Scrabble?! DUMBSHOW

Definitions of DUMBSHOW in various dictionaries:

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." In the theatre the word refers to a piece of dramatic mime in general, or more particularly a piece of action given in mime within a play "to summarise, supplement, or comment on the main action".In the Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Michael Dobson writes that the dumbshow was originally "an allegorical survival from the morality play". 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".There are examples in Gorboduc (1561) throughout which dumbshow plays a major part, and in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (1580s), George Peele's The Battle of Alcazar (1594) and The Old Wives' Tale (1595), Robert Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1594) and the anon