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

Folklore, April, 2003 by Peter Millington

* Page one. Speeches 1-3, Introducer and "father Christmas"

* Page two. Speech 3 (continued) and speech 4, "king of eagypt" [plus speech 18 for insertion]

* Page three. Speeches 5-11, Dispute between "son George" and the Turkish Knight.

* Page four. Unnumbered speeches, lament, "sampo," plus the doctor's travels and cures.

* Page five. Speeches 12-17, the cure and the Turkish Knight's plea for pardon.

* [From page two]. Speech 18, "ould belzey bob" (supernumerary).

* Page six. Speeches 19-23, "bloody Woror," "little man John," and King of France ...

* Page seven. Speeches 24-27, King Henry Filth's Conquest of France.

* Page eight. Speeches 28-31, "bing bing," "vornal bould," and conclusion.

This corrected sequence is more consistent with other plays. The Doctor's speeches are more coherent, and "ould belzey bob" appears more conventionally after the cure, along with the other supernumeraries. Also, William's incongruously adjacent speeches are separated (although those of Solomon and Crossman remain).

The Actors

Five actors are named in the script--William Solomon (forty-eight lines), John Rowe (alias "F. Rowe," ten lines), Pentecost Langdon (alias Penty Landin, sixty-six lines), William Williams (forty-eight lines) and Henry Crossman (eighty-two lines). This set of names seemed sufficiently distinctive to justify searching genealogical sources for a time and place where they coincided. In searching, it was assumed that the actors would have been approximately the same age. On the other hand, it was not assumed that they had lived in Mylor. Therefore, records for the whole of Cornwall were searched for the period from 1759 (the most recent historical allusion in the text) to 1905 (the year Peter obtained the text from Enys).

Figure 1 shows the location of key places mentioned in this paper. They are all on the western shore of Carrick Roads in western Cornwall, which is itself at the extreme southwestern tip of England.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

In assuming that the play was performed by a single synchronic generation, the question then arose of what age the actors were when they performed the play. Three references to Cornish plays, dating from the early nineteenth century, state that they were performed by children and very young people [5]. This strongly implies that they would have been unmarried, which is an important consideration for genealogical research. Unfortunately, Davies Gilbert's account of western Cornish performances in the late eighteenth century does not give the age of the performers (Gilbert 1823). However, it seems reasonable to assume that eighteenth-century performers were of the same age group.

The initial approach was to search family history sources on the Internet for information on people with the actors' names in Cornwall. A variety of websites were used, the most useful of which was the FamilySearch database of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (1999-2001). Subsequently, key biographical details were checked and supplementary material located in parish registers and church accounts for St Mary's and Kenwyn, and other manuscript sources held by the Cornwall Record Office and the Royal Institution of Cornwall. The more useful sources included Gay et al. (1940), Cornwall Family History Society (1984), the Myra Williams Burial Index (Williams 2000), and Kenwyn Churchwardens' Accounts (1780-1814; 1814-46).