unlike the visitors of Richard II in 1377, they do not, so far as the records show, call upon the guests to take a part in the dancing. This characteristic feature of the primitive ceremony seems, under these particular conditions, to have dropped out. Generally, though not always, there are two sets of disguised persons, lords and ladies, corresponding to the 'double mask' of later days, and these dance together. When they go out, the guests very likely dance amongst themselves, before the 'void', or refreshment of wine and spices, comes in. But of direct contact between disguisers and guests, except in the old-fashioned 'mummery' with its dice-play, there is nothing.
This same divorce between performers and spectators seems to rule in the momeries and entremets, which correspond to the English disguisings in fifteenth-century France and Burgundy, and in many of the intermedii and trionfi of fifteenth-century Italy.[1] But somewhere in Italy, possibly in the carnival masks of Florence, the primitive practice must have survived; and from Italy it made its way back again to France, and also to England, under the rather unjustifiable colour of a novelty.[2] It was on the Twelfth Night of 1512,
- ↑ For France, cf. the examples of 1377, 1389, 1393, 1457, &c., cited by Brotanek, 287, Prunières, 3; the verses of Charles d'Orléans (> 1415) for a mommerie of women (ed. d'Héricault, i. 148); the 'danse en barboire, en laquelle fut dancé à la mode de France, de l'Allemaigne, d'Espaigne et Lombardye, et à la fin en la manière de Poitou' at the betrothal of Claude of France and Charles of Austria in 1501 (Jean d'Auton, Chron. de Louis XII, ii. 99); and the revels during the Italian campaigns of Louis at Pavia and Milan in 1507 (Jean d'Auton, iv. 289, 311). At Milan lords danced 'en masque' and ladies danced 'a relays les unes apres les autres', but it is not definitely said that ladies and maskers danced together. The 'danse en barboire' possibly illustrates the enigmatical barbaturiae of which the nuns of St. Radegund in Poitou were guilty in the eighth century (Mediaeval Stage, i. 362). For Burgundy, cf. Prunières, 10, citing accounts of the crusaders' Feast of the Pheasant (1454), and the wedding of Duke Charles and Margaret of York (1468). In 1454 there were dumb shows of the Golden Fleece, followed by the entry of Grâce-Dieu and her train of Virtues, who delivered a speech and then 'commencèrent à danser en guise de mommeries'. In 1468 there were 'entremectz mouvans' of the Labours of Hercules (Olivier de la Marche, ed. Soc. H. F. iii. 134, 143). These shows were given while the guests were still at table. When they were over, the tables were cleared away, and the guests danced.
- ↑ To the entremetz of France correspond the intermedii of Italy. These, as described by Creizenach, ii. 419; D'Ancona, ii. 168, 420; Symonds, Shakspeare's Predecessors, 321; Renaissance in Italy, v. 122; Prunières, 28; Cunliffe, Early English Classical Tragedies, xxxix, and in M. L. A. xxii. 150 and M. P. iv. 597, were entr'actes to late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century plays, but very similar shows were given independently at banquets; e. g. the mimetic chori with Silenus for risus devised by Bergonzio Botta for the wedding of Giangaleazzo Sforza and Isabella of Aragon
