Spenser’s Aesculapius Episode and the English Mummers’ Play

Playhouse Calls: Folk Play Doctors on the Elizabethan Stage

“…Spenser appears to be drawing significant parallels with the mumming play or something like it, though of course the attempted resurrection fails. 10 Hundreds of written scripts of the mumming play exist in Britain and other English-speaking countries, and though none can be dated before 1700, tantalizing hints like this one in Spenser suggest that Elizabethans were familiar with the hero combat, doctor, and cure scene. Although the principal subject of this article is the figure of the doctor, it is worth considering whether he might have existed as we know him in the mumming play during the Elizabethan period, when doctors on stage often seem to echo his behavior.…”