Dumb Show Term Analysis

A dumb show is a pantomime, almost like the theatrical equivalent of a wordless movie montage. In Jacobean theater, pantomimes were often used to fill audiences in on major plot events without dramatizing them in detail (i.e., the dumbshow in The Changeling depicts Beatrice and Alsemero’s wedding in a matter of seconds rather than devoting a full scene to the ceremony). Though the most famous dumb show of all time occurs in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the device was used in many 16th- and 17th-century English plays.