Lydgate's Mummings and the Aristocratic Resistance to Drama‪.‬

In an article in PMLA in October 1998, W. B. Worthen declared "a conceptual crisis in drama studies." (1) Over the last two decades, the field of performance studies has coalesced around assertions of the primacy of temporal performance over the presumed authority of the written text; thus drama studies, from which performance studies emerged, has been left in a critical quandary. The essential problem, Worthen says, is that "the burgeoning of performance studies has not really clarified the relation between dramatic texts and performance." (2) Also in 1998, Derek Forbes staged Lydgate's Mumming at Hertford at Hertford Castle, the location of its original performance, and then published his adapted text along with an account of the production under the title Lydgate's Disguising at Hertford Castle: The First Secular Comedy in the English Language. (3) The subtitle is erroneous, but Forbes's production was the first stage presentation of this or any of Lydgate's mummings since their original performances in the late 1420s. (4) To accomplish his restaging, however, Forbes had to make numerous alterations to Lydgate's text beyond simply updating the language--including having an actor in the role of King Henry VI, and providing dialogue for players who were originally mute.