tradition' against which printed forms can be judged.

The question of aesthetics was similarly problematic. Two main areas of difficulty were highlighted. Firstly, there is a marked absence of textual studies of the generality of performed plays.33 Without such empirically-based research, no firm conclusion on earlier scholars' proposals that the use of chapbook play texts produced degeneration in the language of performed plays can be reached. More fundamentally, however, the full implications of evaluating the language of traditional genres involving numbers of performers and a relatively fixed text have not yet been explored. Until further research is undertaken on the texts of performed plays, and more importantly, the processes underlying their maintenance and variation, all statements on the language of plays in general must be treated as hypothesis rather than fact.




In the introduction to this paper, the major limitations of existing theory and research in traditional drama were outlined. Perhaps the most crucial failure in this area is the absence of studies of the processes involved in the performance of traditional plays. It will probably have been noted that this discussion of the relationship between chapbooks and performed plays has concentrated almost exclusively on matters of text. This imbalance is derived from the fact that frequently a text is the only extended source of information available for any performance. Recent research34 has greatly added to our knowledge of the psychological, social, and other contexual dynamics of performance in contemporary plays. Historically, however, only tentative conclusions on the processes of performance may be put forward.

Although local traditions frequently form part of any Hero Combat play, the standardising effect exercised by chapbooks on the texts of performed plays is clearly apparent-particularly amongst those collected in the north of England. The form and scale of this regularisation has not, as yet, been measured.35 Non-textually, however, it is possible to propose that the printing of chapbooks had two effects on performed plays which were of considerable significance.

Mumming represented an enjoyable method of collecting gifts of money or food, and visits by teams were frequently popular forms of entertainment. An article on traditional drama appearing in the Sheffield Telegraph in 1920 is, for example, subtitled 'Twenty Minutes of Old English Comedy.' In it, the following view of performances in the 1860s is put forward:

Sheffield was a happy home of several parties of these 'Mummers', but the records of their activities have not been handed down. It is a pity, for there was a wealth of humour in these twenty-minute plays which delighted the people, and were given the patronage of the elite.

One of the few survivors of the old Sheffield Mumming Party is Mr. J. W. Wild of Dykes Lane, Malin Bridge, Sheffield, who sixty years ago played the part of 'the Doctor' in the play, 'St. George and the Black Prince' which was the piece de resistance of a party of youths of that day ....

Mr. Wild, .... has some very pleasant recollections of the happy times the old Mummers had in the course of their visits. He tells us that they were always welcome, and their visits looked forward to.36

Although such accounts may have some elements of nostalgia, there are large numbers of similar reports, from all parts of the country, which suggest that this was not an isolated example. As popular productions aimed at an apparently welcoming mass urban market, chapbooks may therefore have stimulated numerous groups of performers to take advantage of the density of population in towns to go out mumming. A circular relationship between the mass production of chapbooks in towns and the capability of densely inhabited urban centres both to produce and support many groups of mummers can therefore be proposed. Such a situation would, moreover, be neither acceptable nor econo- mically viable in small, scattered rural communities.

By making knowledge of the existence of plays and their texts easily and widely available, chapbooks may therefore have increased the intensity of traditional drama performance. That chapbooks containing traditional play texts were the source of performed plays is indisputable. In Sheffield, for example, apart from the play described by Mr. Kelsey, other reports detail performances in the Broomhill district37 based on an edition of Abel Haywood's



216 GEORGINA SMITH

Peace Egg,38 and provide information on the derivation of plays from unnamed chapbooks in various areas in the centre of the city.39 It may be, therefore, that the large numbers of locations for performances of traditional plays in the industrial areas of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire given in English Ritual Drama40 represent not merely a greater density of population, but also greater spread of information about the form and nature of Hero Combat plays through the medium of chapbooks.

A further result of the urban emphasis in chapbook production and use was probably that the tradition became more firmly associated with young performers.41 The relatively quiet period in the agricultural year, stretching from November to the beginning of January, allowed adults in agrarian-based communities free time to take part in activities such as guising or mumming. Although it may be that these were always young people's customs, the introduction of the constant tempo of work associated with industrialisation meant that both the socio-economic need and the possibilities for any but non-employed children at school to take part in such performances was considerably limited.42

This association with child performers would, it may be hypothesised, result in greater standardisation of the texts. In general, children lack the exponential base for embellishing performances with impromptu speeches or action-one former mummer actually commenting:

We were too young and inexperienced to add to the script. 43

During the period of the performances' greatest popularity-the nineteenth century-children were also increasingly conditioned by the education system to accept the primacy of printed sources and learn them by rote. It may be, therefore, that children could be expected to prefer printed to oral texts and to perform chapbook plays exactly as given.

As has already been demonstrated, the inter-relationships between chapbook and performed plays are complex and, at present, under-researched. The information we have on the texts of performed plays shows that 'traditional' elements in fact co-exist with 'chapbook' forms to a far greater extent than the generally accepted dichotomy between the two types of transmission would suggest. Similarly, the processes involved in the use of texts contained in chapbooks can be seen to have led to an increase in performances of the play- perhaps even ensuring its continuance by making texts available to children when older performers no longer had time or need to take part. Given more extensive research on the contexts of historical performances, it is to be hoped that the newly emerging model of processes of inter-action and accommodation between printed and oral forms of transmission will provide a more balanced and empirically-based understanding of traditional drama as a whole. The Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language, University of Sheffield.

NOTES

1. The best definition of'a chapbook is that by A. R. Thompson in 'Chapbook Printers,' The Bibliotheck. VI (1972), 76, where he proposes that a chapbook is a booklet, 'normally of eight or twenty-four pages, though other multiples of four can be encountered, usually illustrated on the title-page by a woodcut, containing verse or prose matter calculated to appeal to a popular readership and sold most commonly for a penny either by pedlars or in some cases by the printer himself.'




2. John Brand, Observations on Popular Antiquities, Including the whole of Mr. Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares. With Addenda on every Chapter of the Work (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: T. Saint, 1777), pp. 185-86.

3. Alan Brody in The English Mummers and their Plays: Traces of Ancient Mystery (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 7, gives details of the appearance of traditional play texts in various antiquarian publications with the (apparent) caveat that 'upon investigation they prove to be taken from chapbook versions of the play.'

4. I have discussed the effects of this theory's development on English folkloristics in 'Literary Sources and Folklore Studies in the Nineteenth Century: A Re-assessment of Armchair Scholarship, Lore & Language, 11:9 (1978), 33-35, and its application to the study of traditional plays in particular in 'Excellent Examples: The Influences of Exemplar Texts on Traditional Drama Scholarship,' Papers Presented at the Traditional Drama 1978 Conference [working title] forthcoming.

5. For examples of this attitude, see Margaret Dean-Smith's comment, '. .. the Play, and any significance it may have, resides in the action,' ('The Life-Cycle or Folk Play: Some Conclusions Following the Examination of the Ordish Papers and Other Sources,' Folklore, LXIX (1958), 244), and E. C. Cawte, Alex Helm and N. Peacock's description of their decision to classify traditional plays 'in terms of their basic action, and . . . ignore the nonsense of the text, . . .' (English Ritual Drama: A Geographical Index (London: Folk-Lore Society, 1967), p. 13). The view that other aspects of traditional plays were degenerate later accretions is also expressed in the comments on costume in, for example, Violet Alford & Rodney Gallop, The Traditional Dance (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1935), pp. 74-75, and Margaret Dean-Smith, 'The Horsham Tipteers' Play,' West Sussex Gazette, 25th April, 1963.

6. Cawte, Helm & Peacock, English RitualDrama, p. 27. 7. Ibid., p. 29. 8. Alex Helm, The Chapbook Mummers' Plays: A Study of the Printed Versions of the North-

West of England (Ibstock, Leics.: Guizer Press, 1969), pp. 5-6. A process of textual standardisation via the use of chapbooks is also proposed on a regional basis by Sir Edmund Chambers in The English Folk-Play (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), pp. 11-12.

9. See Helm, The Chapbook Mummers' Plays, pp. 32-33 for details of his comments. 10. Ibid., p. 6. 11. This analysis is being undertaken as part of a major study on chapbooks and traditional

plays. For details, see M. J. Preston, M. G. Smith & P. S. Smith, 'SLF Research Projects: Traditional Drama Project 1: A Classification of Chapbooks Containing Traditional Play Texts,' Lore & Language, 1:7 (1972), 3-5.

12. For a discussion of traditions in the social context of customs see the writer's 'Castleton Garland: Variation and persistence in a North Derbyshire Calendar Custom' (unpublished MA dissertation, Memorial University, Newfoundland, 1979), pp. 69-152, passim.

13. This absence of recording may be instructively compared with the numerous descriptions and recordings of other forms of seasonal traditions, such as rush bearing, making and exhibiting garlands, maypole and morris dancing, occurring in early sources.

14. The speech occurs in a footnote to Andrew Brice, The Mobiad; or, Battle of the Voice (Exeter: Brice and Thorn, 1770), p. 90.

15. For a discussion to the background of this singular performance see M. J. Preston, 'The Revesby Sword Play,' Journal ofAmerican Folklore, LXXXV (1972), 51-57.

16. For a discussion of this text, published in P. H. Ditchfield, Old English Customs (London: Redway, 1896), pp. 316-26 and probably based on a manuscript in the Manning Collection, Bodleian Library, Ms. Top. Oxon. d.199.ff. 307r-309r, see M. J. Preston, 'The Oldest British Folk Play,' Folklore Forum, VI (1973), 168-174.

17. Fuller details of this chapbook may be found in M. J. Preston, M. G. Smith & P. S. Smith, Chapbooks & Traditional Drama: Part I, Alexander and the King of Egypt Chapbooks. CECTAL Bibliographic and Special Series No. 2 (Sheffield: Centre for English Cultural Tradition & Language, 1977), pp. 1-2.

18. See Brody, The English Mummers and their Plays, p. 10, for a full discussion and re- statement of this position.

19. Alex Helm, 'The Life-Cycle Drama in England' (unpublished typescript), p. 1. 20. R. J. E. Tiddy, The Mummers' Play (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), pp. 84-85. 21. Sir Edmund Chambers, The English Folk-Play (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933),

p. 48. 22. A fuller discussion of this linguistic from and its occurrence in the traditional lore of children



218 GEORGINA SMITH

can be found in Mary Sanches and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 'Children's Traditional Speech Play and Child Language,' in Speech Play: Research and Resources for the Study of Linguistic Creativity, ed. by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), p. 93. The whole article is, however, of considerable value for the study of oral poetry.

23. Transcription from performance recorded at Antrobus, 31st October, 1977, and held in P. S. & M. G. Smith Field Collection.

24. Susan Pattison, 'The Antrobus Soul-Caking Play' (unpublished MA dissertation, University of Leeds, 1975), p. 12.

25. This group of chapbooks has the longest printing history of any of the chapbooks containing traditional play texts-see Preston, Smith & Smith, Alexander and the King of Egypt Chapbooks. pp. 1-4.

26. A full discussion of the similarities between chapbooks printed in Lancashire and Glasgow is contained in M. J. Preston, M. G. Smith & P. S. Smith, 'The Peace Egg chapbooks in Scotland: An analytic approach to the study of chapbooks,' The Bibliotheck, VIII (1976), 71-90.

27. See Cawte, Helm & Peacock, English Ritual Drama, pp. 66-67. 28. P. Stevenson and G. Buckley, 'The Chapbook & the Pace Egg Play in Rochdale,' Papers

Presented at the Traditional Drama 1978 Conference. The reader is referred to the whole paper for the full information obtained in this fine microstudy.

29. This, and subsequent quotations from Mr. Kelsey, are transcribed from the first of two tapes recorded on the 8th January, 1968, by Dr. J. D. A. Widdowson and held in the Archives of the Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language, index nos. A1-68 and A2-68. I am most grateful to Dr. Widdowson, the Director of the Centre, for permission to quote from these recordings.

30. Ibid. 31. P. S. & M. G. Smith Collection. 32. It should be noted, however, that these characters need not have been drawn from traditional

plays, but could have been associated with other forms of calendar custom. 33. The implications of traditional drama scholars' concentration on a very limited number of

untypical texts is discussed in my 'Excellent Examples.' 34. Such as that described by Barry Ward in 'A Functional Approach to English Folk Drama'

(unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1972), and Pattison, 'The Antrobus Soul- Caking Play.'

35. Only one statistical study of levels of similarity in performed play texts has, as yet, been undertaken, P. S. Smith, 'An Examination of the Problems Involved in the Spatial Presentation and Analysis of Traditional Drama' (unpublished BA dissertation, University of Sheffield, 1976).

36. 'Sheffield "Mummers": Twenty Minutes of Old English Comedy,' Sheffield Telegraph, 10 January, 1920, p. 6, Col. F.

37. Letter from A. B. Mettam to A. Freeman, 9th January, 1920, Carpenter Coll. MSS. 273-13, Sheffield City Library.

38. Four editions of this title are known-see M. J. Preston, M. G. Smith & P. S. Smith, An Interim Checklist of Chapbooks containing Traditional Play Texts (Newcastle: History of the Book Trade in the North, 1976), p. 28.

39. See for example, letters to A. Freeman fromn I. Lingard, 9th January, 1920; C. Gillot, 20th January, 1920; N. A. Trower, 9th January 1919 [1920?] and B. Baker, 8th January, 1920. Carpenter Coll., MSS. 273-16; 273-25; 273-14; 273-8.

40. Cawte, Helm & Peacock, English RitualDrama, pp. 48-49 and 63-65. 41. William Walker & Sons of Otley, the major producers of chapbook plays, for example,

printed a series of texts and several individual items specifically designated 'for the amusement of youth,' 'for boys,' and 'juvenile plays.' Other listings are also given in Preston, Smith & Smith, An Interim Checklist.

42. The accepted view that children's performances are a symptom of the degeneration of tradition (see, for example, Helm's comment in The Chapbook Mummers' Play, pp. 30-31) should therefore, be weighed against the possibility that absence of free time, but comparative regularity of payment, may have removed some of the rationale for adult performances.

43. Letter from Edwin Raynor to Gerald Tylor, 18th September, 1956. SLF Long Item held in the Archive of the Centre for English Cultural Tradition & Language, University of Sheffield.



chapbooks and traditional plays: communication and performance

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