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. 75 And fill with horror ev'ry wind ...    foil of grief and every
                                                wind ... [eight lines
                                                intervene]
1. 4. 9  Full of grief, and full of love!       full of grfe [sic] and
                                                full of woe

Given the example of ballad tradition, and the circumstance that each contamination occurs within a speech by a single character (in the Truro play), these instances encourage the assertion that, when the Truro play was recorded in the 1780s, the inserted passages from Rosamond had been in it through several performances, and so perhaps several seasons.

But there is one further instance of contamination in the Truro text that may permit deeper insight. While there are a few cases of the omission of lines within the text segments quoted, there is only one instance of a line being added, and it derives, as Tiddy noted, from another scene in Rosamond, albeit one already used (Act 1 scene 4) for other borrowings:

       Rosamond                                  Truro
       Page.                                     Penty Landin 24
                                                 [= Henry's Page?]
1.1.68 Hark, hark! what sound invades my ear?    Hark hark wot sonding
       The conqueror's approach I hear.          Vads my ears the
       tis Henrys march tis Henry tune/I now     conquars a porch I
                                                 hear
70.    He comes, victorious Henry comes!         he comes he comes
                                                 victorus Henry comes

1.4    Sir Trusty.
71     But hah! a sound my bower invades,
       And echoes through the winding shades;
       'Tis Henry's march! the tune I know ...

As in the preceding instance, except that the process adds a line rather than substituting a formulation, recollection from memory has been disturbed by the occurrence at two points in the text of similar formulations: "what sound invades my ear" (Act 1 scene 1, line 68), "a sound my bower invades" (Act 1 scene 4, line 71). In this case, the purely verbal parallel is reinforced by a dramatic equivalence: both speeches in Rosamond are the exclamation of a subordinate figure on hearing the approach of the king (respectively, the Page attending on the Queen and the gentleman entrusted with care of Rosamond). These correspondences have induced the performer to introduce into the first instance a line from the second, "Tis Henry's march! the tune I know," before recovering and reverting to the proper sequence. But of course this can only have happened if at least part of Sir Trusty's speech from the end of Rosamond Act 1 scene 4 was once present in the memory of the Truro actor who speaks the Queen's Page's lines from Rosamond Act 1 scene 1 (that is, Penty Landin or a predecessor who transmitted his part).