mummery

But what was once the norm can now seem a kind of ableist mummery, which this production attempts to sidestep by offering a Richard with no physical impairments at all.

From New York Times ● Jul. 11, 2022

Typically, contemporary novelists speak reverently of their form, as if the result were some kind of sacred object, so Alice’s position has a refreshing lack of mummery.

From Slate ● Sep. 1, 2021

“You know what that means,” is all he offered, and, after an evening of portentous headgear mummery, this hint at abdication should not be taken lightly.

From Slate ● Dec. 20, 2019

It's all mummery and flummery, and conducted with a winning amateurishness.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 1, 2012

If we lose the war, she ought to take up mummery, she has a gift for it.

From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin

Nor was it ''mere timidity or fanaticism or calculated hardness: it was a deep and speculative thing: hatred of all shams, scorn of all mummeries, a bitter, merciless pleasure in the hard facts.

From Time Magazine Archive

He grew cold to newsmen, turned his press conferences into funereal mummeries, finally began canceling them altogether.

From Time Magazine Archive

Lukins was first attacked by a kind of epileptic fit, when he was going about acting Christmas plays, or mummeries: this he ascribed to a blow given by an invisible hand.

From Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed by Joseph Taylor

I, as medicine man and chief sorcerer, went through a great many mummeries, which I managed to make last all the forenoon.

From O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas by Gordon Stables

Power unmolested For centuries, vested In impotent sinew and imbecile brain, Altars that rested On mummeries ilested, Tatters to ruin and not in the rain.

From The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 by Various