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

* 35% of lines, not yet found elsewhere in folk plays or in literary sources.

In the last category, there are about ninety "extra" lines. Some of these lines could simply be regarded as abstruse variations of lines found in other folk play texts. Others have the appearance of coming from literary or ballad sources. I therefore ran an exhaustive series of searches for keywords and phrases from the extra lines, using a variety of spellings, word stems, and so on, in the Literature Online or LION database (Chadwyck-Healey 1996-2001), which is currently the most comprehensive available full-text database of literary sources. I also ran searches, as far as was possible, against a combination of the Digital Tradition and Bodleian Broadside databases (Greenhaus et al. 1988-2001; Bodleian Library, 1999). The Digital Tradition database is a full-text database of the lyrics of traditional and other songs, but its coverage is dependent on the good will of its contributors, and there is no formal quality control. However, it is a useful tool for identifying song titles and first lines, which can then be investigated further in the Bodleian Broadside database and elsewhere. The Bodleian database is only searchable on titles, first lines and subject terms, but images of the original broadsides can be viewed and read on-line, often with multiple editions of a given ballad. Despite the wealth of material in these three databases, my searches failed to find any of the Truro lines, except for the following, spoken by the King of France:

   but let him com I will thonder him
   back he can not me with stand
   my milk wite corls my rid Caps my yallow fethers
   deccar my resoralson stout and bould

The italicised phrase appears in the following excerpt from Deloney's Iohn Winchcomb (Iack of Newbery):

   When Iacke had receiued this charge, hee came home in all haste, and
   cut out a whole broadcloath for horsemens coates, and so much more
   as would make vp coates for the number of a hundren men: in short
   time hee had made ready fifty tall men well mounted in white coates,
   and red caps with yellow feathers, Demilances in their hands ...
   (Deloney 1626, 30).

The match between the italicised phrases is reasonably convincing, but it is an isolated case. There is nothing else in the adjacent text and context that suggests Deloney's prose was used as the source for this part of the Truro text.

Returning to the literary inclusions and the diverse content of the Truro text, this is by no means uncommon in English folk plays. Craig Fees gives an excellent overview of stage plays and non-Saint George themes in English folk plays (Fees 1994, 3). The Truro text also adds ballad sources to Fees' discussion, although one Robin Hood ballad--Robin Hood and the Tanner--is already known to have replaced Saint George's combat in some plays [for example, Shipton-under-Wychwood in Tiddy (1923, 209-13)]. The re-dating of the Truro text brings the focus of this phenomenon to the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, with most of the identified literary and ballad sources predating 1750. Fees cites several Cornish sources in his discussion, including William Borlase on scripture subjects, Davies Gilbert for drama-like Christmas sports, Robert Hunt and William Bottrell for "Duffy and the Devil," and Robert Hunt on Giant Blunderbuss and Tom, with St George and the Turkish Knight attached (respectively, Borlase 1758, 299; Gilbert 1823, iii-vi; Hunt 1865, 718; Bottrell 1873, 1-2 and 26; Hunt 1896, 60). To these can be added the following contemporary observations: