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Dumbshow, alsodumb show ordumb-show, is defined by theOxford Dictionary of English as "gestures used to convey a meaning or message without speech; mime." In the theatre the word refers to a piece of dramaticmime in general, or more particularly a piece of action given in mime within a play "to summarise, supplement, or comment on the main action".[1]
In theOxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Michael Dobson writes that the dumbshow was originally "an allegorical survival from themorality play".[2] It came into fashion in 16th-century English drama in interludes featuring "personifications of abstract virtues and vices who contend in ways which foreshadow and moralize the fortunes of the play's characters".[2]
There are examples inGorboduc (1561) throughout which dumbshow plays a major part, and inThomas Kyd'sThe Spanish Tragedy (1580s),George Peele'sThe Battle of Alcazar (1594) andThe Old Wives' Tale (1595),Robert Greene'sFriar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1594) and the anonymousA Warning for Fair Women (1599).[3]Shakespeare used dumbshow inHamlet, for theplay within a play staged by Prince Hamlet and the players for King Claudius. That, like Revenge's dumbshow inThe Spanish Tragedy, suggests by mime the action soon to take place in the main spoken drama.[4] In Dobson's view the dumbshow was becoming old-fashioned by Shakespeare's time, and the playwright's most elaborate dumbshows are inPericles, a play intentionally constructed in "a mock-medieval dramatic idiom".[2] In the 17th century, dumbshow survived as an element of the courtlymasque, and in the Jacobean tragedies of Webster and Middleton dumbshows are featured in masque-within-the-play episodes.[2]
From the 1630s the dumbshow no longer featured in mainstream British drama, but it resurfaced inharlequinades,pantomimes andmelodramas in the 19th century.Thomas Holcroft introduced a dumb character in his playA Tale of Mystery (1802), and the device of using a mute to convey essential facts by dumbshow became a regular feature of melodramas. In hisDictionary of Literary Terms (first published in 1977),J. A. Cuddon lists 19th century plays with the titlesThe Dumb Boy (1821),The Dumb Brigand (1832),The Dumb Recruit (1840),The Dumb Driver (1849) andThe Dumb Sailor (1854).[3]
Cuddon notes three 20th century instances of dumbshow inAndré Obey'sLe Viol de Lucrece (1931),Samuel Beckett'sWaiting for Godot (1953) andTom Stoppard'sRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966).[3]