The play performed in some areas of the East Midlands (Cropwell Bishop, and Farnsfield, Notts, for example) was one with Bold Tom as the narrator, his entrance followed by the Recruiting Sergeant, Young Man (who enlists), his lady, Farmer's Man, Sankey Benny (pedlar), Dame Jane (with illegitimate child, said to be Bold Tom's), and then Beelzebub, who challenges anybody who will stand before him and fight. Dame Jane obliges and is clubbed to the ground. Enter the Doctor, etc.

Now part of this play has a definite point of origin (Recruiting Sergeant), but who can say that it wasn't a "updating" of an earlier form: the Recruiting Sergeant, one of the first figures to enter, and the Young Man and the Lady become mere incidental characters after they have recited their verses and the young man is enlisted. I suspect that most of the characters, except the Doctor and Beelzebub, are relatively recent "tweakings" from the lines they speak, but they could have also been contemporary updates from the time of the Recruiting Sergeant. Audiences always react well to things they can relate to, and many performances have topical additions to the script.

On the other hand, it could have been written and first performed in the last couple of hundred years!

My husband used to be in the group that performs this play around Calverton, Notts. He made a wonderful entrance in clog-irons on a sloping tiled floor one year: "In comes I, the farmer's man..." CRASH! Trouble was, it went down so well he had to do a fall at every subsequent performance that year.

Andrea