Note 1454 — Chapter XVII · MASKS AND MISRULE

Hall, 597, speaks of a disguising in 1519, which apparently included ‘a goodly commedy of Plautus’ and a mask. Away from court in 1543 four players were committed to the Counter for ‘unlawful disguising’ (P. C. Acts, i. 109, 110, 122). They surely played interludes. It may be further noted (i) the elaborate disguisings of Henry VII and Henry VIII, with much action and speechifying besides the dancing, are difficult to distinguish when merely described from interludes. What Hall, 518, calls in 1511 an interlude, seems from the Revels Accounts (Brewer, ii. 1495) to have been really a disguising. Hall, 641, speaks of a ‘disguisyng or play’ in 1522, and Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, i. 136, of a ‘disguising or interlude’ in 1527; (ii) a disguising or dance might be introduced, as entr’acte or otherwise, into an interlude. In 1514 an interlude ‘conteyned a moresk of vj persons and ij ladys’ (Collier, i. 68). In 1526 a moral play was ‘set forth with straunge deuises of Maskes and Morrishes’ (Hall, 719). The interlude of The Nature of the Four Elements (early Hen. VIII) has after the dramatis personae the direction, ‘Also yf ye lyst ye may brynge in a dysgysynge’; cf. Soergel, 21.