Playhouse Calls: Folk Play Doctors on the Elizabethan Stage

The English mumming play (formerly "Saint George play"), though of uncertain age, has many analogues in European countries, some dating before 1500. The doctor with his cure recurs in these analogues and in some plays of the Tudor era. Plays by Dekker, Chapman, and Middleton-Rowley are added to the list, as well as plays by Shakespeare with doctor and cure. The cure perhaps evokes a ritual of social healing linked to a folk doctor of English oral tradition.