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

   I am Prince George that noble knight
   Who shed his blood for England's right.

In some versions, George may be "valiant" rather than "noble," and his blood may be "spilled" or "spent" for England's right, or "lost by English fight." This couplet itself may be succeeded by an alternative to the "nation" couplet, as follows:

   England's right I will maintain
   I'll fight for old England once again

To complicate matters, the latter lines also appear in the Truro play in speech seventeen:

   had it ben a thousand or ten thousand such men as thee i would fight
   for to mentain grait britans right
   great britians right I will mentain
   and fight free for england wance again

It seems possible, therefore, that two different versions of the traditional play were collated in the Truro text.

The Truro text lacks the Irish couplet about freeing Sabra. On the other hand, Sabra's name is typically found in other Cornish plays, in the line: "By which I gained fair Sabra the King of Egypt's daughter." These lines come from the text published by Davies Gilbert (1823), and similar lines can be found in the texts published by Sandys in Hone's Every-day Book (Hone 1826, 2:122-6) and in Sandys' own Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (Sandys 1833). This line also appears in the play from Silverton, Devon (Fox-Strangways 1899/1900).

The texts of the Irish folk plays before about 1900 conform to a single standard, albeit with a small number of variations between the chapbook and pre-chapbook versions. However, plays with "Irish" features are found in a number of locations outside Ireland--Tenby, Hulme, Manchester, the Isle of Man and of course Truro--all on or close to the Irish Sea coast. There remains the question of how the texts were transmitted. Irish immigration may account for the occurrences in Hulme and Manchester (Cass et al. 2003), but fast packet shipping may also have been a factor. It was, for instance, the reason why there were Liverpool readers of The Cornwall Gazette and Falmouth Packet in 1801 and 1802 [10].

Father Christmas and the Turkish Knight

At this point, I need to digress to make the observation that there appears to be a distinct sub-type of the hero-combat play (as defined in Cawte et al. 1967, 27 and 37) that is characterised by the co-ocurrence of Father Christmas and the Turkish Knight. For instance, out of a representative sample of thirty-one plays containing at least one of these characters, twenty-three (74%) contained both. I hope to explore this hypothesis in more detail at a later date, but for now I will make a few general remarks regarding the sub-type's cast and geographical distribution.

Father Christmas is the introducer of the play, and Saint/King George is the hero, with the Turkish Knight as his adversary. As with all hero-combat plays, the Doctor is brought in to cure the loser of the conflict. A particular characteristic in this sub-type is that the Doctor carries with him a bottle of elecampane. (The bottle of elecampane is also found in the Irish plays, which also have a Turkey Champion with different lines, rather than the Turkish Knight.)