Dumbshow
Dumbshow, also dumb show or dumb-show, is defined by the
In the Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Michael Dobson writes that the dumbshow was originally "an allegorical survival from the morality play".[2] It came into fashion in 16th-century English drama in interludes featuring "personifications of abstract virtues and vices who contend in ways which foreshadow and moralize the fortunes of the play's characters".[2]
There are examples in
From the 1630s the dumbshow no longer featured in mainstream British drama, but it resurfaced in harlequinades, pantomimes and melodramas in the 19th century. Thomas Holcroft introduced a dumb character in his play A Tale of Mystery (1802), and the device of using a mute to convey essential facts by dumbshow became a regular feature of melodramas. In his Dictionary of Literary Terms (first published in 1977), J. A. Cuddon lists 19th century plays with the titles The Dumb Boy (1821), The Dumb Brigand (1832), The Dumb Recruit (1840), The Dumb Driver (1849) and The Dumb Sailor (1854).[3]
Cuddon notes three 20th century instances of dumbshow in André Obey's Le Viol de Lucrece (1931), Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953) and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966).[3]
Notes
- ^ "dumbshow", The Oxford Dictionary of English, ed. Stevenson, Angus, Oxford University Press, 2010, retrieved 29 November 2015 (subscription required)
- ^ a b c d Dobson, Michael. "dumb show", The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Oxford University Press, 2003, retrieved 29 November 2015 (subscription required)
- ^ a b c Cuddon, pp. 244–245
- ^ Birch, Dinah. "dumb show", The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2009, retrieved 29 November 2015 (subscription required)
Sources
- Cuddon, J A (1998). A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (fourth ed.). Cambridge: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-20271-4.