The seed of this work was first sown in 1980 when we gave a joint paper on ‘Masks’ to the second annual Medieval English Theatre meeting, which was discussing ‘Props and Costumes’. This was published in Medieval English Theatre 3 and 4, and we then started expanding it into a book. Some time later we realised that we were researching the entire history of medieval theatre, festivity, pageantry, and folk custom. We paused to re-form. Other projects intervened, but the thinking continued and the material kept accumulating. The present book is not complete, but we offer it because we had to stop somewhere.
If we were to thank everyone who has contributed to the project over the last twenty years, the list would comprise the entire community of medieval theatre specialists and a substantial phalanx of other medievalists and early modernists. Here we confine ourselves to those who have helped us over the last push by answering queries, remembering references, helping with translations, checking details in remote libraries, giving access to databases: Richard Beadle, Olga Horner, Malcolm Jones, Gordon Kipling, Tom Pettitt, Andrew Prescott, Bart Ramakers, Graham Runnalls, Susan Rosser, Alison Samuels, Bob Samuels, Roger Savage, Maurice Slawinski, and Zara Zaddy. Others are acknowledged in the footnotes. Besides this, we owe a particular debt of enlightenment to Carl Heap and Dick McCaw of the Medieval Players, to Donato Sartori, mask-maker extraordinary, and to the Joculatores Lancastrienses past and present, the research team who tried out our theories in performance. Our editor, Erika Gaffney, brought things to fruition with a commendable blend of patience and firmness.
All authors owe thanks to their families and friends for putting up with their neglect and preoccupation while the book was being written. The debt we owe ours is far too great and too prolonged to be acknowledged here. Only they – and we – know how much they have given us.
SMC MAT
It has been my wish and intention to draw as sharply as possible the line of demarcation between my facts and the hypotheses by which I have attempted to colligate them. Hypotheses are necessary but often temporary bridges built to connect isolated facts. If my light bridges should sooner or later break down or be superseded by more solid structures, I hope that my book may still have its utility and its interest as a repertory of facts.
Sir James George Frazer The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings (Part One of The Golden Bough) 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1911, 3rd edition) 1: xix–xx.