Tempo's Sickle: Rapping, Zapping, Toasting, and Trekking through History in Black British Drama

Abstract

In September 1978, when the con man, illegal immigrant, and putative Black Jew, Meadowlark Rachel Warner, hit the Hampstead Theatre audience with his unstoppable Jamaican patois, he created a new precedent in the representation of blacks, and particularly of black English vernacular, in British theatre. Meadowlark's eloquent acrolect, half well-observed imitation, half music-hall caricature, is an upgraded version of one of the theatre's oldest verbal resources, namely the outrageous chatter of the persuasive trickster: I a hypocrite, I a lying cheat, I a sponger, I a dirty bastard what livin off of women, an floggin two woolly caps either end of the stadium, an keepin two fish in de sky stead of one bird in the sea, always broke, man, always runnin, trying to cheat de honest public, tekkin de easy way out, snitchin a quid here, an hustlin one dere, never stop watchin where de main chance! Right?1