Dumbshow

Dumbshow, also dumb show or dumb-show, is defined by the Oxford Dictionary of English as "gestures used to convey a meaning or message without speech; mime."

[1] In the Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Michael Dobson writes that the dumbshow was originally "an allegorical survival from the morality play".

[2] It came into fashion in 16th-century English drama in interludes featuring "personifications of abstract virtues and vices who contend in ways which foreshadow and moralize the fortunes of the play's characters".

Thomas Holcroft introduced a dumb character in his play A Tale of Mystery (1802), and the device of using a mute to convey essential facts by dumbshow became a regular feature of melodramas.

[3] Cuddon notes three 20th century instances of dumbshow in André Obey's Le Viol de Lucrece (1931), Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953) and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966).