From stage to folk: a note on the passages from Addison's Rosamond in the "Truro" mummers' play - Topics, Notes And Comments

        Rosamond                                   Truro
1. 1. 6 And soft Elysiums rise:                    and soft delusions
                                                   rise
sometimes producing nonsense:

         Rosamond                                  Truro
1. 1. 13 A hundred echoes round us talk:           an hundred ecos
                                                   round us stock
1. 1. 68 Hark, hark! what sound invades my ear?    Hark hark wot
                                                   sonding vads my ears
1. 1. 69 The conqueror's approach I hear.          the conquars a porch
                                                   I hear

Garblings of this kind could have arisen in the course of the writing down of the text from recitation or memory, the writer attempting to reproduce what he heard or remembered hearing (for example "us stock" for "us talk" in Act 1 scene 1, line 13 just quoted). More interestingly, they might also have occurred in the course of the text's living transmission: the retention of the textual material in the performers' memories between performances and its reproduction from memory in performances. Both factors were probably operative, and by themselves, therefore, such alterations can tell us little about the extent and nature of that living transmission.

We are on firmer ground when the play-text, juxtaposed with the original and in the manner of some Shakespearean "bad quartos," displays the same kind of change as can be detected in traditional songs subjected to sustained oral transmission, essentially the generation of verbal repetitions by a process of internal contamination, with a word or phrase from one line replacing the original formulation in another line (Pettitt 1997; 2001). The lines involved can be adjacent:

         Rosamond                                   Truro
1. 1. 37 Ever bending,                              ever ending
1. 1. 38 Never ending,                              ever bending

[this is the one instance of the reversal of the order of lines]

1. 4. 3  Through all the mazes of the grove,        thrue all the
                                                    minglin of the
                                                    groove
1. 4. 4  Through all the mingling tracts I rove,    thrue all the
         or separated by other lines:               minglin tracks of
                                                    love

         Rosamond                                   Truro
1. 1. 13 A hundred echoes round us talk:            an hundred ecos
                                                    round us stock
         From hill to hill the voice is tost,       from hils to hils
                                                    the voices tost
         Rocks rebounding                           rocks rebounding
         Caves resounding,                          ecos resounding.

The Truro play also has a classic instance of the contamination of a whole phrase, prompted by the occurrence of a similar word at the beginning of the lines concerned: