Mumble-Mumper - Theatre Etymology - Part 16

These days, people don't tend to attribute certain names to actors that they can't hear on the stage. There isn't a movement in theatre like there is in films and television known as mumble acting (which surprisingly even has fans, so the genre and fans call it mumblecore). In theatre, people need to be heard.

However, there are times when an actor cannot be heard. Directors try to avoid having this happen. However, it can always be a problem. It seems to have been more of a problem from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. There was even a term, "mumble-mumper." However, this wasn't applied to any actors. It seems like these actors had to be old. The most common definition found is "An old, sulky, inarticulate, unintelligable actor." It is thought that the term comes from around the year 1860.

Other defitions of mumble-mumper are "an old, inarticulate performer whose lines cannot be easily heard or interpreted by the audience" and "an old, inarticulate actor that the audince struggles to understand." It is fairly obvious why mumble would be part of the term, but mumper is more of a mystery.

Mumble can mean "to speak in a low indistinct manner, almost to an unintellible extent." It comes from the Middle English word momelen or the Dutch world mommelen or the German word mummeln. However, mumper has nothing to do with acting or speaking. It also has nothing to do with the mumps. Mumper means "a beggar, a mandicant; a person who sponges on others." Sometimes the word mumper was only applied to genteel beggars, but it seems to have ended up being applied to all beggars. In some parts of England, the word mumper is only applied to troops of beggars who go from house to house. Sometimes this is on St. Thomas's day or St. Stephen's day.

While this is not theory found by others, I have a theory that an actor may have ended up being a beggar and with the confusion of a troop of beggars and a theatre troupe, that an actor also being a mumper ended up being called a mumble-mumper. Somebody heard the term and liked it, so then it was applied to all old actors who couldn't be understood.

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