ABSTRACT
Mummers’ plays first appeared in the mid- to late-eighteenth century and quickly gained in popularity as a vehicle for seasonal house-to-house cadging. Mummers’ plays retained one direct connection with the medieval mummings, the importance of perambulation, arrival and entry. Individual mummers’ plays, like the individual mummers who perform them, emerge into the repertoire only to recede into the archive. Mummers’ visits, like mummers’ plays, would always have been creative and social events; each visit or revisit in some way affirming or re-affirming social relations. A definitional characteristic of mumming is that neither individual home visits nor single performances comprise the ‘whole event’. The only connection between medieval mumming and the mummers’ plays of the eighteenth century and later is in the descriptor mumming and the shared engagement with ideas of house visits, perambulation between those visits, and a stress on arrival and entry. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
