The Truro cordwainers' play: a "new" eighteenth-century Christmas play - Research article: focus on traditional drama

Folklore, April, 2003 by Peter Millington

Unfortunately, we do not have Peter's side of the correspondence. Presumably his letters may have been in Tiddy's papers, but their whereabouts cannot be traced. It is unlikely that Tiddy did "restore" the text before going to war in 1915 because, when the play was subsequently republished in his posthumous book The Mummers' Play, it retained its original orthography (Tiddy 1923, 68 and 148-56). Tiddy's book gave the location of the play merely as "Cornwall." On the other hand, he gave several substantial footnotes regarding internal historical evidence, and literary parallels to some passages of the text. In summary, these are:

* The inclusion of Addison's Rosamond, An Opera (Act I scene i) as soliloquies following the cure (Addison 1707).

* The dramatisation of much of the ballad King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France (c. 1730) in the latter half of the play.

* "bing bing"--referring to Admiral Byng, who was tried by court-martial and shot on the 14 March 1757 for failing to relieve Minorca--speech no. 28.

* "vornal bould"--referring to Edward Vernon, who captured Portobello on the 20 November 1739--speech no. 29.

E. K. Chambers published the text for the third time as "The Mylor Play" in his book The English Folk-Play (Chambers 1933, 71-82). He did little to analyse the play, other than to repeat the internal evidence and literary parallels footnoted by Tiddy. He did, however, remark that the cure had been "much dislocated," and that the description of Vernon's exploits had been mixed up with the capture of Quebec by General Wolfe in 1759.

A letter in the Carpenter Collection from E. H. Enys, dated 11 February 1935, indicates that he and James Madison Carpenter tried and failed to find the "Mylor MSS" when the Harvard scholar visited the Enys mansion during a collecting trip to Cornwall. However, although the letter tells Carpenter that Enys later found the manuscript after this visit, there is nothing in the Carpenter Collection to show that Carpenter subsequently followed it up. As far as I am aware, the text has not been the focus of any other academic attention since Carpenter.

The Manuscript

Enquiries at the Cornwall Record Office revealed that the manuscript is in their safekeeping. It is inserted loosely in an album entitled the Enys Memoranda (n.d.), which is a miscellany of charters, letters and other documents relating to the Enys family and the Enys mansion (SW7936) from the time of Queen Elizabeth I onwards. The manuscript is not dated, but its Cornwall Record Office catalogue entry reads: "f.22. Text of a Christmas mummers' play with the names of the persons taking the various parts. (1) n.d. eighteenth-century."

Their attribution of the manuscript to the eighteenth-century date was apparently based on the physical appearance of the manuscript. There is nothing explicit in the manuscript, nor elsewhere in the Enys Memoranda (n.d.), to confirm the date of the play. Similarly, there is nothing at all to confirm that the play was performed in Mylor or Enys, or indeed anywhere else specific. J. D. Enys was a noted bibliophile, and acquired much material, including manuscripts, from house clearance auctions, and that may be where he obtained this manuscript (Cornwall Record Office, personal communication).