Note 518 — V THE MASK

Brotanek, 118; Reyher, 14, citing, inter alia, A Manifest Detection of ... Diceplay (Percy Soc. lxxxvii), 37, 'If it be winter season when masking is most in use ... they hire ... a suit of right masking apparel, and after, invite divers guests to a supper, all such as be then of estimation, to give them credit by their acquaintance, or such as ... will be liberal to hazard some thing in a mumchance; by which means they assure themselves, at the least, to have supper scot free; perchance to win xxˡᶦ about. And howsoever the common people esteem the thing I am clear out of doubt, that the more half of your gay masks in London are grounded upon such cheating crafts, and tend only the pouling and robbing of the King's subjects'. The dice were loaded otherwise for Richard II. A 'mummery', with 'foure visards, foure gownes, a boxe and a drumme', is dramatized in Soliman and Perseda (Boas, Kyd, 189), ii. 1, 187, where for 'Charleman is come' (l. 228), lege 'Christemas is come'. It is in dumb show, which confirms the supposed etymological connexion with 'mum' (cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 396). 'Mumchance' is a common term for dice-play. But the French momon, momerie, and Italian mumia do not appear to have been specialized in the English sense. 'Some goodly mummery at supper' was planned for the meeting of Henry VIII and Charles V at Gravelines in July 1520 (Rutland Papers, C. S. 54). Jonson introduces Mumming as a dancer in his Masque of Christmas (1616).