A Mummy Play

The Mummy, or Liquor of Life was originally a British play but was so successful and funny it found a welcome audience in America. Properly deemed a "farce"  it is a comic work utilizing buffoonery and horseplay, including crude characterizations and ludicrously improbable plot.

The story is simple--a man (Canter) is in love with a woman (Fanny), and in order to impress her, decides to find an Egyptian mummy for her father (Mandragon), who owns a museum, and who wishes to perform revitalization in the mummy via "a liquor of life." Unable to find a real thing, he persuades his friend Toby to act the part. Toby agrees but finds the work dusty and hot and decides to sneak out of his coffin for a drink. He not only finds the "liquor of life" but also a fine bottle of brandy. He drink the first and finds it nasty and distasteful and so he switches the labels. In the meantime another gentleman has arrived with a REAL mummy, and proposes to test which one is authentic by attempting to revive it. The bottle switch is the key here, as of course it doesn't do a thing for the real mummy but it certainly does animate Toby. After a bit of folderol, Canter wins the hand of the lovely Fanny and all's well that ends well.

Toby, as the mummy, is dressed in a "dark brown shape dress with red and blue stripes." Hardly the usual dress of a mummy, but I suppose it is theatrical license to indicate the stripes in mummy wrappings! In the picture from the play, he does wear a vaguely Egyptian headdress (sort of a nemes), and appears to be dark-skinned, although there is no indication that the mummy should be in blackface.

The play is not long and must have afforded contemporary audiences with a great deal of laughter at the characters and the situations. This certainly is a forerunner of burlesque, vaudeville and even slapstick comedy.