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From stage to folk: a note on the passages from Addison's Rosamond in the "Truro" mummers' play - Topics, Notes And Comments
Folklore, August, 2003 by Tom Pettitt
The 1767 Covent Garden performance is the last recorded in London in the eighteenth century, and there seems to be no evidence of theatrical performance elsewhere. An edition of Rosamond printed in London for J. Harrison and J. Wenmann in 1778 offers, according to its title page, Rosamond: A Tragic-opera. As it is acted at the Theatres-Royal in Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden, but this is largely an advertising ploy: the claim is repeated verbatim on the title pages of some forty-five other plays issued by the same publishers in the years 1778-81. [1] In the case of Rosamond, at least, "was acted" would have been more honest than "is acted," as this edition actually contains Addison's original text as published and acted at Drury Lane in 1707. It is entirely in keeping with this sales pitch that the frontispiece has an engraving of "Mrs. Oldfield in the Character of Rosamond": no Oldfield acted this or any other role in any recorded public performance of Rosamond, and the reference is probably, by way of further advertisement, to Anne Oldfield, who was indeed the most celebrated actress at the time of the work's composition and first performances, but who did not perform in it (she was not a singer) and died in 1730 (Stephen and Lee 1963-4, 990-4).
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The main argument against the scenario of someone returning from London to Truro with odd speeches from Rosamond lodged in his memory is the ready availability of printed editions of the play throughout the eighteenth century, which would have rendered the exercise superfluous. For, whatever its fortunes on the stage, Rosamond was as much or more a success in the book market, and several distinct printing traditions can be identified--all, incidentally, of the libretto without music (and one presumes the Truro mummers knew their lines from Rosamond as speeches, not arias or recitative).
On the periphery of the printing traditions we may discount the text accompanying Samuel Arnold's new music and published in 1767: it actually lacks some of the lines from the Addison text which are borrowed to become part of the Truro play's speech 24 (from "he comes ..." to "... and every wind"). One of the two central traditions in the printing history of Rosamond is publication of the work by itself, starting with what was evidently the authorised first edition printed in London by Jacob Tonson in 1707. Tonson brought out a second edition the same year, and third and fourth editions followed in 1713 and 1725. The editions with the same title printed in Dublin, Glasgow, and London in 1743, 1751, and 1765 are presumably derivatives. Well before this, however, the text had entered its second major printing tradition, encompassed within The Miscellaneous Works, in verse and prose, of the Right HonourabIe Joseph Addison, Esq., edited by Addison's friend Thomas Tickell, the first edition (also printed by Tonson) appearing in 1721. The edition of 1777 (London: W. Strahan et al.) would presumably be the latest that might be the source of the interpolations in the Truro play text of the 1780s.
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