English Folk Drama - Costume
Costume
In conventional plays we are used to having characters identified by their dress, but in the mumming play this was not so. Admittedly, later teams started dressing 'in character', but in the earlier tradition the performers dressed the same. A common style, especially in the south of England, was in long strips of rag or wallpaper sewn on their clothes, with tall hats (made of cardboard) with strips coming down over the face, completely disguising them. Other teams had shorter shreds and patches but they were likewise anonymous to the onlooker.
It is interesting to note that even in later teams where ‘dressing in character’ was the norm, some of the performers wore patches, ribbons or streamers. This was particularly true of characters who did not have an easily identifiable persona – everyone knows what Father Christmas or a Doctor should dress like, but someone called ‘Twing Twang’ or ‘Hind Before’ is less obvious.
It is often stated, quite confidently, that the origin of the mummers’ costume is that it was a disguise to prevent breaking the magic of ancient fertility rituals or luck-bringing ceremonies. However, this is a modern invented explanation based on romantic wishful thinking rather than evidence. There is no evidence to support any notion of ritual origin, or that the play is older than the 18th century, and precious little that any of the mummers thought they should be anonymous.
Indeed, throughout the recorded history of the custom, although the performers themselves were working-class one of their key places of performance was at the houses of people from a higher (and richer) social status e.g. the gentry, the squire, the farmers, the parson, the local magistrate, and so on. The idea that the mummers were in some way counter-cultural, subversive, or secret is completely untenable.
Some teams blackened their faces, and this also is confidently asserted to be a form of disguise. The germ of this comes from the fact that participants in social protest movements such as the Captain Swing riots of the 1830s, did disguise themselves in this way (whilst operating at night), but again there is no tradition of anonymity being thought necessary in the Mummers. The origin of the black faces in the Mummers is more likely borrowed from the craze for blackface minstrels, which emanated from America in the 1830s and a hugely popular form of entertainment for the rest of the century, and beyond.
Most of the participants wore some kind of hat that could be decorated with a few ribbons or colourful patches. In later times, this was an approximation of the character – top hat for the Doctor, fez for the Turkish Knight, military cap for George. In its most ornate form – as in Hampshire – the hat was a tall cardboard construction covered in tinsel, rosettes, and ribbons, with streamers hanging down over the face.
Props were few and simple (they had to be carried from place to place). The ‘heroes’ had something to fight with; The Doctor usually had a bag and bottle or box of pills, and others might carry something mentioned in their speech e.g. Beelzebub’s frying pan or Johnny Jack’s dolls on his back.
