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circumstance occasioned by this practice : it having come to the turn of one of the actors to go on the stage, the ordinary said, " Goe forth, man, and shew thy selfe." The actor, from ignorance, or more probably from a sort of Listonian affected stupidity, stepped forward, made his bow (if bows were then in fashion) and repeated, " Goe forth, man, and shew thy selfe." The ordinary whispered in his ear, " Oh, you marre all the play." The actor, with appropriate gesture, repeated aloud, " Oh, you marre all the play." The prompter then lost his patience, and reviled him with all the bitter terms he could think of, which the actor invariably repeated aloud with a steady serious countenance, as if engaged in the most solemn performance. The ordinary was at last obliged to give over, and the assembly, according to Carew, received " a great deale more sport and laughter than 20 such guaries could have afforded."
Borlase, in his " Natural History of the County," mention three Cornish interludes of the 15th century, in the Bodleian Library: the 1st, containing « The Creation of the World ;" the 2nd, " The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ;" and the 3rd, " The Resurrection." " The Creation of the World," by William Jordan, was written by him in 1611. He was a Helstone man ; but whether the same Jordan who officiated as a sort of city poet laureate about the same time, does not appear.*
The original language of the county became obsolete probably full a century since, and for a long time previous to that, had not been the preva-
* The Shakspearian reader will be amused in this Cornish Interlude to find the expression "Tely valy" used as an exclamation, which will remind him of u Tillie Vallie Lady," &c.; but the language in which it is written does not appear to be pure old Cornish. |
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