Prince Arthur and Katharine of Aragon in 1501.[1] On the first night three great pageants were successively wheeled in. The first was a castle drawn by four beasts and bearing eight disguised ladies. The second was a ship with mariners, whose 'counteynaunces speaches and demeanor' doubtless furnished an element of comedy. They brought Hope and Love, who were ambassadors from the third pageant, a Mount of Love, which bore eight knights. These descended and assaulted the castle, and finally the ladies yielded and knights and ladies danced together. On the second night the pageants represented an arbour and a lanthorn; on the third two mountains; on the fourth, at Richmond, a chapel. Very similar to these revels of Henry VII's reign are those described by the chronicler Halle during the early years of that of Henry VIII.[2] Many variations are possible. There is not always a pageant. The comic element may take the form of a 'morris'. The whole thing may form a setting or after-*piece to an interlude. Occasionally a dicing is introduced, and to this variety the term 'mumming' or 'mummery' appears by the sixteenth century to have been specialized.[3] The more generic term is 'disguising'. For all its elaboration, the early sixteenth-century disguising retained many of its original features. Vizards and torches are employed. The disguisers come in suddenly, as a surprise to the guests. But
- ↑ Leland, Collectanea, v. 359; Reyher, 500; from Ralph Starkey, Booke of Certain Triumphes (Harl. MS. 69, f. 29v); Grose and Astle, The Antiquarian Repertory, ii. 249.
- ↑ Halle, i. 15, 21, 22, 25, 40; Brewer, ii. 2, 1490 sqq., from Revels Accounts (Misc. Bks. Exch., T. of R. 217).
- ↑ 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 xx^{li} 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).
