The Quack Doctor in the Russian Folk and Popular Theatre

Abstract

VIOLET Alford wrote: 'In the farces, still sometimes played in La Soule, a Doctor often appears. He tells boastfully of his travels and the far countries in which he learnt his work. Apres avoir fait le tour de la Prussie, et de la Russie, de l'Angleterre et de la Turquie je suis revenu chez moi: In almost the same words does the Doctor of our Mummers' Play extol himself. It is quite likely that the Masquerade Doctor used the same stock phrases. Where do they come from? Miss Alford's puzzlement at the similarities between the Basque and English Doctors is understandable and might apply equally well to other national parallels, for the comic Doctor in one guise or another is one of the most ubiquitous characters of popular theatre and embryonic dramatic' forms across Europe. Wace's description of the Doctor in a play performed by villagers from Semarina in the Pindus ('First he felt the pulse, then he listened at the soles of the feet to see if the heart was beating . ..)2 must strike a familiar note to anyone who has watched an English Hero-Combat Play, and Frazer's Dr. Iron-Beard from Swabia, who bleeds a sick man 'who thereupon falls as dead to the ground' but whom he subsequently restores to life 'by blowing air into him through a tube,'3 is likewise a part of an age-old European tradition. The Basque mummer spoke of his visit to Russia. Curiously enough in Russia, as it happens, the comic Doctor has a long and complex pedigree in the world of popular entertainment. In his earliest form he took part in the New Year and spring fertility games which involved the death and resurrection of a goat, horse, bull or some anthropomorphic figure. He was the central figure in the cycles of farcical interludes, originally performed between the serious acts of plays in the repertoire of the Academic theatres in the late 17th and 18th centuries, but which in the hands of serm