Title: Acting Charades or Deeds Not Words, A Christmas Game to Make a Long Evening Short
Author: The Brothers Mayhew
Publisher: D. Bogle
Year of printing: 1850
Notes:
It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a time before TV, radio, or even recorded music existed, but people still had the human desire to unwind and be entertained in the evening. Without other options, a greater emphasis was placed on what today we would call “family” or “party” games. This book describes one such game, called “Acting Charades”.
Similar to standard charades, players pick a word and try to get other plays to guess it. But in Acting Charades, they try to convey the word by acting out elaborate plays — one for each syllable, and then one for the overall word. This book contains a variety of words to use in the game, along with detailed, suggested plays to go along with each syllable and word. Each play contains multiple characters, costumes, sets, storylines — but no dialogue. It truly does seem like it would fill a long evening!
The book is framed as a Christmas book, with a beautiful red and gilt cover reminiscent of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and a lively hand-colored frontispiece featuring Father Christmas. However, the actual content has nothing to do with the holiday.
The book is a fascinating time capsule — within the first few sentences of the introduction, the authors manage to demean the French: “The French have made themselves singularly famous by their ‘petit jeux’ as they call them. Their inability to sit still for more than half an hour has forced them to invent a long list of amusing excuses for locomotion.” The plays themselves are interspersed with slightly offensive stereotypes of various groups of people, and other antiquated references like “car” referring to a horse drawn carriage, “blunderbuss” being a household gun, and “monthly nurse” referring to a woman who looks after a new mother and baby.
The Brother Mayhew refers to Henry (1812-1887), Augustus (1826 – 1875), and Horace (1816 – 1872) Mayhew. Henry, in particular, founded Punch magazine, a popular and influential humor magazine which coined the word “cartoon” and ran from 1841 to 2002. This book was illustrated by Henry George Hine (1811 – 1895), who was also well-known for illustrating Punch.
Historical context:
In 1850, Victoria was Queen of Great Britain. Besides acting charades, families would read serialized novels together, play moral boardgames such as The Mansion of Happiness, or rowdy parlor games like “snapdragon”, where raisins would be doused in brandy and set on fire, then eaten to extinguish the fire. Commercially available recorded music appeared in the 1880s, setting the stage for more passive evening activities.
Further Reading:
- Full text on Google Books
- Library entry at Jisc
- Entry at Bodleian Library, Oxford University
- The Brothers Mayhew – Oxford University Press
- Henry George Hine – Lambiek Comiclopedia
- Punch Magazine – Wikipedia
Acquired in June, 2026