The Grasmere Dialect Plays Find!
In an earlier find I talked about Canon Rawnsley and his charming book "Lake Country Sketches". One of my favourite chapters from this book is entitled "At the Grasmere Play". In it Rawnsley tells of a visit he makes to Grasmere where he is lucky enough to coincide with the annual Grasmere play which for generations "the village had come to look upon as part of its very life and soul".
"It was growing dark as I stood by the cottage door. The omnibus, as it drove down from the Raise gap with folk from Keswick coming to see the play, was sending sparks out from behind its 'slipper', as though it were making fireworks. And soon I saw the lamp-lighter lighting up the oil lamps in the quaintly intricate lanes of the village beside the Mere. Knots of people were gathered already at their door-ways talking of the play, and already folk were drawing towards the village hall near the Red Lion. I soon joined them, and passed up a break-neck stairway to a big barn-like room, the back part of which was filled with rough boards knocked up into temporary benches, and the forepart had wooden cottage chairs for reserved seats".
I know that the Grasmere Players still exist and still produce plays in the village every year but I had no idea of the long history which lies behind these amateur theatricals. I decided to delve deeper and discovered, thanks to Jackie the Local Studies librarian at Kendal, some copies of the plays plus some wonderful original programmes. Ladies, obviously those who sat at the front on the cottage chairs, are kindly requested to remove their hats before the start of the play.
I've just done some more detective work and discovered an article which appeared in the New York Times on Sunday 5th February 1911. It is headed "The Grasmere Dialect Play; A Novel Entertainment Seen in an English Village". The article begins 'Grasmere in Winter is like Time and the Pyramids'. It declares that Wordsworth and De Quincey would find little change if they were to return. It continues 'Last night a goodly assemblage met in the village hall to see the annual dialect play, a drama of village life in four acts, entitled "The Mistress of Mosshead". With two or three exceptions the cast seemed to be much the same as in former years. The play itself is the production of the indefatigable local playwright Miss E Simpson of The Wray'.
The article continues with a detailed description of the play which can be read at:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res
11 October 2009 from Mary Rossall
Finds
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
- And Nobody Woke Up Dead
- An accessible paradise
- The Fleming Family novels and Graham Sutton
- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
- Writing on the Wall
- Beyond Scafell by Alan Robinson
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
- In There Somewhere
- The Bondwomen by W G Collingwood
- "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!"
- A Cumbrian Copper by Ray Huddart
- The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
- Old Will Stories by Dudley Hoys
- The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff
- T'Bacca Queen by Theodora Wilson Wilson
- Furness and the Industrial Revolution
- The Shadow of Black Combe
- The Painted Letters of Percy Kelly
- Ivver Sen
- Lakeland in the 1830s
- Wasdale Climbing Book By Michael Cocker
- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
- Deborah in Langdale
- Early Recollections of Grange
- Hazard's Way by Roger Hubank
- Yan, Tan, Tethera
- Talk of the Town
- Capturing the Mountains
- Hope On, Hope Ever
- Mildred Edwards: Our City Our People 1889 - 1978 Memories
- Lakeland Limericks
- Surrounding loveliness
- Haweswater by Sarah Hall
- Coast to Coast by Jan Minshull
- Sunshine To The Sunless
- Geese, cattle wallopers and secret Irish paths
- Anarchists, Angels and wet Bank Holiday Mondays
- A more unconventional kind of find...?
- Skiddaw Summit by Kathleen Jones
- Thorstein of the Mere: A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland
- Wednesday Early Closing
- Smoke Across The Fell
- The Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay
- The Chronicles of Boggerthwaite
- Carrock Fell
- Feet in the Clouds
- Hercules and the Farmer's Wife
- Shepherd's Warning
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
Recent posts
- Thank you!
- Coffee and books at the Bluebell Bookshop
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- Grange over Sands get reading
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