Resumen de THE PRINCE OF PEACE AND THE MUMMERS: Richard II and the Londoners’ Visit of 1376/1377
This is an expansion of material which Sarah Carpenter and I treated briefly in Masks and Masking.¹ It shows how a folk custom can be adapted, overtly as a mini-drama, and covertly as a means of political negotiation. It also shows how context, expectations, and costume can between them create a message, a message the more powerful because, according to the ‘rules’ of the game, it is delivered in complete silence. Besides this, it raises salutary caveats about our modern expectations: that the ostensible message will be the same as the underlying one.
