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THE COURT
and green, with flails and spades of gilt wood, black high-laced shoes made out of the limbs of the previous year's Moors, hedging mittens, and white gold sarcenet aprons, which were 'gyven awaye by the maskers in the queenes presence'. They had eight Hinds for torch-bearers, and a shepherd for a minstrel.[1]
- ↑ The succession of masks for 1558-60 is traceable with the aid of Il Schifanoya from an analysis of the following Revels documents, (a) an inventory of 26 March 1555 (Feuillerat, Ed. and M. 180), (b) the accounts from 26 March 1555 to 29 Sept. 1559 (Feuillerat, Ed. and M. 195-242; Eliz. 79-108), (c) an estimate of the cost of the 1559-60 masks (Feuillerat, Eliz. 110), (d) a 'rere-account' of the uses to which the masks inventoried in (a) and certain stuffs subsequently issued to the Masters of the Revels had been put during 1555-60 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 18), and (e) an inventory of c. May 1560 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 37). There were fifteen sets of masking garments in store in 1555, Mariners, Venetian Senators, Turkish Magistrates, Greek Worthies, Albanian Warriors, Turkish Archers, Irish Kerns, Galley-Slaves (torch-bearers), Falconers (torch-bearers), Palmers (torch-bearers), Turkish Commoners (torch-bearers), Huntresses, Venuses, Nymphs, and Turkish Women. Some of these were no longer serviceable and became fees; the rest were gradually pulled to pieces during 1555-60 and used with fresh material in constructing new sets. As a result the inventory of 1560 contains none of the sets of 1555, but seventeen of later origin, Patriarchs, Actaeons, Hunters (torch-bearers to Actaeons), Nusquams, Turkish Commoners (torch-bearers to Nusquams, not the set of 1555), Barbarians, Venetian Commoners (torch-bearers to Barbarians), Clowns, Hinds (torch-bearers to Clowns), Swart Rutters, Almayns (torch-bearers to Swart Rutters, although not so described), Moors, Diana and her Nymphs, Maidens (torch-bearers to Diana), Italian Women, Fishwives, and Marketwives. The rere-account shows that in the interim between 1555 and 1560 eleven other sets had come into existence and been picked to pieces again. There were Almayns (not the 1560 set), Palmers (not the 1555 set), Irishmen (not the 1555 set), Hungarians, Conquerors, Mariners, or Shipmen (not the 1555 set), Moorish friars (torch-bearers), Fishermen (torch-bearers), Astronomers, and unnamed torch-bearers to Astronomers and to Patriarchs. A number of ecclesiastical costumes had also been made, of which a few were still in store in 1560, and which evidently belong to the mask described by Il Schifanoya. It seems clear from the Revels Accounts that the only new mask between 1555 and the end of Mary's reign was one of Almayns, Pilgrims, and Irishmen on 25 April 1557 (Feuillerat, Edw. and M. 225). This accounts for three of the twelve interim sets. The other nine and the seventeen in the 1560 inventory must all be Elizabethan. The documents give or indicate dates for most of them. A process of exclusions obliges us to place the Conquerors, Moors, and Hungarians in the early part of 1559. Here are three vacant dates. Il Schifanoya tells us that there was a second company of maskers on Shrove Sunday, besides the Swart Rutters, whom the accounts assign to that day. The Hungarians would be appropriate antagonists to the Swart Rutters. There were also two unspecified masks at the time of the Coronation, one on the next day, 16 Jan., the other 'on the Sondaye seven nighte after the Coronacion', which as 15 Jan. was itself a Sunday, probably means 22 rather than 29 Jan. As part of the garments of the Moors had previously been used for the Conquerors (Feuillerat, Eliz. 20), the Moors must have been the later of the two. The
