MUMMERS IN LONDON

Otago Witness, Issue 3443, 9 March 1920, Page 43

MUMMERS IN LONDON

REVIVAL QF ANCIENT FOLK-PLAY. A quaint revival of the old mummers' play took plaoe in London recently, and, in spite of the depressing weather, a gay and hardy body of members, of the League of Arts brought to life Father Christmas . and his wife, old Bet,«St. George and the Dragon, the Turkish Knight, the King qi Egypt, the 'Giant Turpin, -Little Devil Doubt, and all the subsidiary characters and crowd of a simple and happy form of amusement which takes us back to the times when the folk of -Merrie England took their pleasures less sophistically than we do now. Dressed in traditional garb, the players perambulated many of the streets of Kensington, carrying lighted lanterns and lamps;. and in Phillimore Gardens, and again on Oampden Hill, stopped to sing the old folk-song "Here We Come a Wassailing," and to go through the old-time performance in which St. George fights and slays the Dragon, and the Turkish Knight, and the Giant, and other oncomers. a Hundreds of delighted residents followed the lanterned procession, and came out of their houses to laugh and applaud the speeches. of the dramatis persons and the gambols of thejr fellow mummers of the ancient Green Room. But what they thought of it all. and how they reconciled' old Father Christmas in beating Ins wife with the. gentler and more popular conception of that historic old gentleman it i 3 difficult to say. • It must be quite a couple of hundred years since the mummers' play was seen in London —or, at least, in the open Lon- > don streets, —Although the performance is still carried out in out-of-the-way places in Wales and Cornwall. In theory it is delightful. In practice, when the rain is falling in dark and half-deserted suburban by-streets, mos f ' of whose denizens were probably at the theatres and kinemas, the ancient sfolklore festivity would seem still ' to find a happier venue, where the signpost or the pump rears an only monument in village or hamlet. No doubt in time the really exceih nt aims and objects of the' League of Arts will appeal more strongly to th«v sympathies of Londoners, and the coming of the spring and summer will give members of the league many, and better, opportunities for their pleasurable activities. It is all to the good, and deservin* of the highest encouragement. The script which the players used last evening, edited by Mr Patrick Kirwan, the well-knowa actor, to whom London owes sq many delightful revivals. Shakespearean and otherwise, is literally based on texts of mummers' plays which were performed in England from the fifteenth century onward. It -was of course from the old Liturgical pageantry of tho Oharch that the drama emerged, and no doubt the lay dramatists were responsible for the introduction of the Devil and evil spirits, or "Vice"—which the folklorists transformed into Little Devil Doubt. Little Devil Doubt is interesting as th€ precursor of Shakespeare's Puck. The evolution of the other quaint and merry personages of the festivities, of our forbear* at Christmas'tide, led '.y the Lord of Mis* rule, are equally interesting; and there it no more learned and charming a teaohei of all this me'diapval folk-lore than Mr Kirj wan. But is there not someone in alj London who loves the Merrie England of old. and who is willing to put some suitabU hall at the disposal of Mr Kirwan and hit enterprising companions ?