Chapter 13

Terminology

The terminology for masking in the pre-modern period is flexible and, as might be expected, not always consistent, at least to modern eyes. Consequently, although we may set out to provide a comprehensive definition of the vocabulary, this can never be fully realised. Nonetheless the nuances and ambiguities thrown up by the attempt are significant in themselves and, as with most such exercises, definition becomes less important than implication and connotation. The boundaries of the semantic field of any one of the terms used below do not map precisely to the boundaries of our modern equivalents, but the interest of the exercise lies precisely in the places where they do not, because this can reveal unexpected assumptions about the nature of masking and the implicit categories into which it was placed. An apparent ambiguity may be the clue to a different mode of thinking, and open a window on an entirely new view of pre-modern masking.

Nor do the terms remain static, and the very process of translating some of the quotations in this book has thrown the problems into sharp focus. At what point, for example, did a larva cease to be ‘a frightening apparition’ and become ‘a face mask’? Was it possible that it meant both at the same time, but that the language available for our translation cannot accommodate this? Equally, is it possible that we are translating by hindsight, imposing a later meaning on an ambiguous sentence structure,¹ or seeing what we want to see because it fits our thesis? (It is a wholesome corrective to read William Prynne’s 1633 translations of some of the early church decretals: his own polemic concerns demand that spectacula should be translated as ‘Stage-playes’ and histriones as ‘Stage players’ almost throughout.)

At its most basic, the history of the semantics of a word can be the history of the activity or object it describes. Furthermore, the etymology of a word can reveal a whole pre-history of implications which may well have lingered on even when the word seems firmly to have adopted its later meaning. This section, from being the straightforward glossary we intended, has thus become a more tentative supplement to the explicit ideas and theories expressed in Chapter 11.

One word that is not used in English until the very end of the period is mask itself. The earliest citation in the OED to mean the object that covers the face dates from 1534, but the word does not generally have this use until the 1580s. In the Revels accounts mask almost always refers to an entertainment (later spelt masque, and confusingly to be found under this spelling in the OED): Sir Thomas Cawarden, the first Master of the Revels, is described in his patent of 1554/5 as Magister … iocorum revelorum et mascorum omnium et singulorum nostrorum vulgariter nuncupatorum revelles and Maskes (‘Master of our pastimes of revels and masks, all and singly, known in the vernacular as revelles and Maskes’).² By extension mask may mean the costumes and gear associated with the entertainment: when John Holt, the Yeoman of the Office, is paid in 1546/7 ‘for carrying maskes to & fro the Cowrte at v^s the nyght’ he is taking the entire production – costumes, props, and equipment.³ Similarly ‘maske heddes’ and ‘headpeces for maskes’ are head-dresses for the disguising; there are only two instances where the word appears to denote the object, in the doublet phrase ‘vezars or maskes’.⁴ Mask at this stage is a French loanword, which suggests that it was adopted as a name for the pastime from the court of Francis I.⁵ It also has an interesting and somewhat enigmatic history in earlier folklore, which we discuss more fully below.

Probably the least ambiguous term for the face-covering object in the period, though it too presents its problems, is viser, which the OED cites in this meaning from the early fourteenth century. In Latin versions, the Medieval Latin Wordlist cites it as viserium from 1239; Ducange’s glossary as viseria from 1298. This was probably the latinisation of the French word: a variety of early-thirteenth-century English/Anglo-Norman glosses of Latin larva appear as (la) visere.⁶ Other English spellings include visar, vesern, and wesseren; visard is a later sixteenth-century spelling. A viser, as the name suggests, is something which covers the vis or ‘face’, making the term roughly equivalent to the Greek term for a theatre mask, prosopeion. Vis, a French loan word, was current in English in the early fourteenth century, but seems to have gone out of fashion later.

The other obvious use of the word viser (later visor) is, of course, for the part of a helmet which covers the face: as we have seen, this can lead to surprising and sometimes revealing ambiguities. Although a helmet visor and a disguising mask, like an armed combat and a courtly dance, may seem entirely different at a distance of five centuries, we have seen the intricate overlap between the courtly performance games of tournament and disguising. In the context of medieval and Tudor court entertainment the act of covering the face, for whatever ostensible reason, seems to unsettle any sense of firm division between the martial, theatrical, and amorous presentation of the self, making the particular referent of the term viser sometimes genuinely indistinguishable. In the Guildford Wardrobe accounts for Christmas 1347, for example, for revels which included both tournaments and disguisings, we find many entries for capita and viseres, both common terms for masks at the time, along with numbers of crestes, a term more usually connected with helmets. While the context, the quantities, and the materials used all suggest that the viseres are disguising masks, there is no proof that they were not decorated helmet visors. The understanding of performance involved suggests that neither the face-coverings, nor the activities were wholly separable. This ambiguity in the common term viser may be a problem for someone attempting a modern generic categorisation, but we need to see it through medieval eyes.

Such deep-seated ambiguity can spill over into popular drama, where the contexts and connotations of particular acts of face-covering may not be wholly clear to us. This is why it is hard to interpret records like the Chester Coopers 1574 entry ‘for the mendinge of arrates vysar’.⁷ As we have seen, it is conceivable that Herod wore a helmet: the Coventry Smiths accounts refer to the ‘mendyng of Arroddes Crast’ and at this period ‘crests’ are most often associated with helms.⁸ But the Smiths’ crested Herod also had a face that was painted: ‘to a peyntour for peyntyng … Herodes face x^d’.⁹ It is not clear whether this face was the face of the actor, or another mask. Or did either of the Herods wear a Maximilian-like grotesque visor?¹⁰ Broadly speaking, however, if a dramatic or theatrical performer is wearing a viser it is likely to be a mask, unless the context suggests differently.

Related terms occasionally appear: in 1573, Sherborne paid ‘for veaysages for the playeres’ in a play of Lot and Sodom.¹¹ Usually, however, the word visage has the more general meaning of ‘face, appearance, expression’, and it is only when qualified with the adjective false that it translates the French faulx visage or ‘mask’.¹²

The word face, which can also sometimes mean ‘mask’, is equally complicated and reveals an interesting set of assumptions. It is a term relatively common in mystery play records. In the Norwich Grocers’ 1565 ‘a face and heare for ye Father’, it clearly means ‘mask’, as it does in the 1568 Coventry Drapers’ ‘payd for makyng the ij devells facys x^s’.¹³ Another year the same Drapers had ‘payd for a demonys face ij^s’, which suggests a mask; but in the same accounts they also ‘payd for blakyng the Sollys fassys’ which sounds much more like make-up.¹⁴ It is clear that face may signify either the mask or the face it covers, so references to the painting of ‘faces’, both at Coventry and Chester, usually need to be considered individually. For example, in 1477 the Coventry Smiths had paid 10d ‘to a peyntour for peyntyng the fauchon & Herodes face’: the fact that falchion and face are both mentioned in the same item suggests that both are props; compare the 1516 entry ‘Item payd to a peynter for peyntyng & mendyng of herodes heed’, and the 1547 ‘Paid to John Croo for menddyng of Herrode hed and a mytor’.¹⁵ On the other hand the 1499 ‘Item paid to the paynter ffor peyntyng of ther fasses viijd’ sounds, again, more like make-up.¹⁶

Where items for painting faces turn up regularly year after year, as with the Chester Smiths’ ‘for guildinge of litle Gods face’ which costs a regular 12d from 1545 to 1569, it presumably refers to make-up.¹⁷ The same would apply to the Chester Shoemakers’ ‘ffor geyldeng of godes ffase & ffor peyntyng of the geylers ffases’ in 1549.¹⁸ But the 1574 Sherborne ‘for gilting of a face for the playe’ sounds more like a mask, simply because of the formulation a face as opposed to X’s face.¹⁹ The Chester Painters’ 1571 ‘paintes to bone the pleares’ may have been used as stage make-up, or more generally to touch-up props and costumes: there is no way of telling.

An underlying reason for the particular ambiguity surrounding the term face is that, as we have seen, the wearing of masks and the painting of faces at this time seem to have been considered very much as equivalents;²⁰ consequently the same formulae tend to be used for both. God in York wears a gilded mask, as probably also in Norwich, Sherborne, and Beverley; but in Chester the gilding is applied directly to His face.²¹ In the York Doomsday the ‘evell saules’ had masks, while in Coventry their faces were blackened.²²

Popular masking games suggest the same interchangeability of mask and face-paint. The 1418 London proclamation against mumming brackets ‘eny feynyd berdes, peyntid visers, disfourmyd or colourid visages in eny wyse’.²³ False beards, painted masks, altered and coloured faces, are all grouped together indiscriminately because they all produce the same effect: to render the wearer unrecognisable. While face-paint may not seem as complete a disguise as a mask, the strong pigments used in popular masking games can be just as effective in wiping out the identity of the wearer. A French prohibition against mumming from Lille in 1395 forbids masking de nuit a tout faulx visage ou le visage couvert par mascarure ou autrement (‘at night with any false face, or the face covered by blacking or otherwise’).²⁴ This similarly seems to equate mask and black face-paint: although Godefroy’s Dictionnaire translates mascarure in this passage as masque, it is more likely to mean ‘blacking’ as the verb maschurer means ‘tacher, salir, barbouiller, noircir’.²⁵ Another quotation in Godefroy suggests that the early-seventeeth-century theorists even sought a classical origin for the conflation of mask and black-face:

Les Coribantes avoient este inventeurs des masques et mommeries, qu’ils s’embarbouilloient le visage avec du noir, d’ou est descendu ce nom maschure.²⁶

The Corybantes were the inventors of masks and shows, for which they smeared their faces with black, from whence comes the name maschure.

The connection, and the ambiguity, between mask and blackened face is clear.

In fact even non-theatrical make-up tends to be associated with masks. Etienne de Bourbon, the thirteenth-century Dominican preacher, refers to ioculatores qui ferunt facies depictas que dicuntur artificia gallice, cum quibus ludunt et homines deludunt (‘entertainers who wear painted faces which are called artifices in French, with which they play and deceive men’). These facies depictas, ‘painted faces’, are clearly masks, artifices. But Etienne introduces his theatrical reference to inveigh contra illas que, cum sint vetule, quasi ydola se pingunt et ornant, ut videantur esse larvate (‘against those women who, when they are old, paint and deck themselves out like idols, so that they seem to be masked’).²⁷ Once again, the conflation of mask with face-paint seems clear.

Modern expectations of stage make-up are rather different; throughout most of the last century it has been thought of as something that every actor wears, not to disguise but to enhance the natural features. The usual justification for this is the advent of stage lighting, but with developments in technology and theatre practice it clearly became more of a ritual than a necessity. Is it, however, possible that medieval performers ever wore anything like such ‘natural’ make-up? Both the materials used and contemporary attitudes to women’s cosmetics would seem to suggest otherwise.²⁸ This may be, indirectly, confirmed by the sixteenth-century Italian discussion of stage make-up reported in Stella Mary Newton’s book on Renaissance theatre costume.²⁹ The opinions expressed there seem close to modern attitudes, also vehemently repudiating the use of masks and false beards as impeding the actor. Such views are probably part of the new and revolutionary movement of the time toward greater naturalism in performance. The conclusions Newton reaches about earlier practice echo our general sense of the equivalence of mask and face-paint in the medieval period: ‘The changing of the character of the face by the use of make-up as an alternative to the mask seems to have been normal in stage productions of the fifteenth century’.³⁰

Another commonly used masking term is head. This can be used for a mask, especially a full-head mask, as in the 1498 Coventry Smiths’ ‘peynttyng of the demones hede’.³¹ More often, though, it means ‘head of hair, wig’, as in the Leicester 1504 ‘Paid for a pound of hemp to mend the angels heads, iiij^d’.³² Such records as the Coventry Smiths’ 1495 ‘paid to Wattis for dressyng of the devells hede viij^d’ might refer to either.³³ If head was not used for ‘wig’, we would have to assume that almost the entire cast of the Coventry Cappers’ Harrowing and Resurrection in 1566 were wearing masks, including Pilate and the three Maries, as well as the Spirit of God, God, the Demon, and three Souls. Although this is not impossible, by comparison with other plays it seems unlikely; but it is perfectly feasible that they all had wigs (also referred to as cheverels, chevelers, and faxes).³⁴ Wigs in fact appear to have been one of the main items of costume: even the Norwich Serpent had ‘a whitte heare’ (a blonde wig), presumably for a female Eve-face.³⁵

Wigs, although not directly covering the face, share many of the face-altering properties of masks, and seem to have been thought of as belonging to much the same category. Female characters played by male actors, as most were, needed flowing hair. A French satirical monologue of the late fifteenth century, which mocks a current fashion for long wigs for young men, actually suggests that youths with this style look perfectly set to play such roles:

Le jour du Sacrement, l’un d’eux

Jouera l’Annonciation,

Pour ce qu’ilz ont si beaulx cheveulx! …

Ilz portent ungz cheveulx de laine,

Tous propres, pignez et bien paingz

Pour jouer une Magdaleine.³⁶

On Corpus Christi day one of them will play in the Annunciation, because they have such lovely hair … They wear wigs of wool, all clean, combed, and dyed well enough to play Mary Magdalene.

It also appears to have been a recognised convention on the stage, as in visual art, for virtuous biblical characters to be distinguished from contemporary figures by long hair. The Apostles in the York Creed Play all have chevelerz, as do many angels.³⁷ Such hair was variously rationalised: Durandus suggests that Apostoli … pinguntur criniti, quasi Nazarei, id est sancti (‘The Apostles are painted with long hair like Nazarites, that is, holy’); Dives and Pauper claims that the Angels’ hair is curled ‘in tokene that here thoughtys and here love beth set alwey in ryght ordre and turnyn alwey up agen to God’.³⁸ The short male hairstyles during most of the fifteenth century would make wigs a necessary item of costume for actors playing Apostles or Angels.

The ambiguity between ‘mask’ and ‘wig’ in the term head may also relate to the fact that wigs and other kinds of headgear were sometimes attached to masks to make a unified head-piece. The York Creed Play inventories offer a good example of how such headgear can be itemised separately yet classed together. In 1449 we find xiij dyademz cum una larva aurata cum chevalerz (‘thirteen diadems with a gilt mask with wigs’).³⁹ The gilt mask is for Christ, apparently supplied with diadem and wig; the twelve other diadems with wigs are for the Apostles. The set is then referred to as xiij diademz cum les chevalerz (‘thirteen diadems with the wigs’). By 1464 three of these headdresses appear to have been lost: x diademata pro christo & apostolis cum una larva & aliis novem cheverons (‘ten diadems for Christ and the Apostles with one mask and nine other wigs’).⁴⁰ Here mask seems to subsume ‘wig’ just as in 1449 in the second list one chevaler included a mask. It seems to be implied that they are somehow attached to make a single composite headpiece.

Similarly, though it cannot be proved, the Norwich ‘face and heare for the Father’ were probably attached to each other. Another version of a ‘mask-and-wig’ is recorded for the chief character of Wisdom who wears ‘wpon hys hede a cheweler wyth browys’, which sounds like a half-mask with wig attached.⁴¹ Unified headpieces may well feature in the York Mercers’ 1433 indenture: ‘Array for ij evell saules … ij vesenes & ij Chavelers Array for ij gode saules … ij vesernes & ij Chevelers’.⁴² But the rest of this York document demonstrates the uncertainty of relying even on what appears to be a legal inventory to provide complete information about costume and props for a play: there is a bewildering permutation of diadems, chevelers, and vesernes for Christ and the twelve (presumably) Apostles. Christ has a ‘diadem with veserne gilted’ but no cheveler unless it is included with the mask; three Apostles also have diadems and masks but no wigs are mentioned, while four others have diadems with ‘Chevelers of 3alow’ but no vesernes. The remaining Apostles have no headgear at all. It seems unlikely that they would be allowed to appear as such a motley set: perhaps various Apostles took costume accessories home, so they did not appear in the inventory.

As with wigs, there seems a strong connection between masks and beards. Beards not only partly conceal the face, they can drastically alter a familiar silhouette, and in predominantly clean-shaven ages must have helped to make symbolic statements about age, status, and position. Wisdom wore a ‘berde of golde of sypres curlyed’, along with his wig-and-mask. The use of beards apparently attached to masks goes back at least to Edward III’s Christmas festivities at Guildford in 1347, where xiiij. similitudines facierum hominum cum barbis (‘fourteen likenesses of faces of men with beards’) figured among the other more exotic viseres.⁴³ The later Revels accounts frequently record such items as ‘i dozen of viserdes with shorte berdes yellowe and blacke haulfe a dozen of the one and half A dozen of the other at xx^d the pece’.⁴⁴ Beards in fact played a prominent part in disguisings, indicating how fully they were associated with concealment of identity. Hall’s comment on the 1527 Greenwich disguising that ‘these persones had visers with sylver berdes, so that they were not knowne’ is characteristic.⁴⁵

In the sixteenth-century drama, as Bevington points out, beards, without masks, offered a convenient way of changing character in plays that called for doubling.⁴⁶ Their use as identifiers was taken seriously: in the late morality Like Will to Like, when the two layabouts Tom Tosspot and Rafe Roister lose their fine clothes, it is specified that they enter ‘no cap or hat on their head, saving a night cap because the strings of the beards may not be seene’.⁴⁷ Bottom the Weaver seems to expect a repertoire of variously coloured beards to be a standard part of any good amateur wardrobe, while the interlude players in Sir Thomas More are reluctant to proceed at all until ‘a long beard’ is brought from Ogle’s.⁴⁸

The head, then, might refer to mask, hair, or any combination of the two. It often seems to be the case that the viser was a mask covering the face only, while a head concealed the whole head, sometimes resting on the shoulders in the manner of a helmet. The famous Bodley Alexander animal maskers wear this kind of complete headpiece, the join at the neck concealed by a shoulder cape [PLATE 1C].⁴⁹ It appears to be common practice for animal heads, which are obviously more realistic if the whole shape is reproduced. Such headpieces might even dispense with the face-concealing viser, as seen in the fifteenth-century French sketch of disguisers wearing splendid headpieces of domestic birds, the maskers’ faces peering out through their beaks.⁵⁰ In mystery play accounts the word head is most often used of devil costumes whose animal-characteristics are best presented in a full-head mask.⁵¹ When the Chester Innkeepers hired a devil’s costume from the Weavers in 1594, they paid ‘for the dye mans coute and heade pese’, clearly conceived as two separate items.⁵² This is confirmed in the striking illustration of devil’s disguise from Maugis d’Aigremont [PLATE 22]. There may even be an intentional distinction in the York Mercers’ 1526 inventory between the ‘ij dewell heddes’ and the ‘wesserons’, which are face-masks only for the human characters.⁵³

The Latin words for ‘face’ and ‘head’, facies and caput, are used as loosely as their English counterparts. The Wardrobe accounts for the 1347 festivities at Guildford might initially appear to make some kind of distinction between viseres, facies, and capita. The capita, some with wings, represent dragons, peacocks, and swans. Apart from these the records speak of xlij viseres diversorum similitudinum (‘42 visers of various kinds’), which are listed as similitudines facierum of women and bearded men, and similitudines capitum of angels.⁵⁴ The capita appear to be non-human, the viseres human: though it is not clear whether the angels ‘heads’ are different from the ‘faces’ of the women and bearded men. In the following year’s accounts, however, capita of men, elephants, men with bats’ wings, woodwoses, and maidens are all classed as viseres.⁵⁵ Later again, we find viseres cum capitibus draconum and viseres cum capitibus hominum habentes dyademata (‘masks with heads of dragons’ and ‘masks of men’s heads fitted with diadems’): it is quite unclear what distinctions, if any, are being made here.

So far we have been looking at words whose connotations may sometimes be ambiguous, but whose ambiguity relates either to differing ways of categorising activities, or to the fact that a mask is an alternative face, or to the physical composition of disguising headgear. Our last group of words, including some we have already visited briefly, have a rather different history. They all seem to derive from, or to have been contaminated by, words for supernatural beings of a distinctly atavistic and folkloric nature. They present a different kind of problem, both in terms of the timing of their semantic change and in trying to assess exactly how much of their original paranormal connotations continued to cling to them, and in what way.⁵⁶

At the most basic level, why should the word larva, which originally meant a ‘a malevolent ghost’, have become the standard medieval Latin word for a face mask? Was it because once the classical masked theatre had died out, all that remained were the masks used in masking games, and that at the time they were preponderantly Hallowe’en-style fright-masks?⁵⁷ Did the semantic focus then change by default, first from the being represented to the object which represented it, and then from ‘a frightening mask’ to the generic unmarked ‘mask of any kind’? If so, does this imply a loss of active belief in the larva as a malevolent ghost, even though this meaning turns up in glossaries throughout the period? The change is difficult to map, and must also depend upon the semantic shifts within the nexus of words of which it forms a part. Besides this, though the shift takes place in Latin, it may well have been affected by the usage of its various vernacular equivalents, which are almost completely submerged for the earlier part of the period. They are, however, occasionally cited as equivalents by writers or glossators, which may indicate that they are aware that this kind of exchange is occurring, or even that larva is an unsatisfactory term for the object or activity they are trying to describe.

The most obvious catalyst for the beginning of the shift is the change in meaning of persona.⁵⁸ In classical times this was the standard word for the theatrical stage mask. However, already by the time of Cicero and probably before, the semantic field of persona had extended to include not only the physical object but also the theatrical role it denoted, probably through locutions like ‘He appeared in the persona (‘mask/role’) of the parasite’.⁵⁹ From there, via metaphor, it came to mean ‘one’s role or character in real life’. It was acknowledged that there was much in common between the art of the orator and the art of the actor⁶⁰ and, again possibly originally as a metaphor, it was used in forensic parlance to refer to ‘an individual involved as party to a legal case’, and then ‘the individual in law’. With the demise of masked acting in the theatre, these meanings became uppermost, and in Christian theology it was adopted to denote the Three Persons of the Trinity. In medieval Latin it lost all theatrical nuances, and was generalised in very much the meaning it has as person today.⁶¹ So Aquinas can talk of the hypocritae, qui intrabant theatrum, et habebant unam personam, et simulabant aliam cum larvis (‘hypocrites, who used to make an entrance in the theatre, and had one personality, and imitated another with masks’), with apparently no sense that persona had ever itself meant ‘mask’.⁶² It was revived in its original theatrical sense by Renaissance scholars such as Erasmus, especially when they wished to talk about the ‘masks’ of human character, since they could draw on its added connotations.⁶³ Elyot’s 1538 Dictionary defines persona as ‘a vysour lyke to a mans face, also person or personage, amonge dyuynes and late philosophers: somtyme the qualitie of a man’.⁶⁴

The word that took over, larva, originally meant ‘malevolent ghost’ or ‘spook’.⁶⁵ This was a term connected with popular folklore. The Larvae, like the Lemures, were associated with the spirits of the dead, malignant and frightening, spectral or skeletal, and needing to be expelled with incantations.⁶⁶ Human beings could be possessed by them and are then called larvatus, ‘bewitched’.⁶⁷ In the seventh century, Isidore of Seville defines larva:

Larvas ex hominibus factos daemones aiunt, qui meriti mali fuerint. Quarum natura esse dicitur terrere parvulos et in angulis garrire tenebrosis.⁶⁸

They say that larvae are [evil] spirits made from men who were deserving of evil. Their nature is said to be to terrify small children and twitter in dark corners.

This sounds as if they were used by nurses to frighten their charges. Someone whose face was a ‘fright’ could be insultingly referred to as a larva,⁶⁹

The term masca, our mask, as Enid Welsford points out in her lengthy etymological study, has a very similar history, save that the masca begins as a Germanic rather than a Latin spirit.⁷⁰ Early references seem to record it purely as an evil spirit: Aldhelm’s De virginitate actually links the masca with the larva:

Nam tremulos terret nocturnis larba latebris,

Quae solet in furvis semper garrire tenebris;

Sic quoque mascarum facies cristata facessit,

Cum larbam et mascam miles non horreat audax.⁷¹

For the larva which gibbers in murky shadows and hiding places of the night frightens timid people; so too the crested face of the mascae causes the same effect: however the courageous warrior will not fear the larva or the masca.

Both larva and masca here appear to be spirits whose raison d’être is to frighten by making horrible faces. (The masca even has a ‘crest’, form unspecified, which could be the origin of the wild upstanding hair of the Romanesque devil.) Earlier in the poem Aldhelm tells the story of Dulcitius, famous from Hrotswitha’s later, tenth-century play, who in the dark embraces the pots and pans in the scullery under the delusion that they are three Christian virgins he is about to martyr. When he emerges covered in soot, his followers flee shrieking, thinking he is a larva.⁷²

Welsford quotes the Lombard Laws (c. 800) to show that the masca is equated with the striga, a witch rather than a spirit as such.⁷³ (Latin glossaries seem uncertain about its sex: it appears as both mascus and masca.) Gervase of Tilbury (c. 1155–71234) compares it with both the striga and the lamia female nightmare figures: Lamias, quas vulgò mascas aut in Gallica lingua strias nommant (‘Lamiasy who are called Mascas in the vernacular, or Strias in French’).⁷⁴ It is not clear which ‘vernacular’ Gervase is referring to here, but the early-seventeenth-century scholar Jean Savaron who quotes him specifically says that the word is ‘Masca’ en toscan et Lombard.⁷⁵ It seems likely, then, that masca as a name for a spirit, travelled to Italy with the Germanic Lombards. There it acquired its connection with the face-mask, and then followed much the same semantic route in the vernacular as larva in Latin, as we discuss below.

Both terms are translated in Old English glossaries by variations on the word grīma which in Beowulf denotes ‘a face-mask, especially one on a helmet’, intended to terrify the enemy. But it, too, seems also to have meant ‘phantom, spectre’, and in the Christian contexts in which we meet it, it is largely evil, connected with sorcery.⁷⁶ In the Exeter Book Riddle 40, the gongende grīma seems to be a wandering spirit which frightens the faint-hearted.⁷⁷ In Icelandic the word gríma is also used of the dragon-head on the prow of a ship, which by law was to be detached at landfall, lest the good spirits be frightened.⁷⁸ All three words therefore seem to have referred to some form of frightening and probably malevolent spectre.

It is interesting that all these terms or their descendants are at some point associated with blacking. Dulcitius is identified as a larva because he is covered in soot. The verbs derived from masca can mean ‘to black up’.⁷⁹ We have already seen maschurer. The same verb sometimes appears as masquier and masquillier, the ancestor of the later French maquiller ‘to apply make-up’; the association with blackening came back into English relatively recently with the adoption of mascara.⁸⁰ The word grīma seems to have followed the same path in Germanic languages. It disappears from English after Anglo-Saxon, only to return in the fifteenth century, possibly from Scandinavian or Dutch, as grime meaning, ‘black dirt, soot’: this sense may derive from the Flemish-German custom of popular black-face masking.⁸¹

It seems as if these spectres were black in the face – possibly because, in the case of the larva at least, they were spirits of the dead. Presumably someone dressing up as a spectre, if they could not come by the appropriate mask, would black up. This may explain the image behind Peter Chrysologus’ criticism of Kalends maskers, that … talium deorum facies ut pernigrari possint, carbo deficit (‘there is not enough coal to blacken the faces of such gods thoroughly enough’),⁸² and, over a thousand years later, the sentence in William Horman’s Latin phrasebook Vulgaria, ‘He smered his face with soote: to fraye children’, translated as Ora fuligine infecit ad terrendos paruulos.⁸³ The echo of Isidore (or possibly some later glossator) is plain; but it sounds as if the Eton schoolboys for whom he wrote the Vulgaria were expected to recognise some early form of Hallowe’en guising.

From being a malevolent spirit, larva comes to denote simply ‘face mask’,⁸⁴ but the stages by which it does this are difficult to chart, and the change in meaning may have been later than we might think. Surprisingly perhaps, given its folk connotations, neither Chrysologus nor his fellow bishops nor the early decretals against Kalends masking call the masks larvae. The animal masks are called capita bestiarum (‘wild-animal heads’); Chrysologus mentions the persona of a god, probably a theatre mask;⁸⁵ and Caesarius once talks of putting on a vultus (‘countenance’). But apart from the animal heads they rarely talk about masks as such. They either concentrate on the total effect: a man changes himself in formam mulieris (‘into the shape of a woman’), or dresses ferino habitu … capreae aut cervo similem facere (‘in wild-animal costume … to make himself like a roe-deer or a stag’);⁸⁶ or the use of a mask is implied rather than specified.

And, despite Chrysologus’ charcoal, there is no direct evidence that the maskers were deliberately imitating the appearance of larvae, even if we take daemones as a blanket term to cover the malignant dead as well as the demoted pagan deities.⁸⁷ Only Chrysologus’ daemonibus formauerunt (‘they had transformed themselves into demons’) might be a solitary reference to impersonation.⁸⁸ Caesarius even suggests that the masks are more frightening than demons: vultus induere quos ipsi daemones expavescunt⁸⁹ (‘put on a face at which the very demons are terrified’); but we do not know whether he is exaggerating the effect of animal masking, or talking about a genuine fright-mask.

By the beginning of the tenth century, however, the larva, the daemon and the masca have become conflated, or at least yoked in the same phrase, in which larva may refer to a mask. The influential Decretals of Burchard of Worms, quoting an edict of c. 852, speak of larvas daemonum, quas vulgo Talamascas dicunt (‘larvae of evil spirits, which they call Talamascas in the vernacular’) being ‘borne in front of’ a party-goer.⁹⁰ But it is difficult here to know how to translate larva. It may be a ‘mask’, since it appears that it can be carried or worn, and is mentioned in the same breath as female contortionists and (dancing?) bears. But it might have the dominant meaning of ‘frightening apparition’, and only secondarily that of ‘mask producing this effect’. Talamasca is also obscure. If it is a Germanic word, the tab may be cognate with Old English tāl, tǣl ‘mockery, derision’, related to Old High German zala ‘danger’, and Old Icelandic ‘allurement, device’,⁹¹ in which case it might either mean ‘a fake masca or simulacrum of an evil spirit, or ‘a delusive, deceptive, and dangerous masca’⁹²

The late twelfth-century glossator Hugutius of Pisa, however, defines larva as simulacrum quod terret, quod vulgo dicitur Mascarel, quod apponitur faciei ad terrendos parvulos (‘a terrifying likeness, which is called Mascarel in the vernacular, which is put on the face to frighten small children’).⁹³ The frightening mask and the frightening spirit have coalesced. Hugutius also glosses larva as ‘scarecrow’, a meaning confirmed in later medieval English-Latin glossaries, and preserved in a verse tag which encapsulates the main senses: Larva fugat volucres, faciem tegit, est quoque demon (‘The larva scares away birds, covers the face, is also a demon’).⁹⁴ Thirteenth-century objections to clerical masking at the Feast of Fools retain the sense that the larva mask primarily provokes fear: the clergy wear monstra larvarum or monstruosi vultus. This also suggests that vultus and larva refer to the same thing, though again, the dominant meaning of larva may have been ‘hideous apparition’, and the object that produced this effect only secondary. The context must determine which is uppermost. Gerhoh of Reichersberg, describing the play of Antichrist, speaks of men transforming themselves into women, clerics into warriors, and homines se in daemonum larvas (‘humans into the hideous apparitions of demons’): here the character is foregrounded, rather than the means. However, Thomas of Chobham (thirteenth century) talks of entertainers who transform themselves induendo horribiles larvas (‘by putting on terrifying larvae’)⁹⁵ which suggests masks, and in the 1404 Langres charivari prohibition the participants make use of larvis in figura daemonum (‘larvae in the shape of demons’), which again suggests the object rather than what it represents.⁹⁶

These uses of the word are all qualified by adjectives and phrases asserting horror and the grotesque. However, the next semantic change moves the larva from ‘a frightening mask’ to the more neutral ‘mask’ that appears in some mystery play accounts. It is possible that there is some cross-fertilisation from learned discourse: by the twelfth century the term larva is used in discussions on classical stage-masks, since persona had lost this sense.⁹⁷ Hugutius, despite his gloss on larva, talks of personae larvati (‘masked characters’) in the classical theatre; although since he is discussing tragic drama it is possible that some sense of ‘horrifying’ may still linger in larvatus.⁹⁸ This is less likely, however, in the early-thirteenth-century Beverley records of a larvatorum … repraesentatio (‘a representation in masks’) of the Resurrection, though the exact connotations of this will depend on whether all the characters were masked, or only, possibly, devils in a Harrowing of Hell scene.⁹⁹ Aquinas (c. 1225–74) uses larva of classical theatre masks, contrasting it with persona meaning ‘individual character’.¹⁰⁰ A century later John Bromyard again uses the term apparently neutrally for actors: Ludentes enim in ludo qui vulgariter dicitur miraculos, laruis utuntur (‘For players in the play that is called miracles in the vernacular, make use of masks’); although in the same passage he also associates the larva with devils he seems in context to be referring to the seductively fair false-face rather than to terror.¹⁰¹ The larva aurata of Christ in the York Creed Play¹⁰² may have inspired awe, but it could hardly have been intended to frighten in the same way as the larvae daemonum. And Edward III’s jousting knights ad similitudinem Tartarorum larvati¹⁰³ were doubtless impressively ferocious, but the word itself must merely mean ‘masked’.

By the fifteenth century larva is glossed in dictionaries as visere. The different layers of sense seem at this stage to coexist: the fifteenth-century Ortus vocabularum interprets larva as a spook mask, a demon, a scarecrow, and a vyser.¹⁰⁴ Thomas Elyot’s sixteenth-century Dictionary equally offers:

Larva, a spyrite, whiche apperethe in the nyght time. Some do call it a hegge, some a goblyn. Also a masker, or he that weareth a visour, it is sometyme taken for the same visour.

Larvatus, he that is feared with a spirite,& is become madde. It sommetimes signyfieth a masker.¹⁰⁵

Larva, like grīma, viser, even mask itself, turns out to be a more revealing word than one might expect. Although its precise denotation at any time or in any particular record may be irrecoverable, it conveys a rich sense of the changing uses of masks and the varying attitudes they might provoke, and reminds us that even the ‘best-favoured’ mask can produce a frisson of uncertainty that is akin to fear. The study of the terminology of masking may begin from a need to clarify what is being referred to in the evidence that survives. But unpacking the history of the words can show how the language itself draws together and preserves the whole intertwined history of medieval masking – popular and courtly, theoretical and dramatic.

Notes

¹  C.S. Lewis’ ‘dangerous sense’. Despite its age and its almost total lack of linguistic terms, his Studies in Words (Cambridge University Press, 1960) remains one of the best introductions to the sensitive reading of the vocabulary of older stages of the language. For the ‘dangerous sense’ see 12–14.

²  Feuillerat Elizabeth 53.

³  Feuillerat Edward VI and Queen Mary 5.

⁴  Feuillerat Edward VI and Queen Mary 73, 200; ‘vezars or maskes’ 14 (1546), 31 (1547).

⁵  The earliest reference in the OED (under masque) is from 1514. We do not discuss the forms masker (1519: cited by the OED for the object, but probably the pastime), maskelyn (1510: the pastime) or masquerade (1597: from Spanish via Italian) here. Mask was a Germanic word that may have been in use in England in Anglo-Saxon times, but which dropped out of currency: see below 338–40.

⁶  Tony Hunt Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-century England 3 vols (Cambridge: Brewer, 1991) 2: 78, 84, 116 etc.

⁷  REED: Chester 109.

⁸  REED: Coventry 69.

⁹  REED: Coventry 59.

¹⁰  See chapters 9 and 5 on ‘Mystery Plays’ 218 and ‘Tournaments’ 115–17.

¹¹  A.D. Mills ‘A Corpus Christi Play and other Dramatic Activities in Sixteenth-century Sherborne, Dorset’ in Malone Society Collections 9 (Oxford: Malone Society, 1976) 12.

¹²  For faulx visaige see DuCange Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis sv Visagium falsum; Godefroy Dictionnaire sv visage. For ffals vysage see DeGuileville Pèlerinage lines 13092–4, 13365.

¹³  Non-Cycle Plays xxxv, REED: Norwich 1540–1642 edited David Galloway (University of Toronto Press, 1984) 53; REED: Coventry 247.

¹⁴  REED: Coventry 474, 475.

¹⁵  REED: Coventry 59, 111, 177.

¹⁶  REED: Coventry 93. Compare REED: Coventry 96, ‘item, payd for pyntyng off ther fasus ij^d, (1502); and 181, ‘Payd to the paynter for payntyng the players facys iiij^d, (1548).

¹⁷  REED: Chester 53, 67, 70, 73, 75, 78, 86, 88, 91.

¹⁸  REED: Chester 50.

¹⁹  Mills ‘A Corpus Christi Play’ 12.

²⁰  See chapter 12 on ‘Materials and Methods’ 316–18.

²¹  REED: York 55, 78, 98; Non-Cycle Plays xxxv; Mills ‘A Corpus Christi Play’ 12; Diana Wyatt ‘The Pageant Waggon, Beverley’ Medieval English Theatre 1:2 56–7.

²²  REED: York 55 (1433 inventory).

²³  London: Guildhall Letter Book I, folio 223^r.

²⁴  Godefroy Dictionnaire svv mascarure.

²⁵  See below 340–41.

²⁶  Godefroy Dictionnaire sv maschurer: Du Verdier, 1616.

²⁷  Anecdotes historiques 231, De vano ornato. Roman de la Rose line 8940 also compares painted women to artefices.

²⁸  See chapters 11 and 12 on ‘Ideas and Theories’ 302–4, 308 and ‘Materials and Methods’ 317–18.

²⁹  Newton Renaissance Theatre Costume 213–14.

³⁰  Newton Renaissance Theatre Costume 151–2 (our italics).

³¹  REED: Coventry 93.

³²  Chambers Mediaeval Stage 2: 376.

³³  REED: Coventry 84.

³⁴  Ingram ‘To find the players’ 36–7; REED: Coventry 240–41, 227, 474; REED: York 55, 78, 80, 98; REED: Chester 66, 78, 105.

³⁵  REED: Norwich 1540–1642 53.

³⁶  Guillaume Coquillart ‘Monologue des Perruques’ in Oeuvres edited M. Freeman (Geneva: Droz, 1975) 386–400. We are grateful to Graham Runnalls for this reference.

³⁷  REED: York 78, 80, 81.

³⁸  Durandus Rationale divinorum officiorum 1: 39; Lib. 1, cap. 3: 10; Dives and Pauper 95.

³⁹  REED: York 78; diadems here is likely to mean ‘haloes’.

⁴⁰  REED: York 80, 98.

⁴¹  Wisdom stage direction at line 1: Macro Plays 114.

⁴²  REED: York 55.

⁴³  Nicolas ‘Garter’ 37.

⁴⁴  Feuillerat Elizabeth 95.

⁴⁵  Hall Union 723. One French term for a mask is barboire: see Godefroy Dictionnaire.

⁴⁶  Bevington ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe 92–3.

⁴⁷  Fulwell Like Will to Like line 924.

⁴⁸  Munday and others Sir Thomas More 147: Act 3 Scene 2, lines 140–41, also stage direction at line 277 and lines 292–4. See chapter 12 on ‘Materials and Methods’ 322–3.

⁴⁹  Bodleian Library, Oxford: MS Bodley 264 fol. 181^v (Flemish, illuminated Jehan de Grise, 1339–44).

⁵⁰  Oxford: Ashmolean Museum: French, c.1540. See Newton Renaissance Theatre Costume fig. 79.

⁵¹  REED: Chester 176,179; REED: Coventry 74, 84, 93, 163, 220 etc.; Ingram ‘To find the players’ 36–7; REED: York 241. See chapter 9 on ‘Mystery Plays’ 201–9 for discussion of the devil’s appearance.

⁵²  REED: Chester 179.

⁵³  REED: York 241–2.

⁵⁴  Nicolas ‘Garter’ 37–8.

⁵⁵  Nicolas ‘Garter’ 43.

⁵⁶  Several earlier scholars hint at a direct descent from pagan custom honouring the spirits of the dead: see e.g. Chambers Medieval Stage 1: 263–9, especially note 4 to 239; Enid Welsford Court Masque 32–7 and 94–7. This approach assumes that the original connotations not only linger, but are fully realised, long after the ostensible central meaning has changed. Welsford attempts to link the Greek μορμϖ ‘bugbear, frightening mask’ with mummery via German Mummel, and thus with ‘the souls of the untimely dead’; but as she points out, there is no evidence that this word survived in Greek after the fourth century: Court Masque 32–7.

⁵⁶  This might imply that the beast-masks of the Little Stag and his confederates were not thought of as being that kind of thing. It also seems to argue that there was no continuous tradition of masked playing by popular entertainers, since their masks when they are mentioned later are also called larvae.

⁵⁸  See Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879; reprinted 1958) svv larva, persona; Oxford Latin Dictionary svv larva, persona.

⁵⁹  E.g. Terence Eunuchus Prologue 31–3, speaking of the playwright’s transference of Menander’s characters to the Roman stage: eas se non negat /Personas transtulisse in Eunuchum suam /ex Graeca (‘he does not deny that he has translated these character-roles from Greek’): in P. Terenti Afri comoediae edited R. Kauer and W.M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, s.d [1935?]) no pagination.

⁶⁰  See discussion of the word hypocrite in chapter 11 on ‘Ideas and Theories’ 287.

⁶¹  With the added meaning of ‘individual with a recognised position in the church, beneficed’, hence parson: see Medieval Latin Word List sv persona. See chapter 11 on ‘Ideas and Theories’ 284.

⁶²  Aquinas Super evangelium S. Matthaei 199: see chapter 11 on ‘Ideas and Theories’ 286.

⁶³  See chapter 11 on ‘Ideas and Theories’ 304–5.

⁶⁴  Elyot Dictionary sv persona.

⁶⁵  Etymology possibly from Etruscan and connected with the Lares, the household deities.

⁶⁶  See Ovid Fasti translated J.G. Frazer (Loeb; London: Heinemann, 1931) 424–5; Book 5, lines 419–92. The Roman Hallowe’en (Lemuria) was in May, and there seems little likelihood that the Kalends maskers were directly impersonating spirits of the dead. Augustine familiarised Christian writers with the word in his discussion on daemones in De civitate Dei edited Bernhard Dombart and Alphonsus Kalb (CCSL 47; Turnhout: Brepols, 1955) 1: 259; book 9, chapter 11:

Dicit quidem et animas hominum daemones esse et ex hominibus fieri lares, si boni meriti sunt; lemures, si mali, seu laruas … Laruas quippe dicit esse noxios daemones ex hominibus factos.

He [Apuleius] says moreover that the daemones are the souls of men, and that the Lares are made from men if they are well-deserving; Lemures or Larvae if evil … he says that Larvae are harmful daemones made from men.

⁶⁷  Larvati is glossed in the Epitoma Festi of Paulus Diaconus as furiosi et mente moti, quasi larvis exterriti (‘raving and out of their minds, as if terrified by larvae’): Oxford Latin Dictionary sv larvatus.

⁶⁸  Isidore Etymologiae 8, 101. Vincent of Beauvais, copying Isidore, seems mistakenly to have conflated the larva with the lamia: Speculum quadruplex 4: 150; Speculum naturale lib. 2 cap. 112.

⁶⁹  Plautus Mercator in Plautus translated Paul Nixon, 5 vols (Loeb; London: Heinemann, 1928–68) 3: Act 5 Scene 4, line 981.

⁷⁰  Welsford The Court Masque 94–7.

⁷¹  Aldhelm De virginitate in Opera edited R. Ehwald (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 15: Berlin, Weidmann, 1919) 469, lines 2856–9. Also quoted Welsford Court Masque 95 note 1.

⁷²  Aldhelm De virginitate 445, lines 2244, 2252. For Dulcitius, see Hrotswithae opera edited P. de Winterfeld (Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum: Berlin, Weidmann, 1902) 127–34; for translation, see The Plays of Hrotsvith of Gandersheim translated Katharina Wilson (Garland Library of Medieval Literature 62, Series B; New York and London: Garland, 1989) 37–49. In Hrotswitha, the girls compare him with an Ethiopian and say: Decet, ut talis appareat corpore /qualis a diabolo possidetur in mente (‘It is fitting that he should appear in body as he is possessed by the devil in mind’); his soldiers recognise the voice of their master, but see imago diaboli (‘the image of the devil’).

⁷³  Leges edited G.H. Pertz, 5 vols (Monumenta Germaniae Historiae; Hannover: Hahn, 1835–75) 4: 48 (Edictus Rothari in Edictus Langobardum 197), 394 (Leges Rothari Regis in Liber legis Langobardorum Papiensis 377). Both condemn accusations of witchcraft against real women. Hugutius also equates it with the stri[g]a: see Ducange Glossarium sv masca.

⁷⁴  Otia imperialia (1209–14) in Scriptores rerum brunsvicensium edited G. W. von Leibnitz (Hanover: 1707–11) 988. Gervase spent much of his professional life in Italy and Provence, where he collected their folklore.

⁷⁵  Savaron Traitte contre les masques 3.

⁷⁶  See Thomas Wright Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies edited R.P. Wülcker, 2 vols (London: Trubner, 1884) 1: col. 29, 31; 431, 442; 446. Grīma can gloss both masca/us and scīna, both originally Germanic words: scīn refers to a phantom or evil spirit, and scīnlāc is ‘sorcery’: see The Oldest English Texts edited Henry Sweet EETS OS 83 (1885) 629. The Vulgate Psalm 108: 31 persequentibus ‘the persecutors (of my soul)’, apparently equated with the devil, is translated by ehtendra egsan grīma (‘terrifying grīma’): The Paris Psalter edited George Phillip Krapp (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932) 94. The noun griming ‘spectre’ is also glossed as mascam: see Bosworth-Toller Supplement sv grīming. See chapter 2 on ‘Early Masking’ 16–18 and 22.

For larva in German masking tradition, see Hans Moser ‘Zur Geschichte der Maske in Bayern’ 100–108. As a mask-name it is equated with ‘schein vel schuich’ (see note 76), cognate with OE scina and scucca, both demon names.

⁷⁷  The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book edited Craig Williamson (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 1977) 92, lines 16–17, Riddle 38. This is a translation of Aldhelm’s segnior est nullus, quoniam me larbula terret (Williamson Riddles 266, line 9).

⁷⁸  Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson An Icelandic-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, second edition 1957); Jan de Vries Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Leiden: Brill, 1962) sv. grima. The Icelandic word grima appears to have had an originally similar semantic field to the Old English word: the first definition is ‘A kind of hood covering the upper part of the face’ (compare Óðinn as Grímnir).

⁷⁹  See above 331. Randle Cotgrave A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London: Adam Islip, 1611) has sv Mascarer ‘To blot, soyle, blurre, sullie, disfigure’.

⁸⁰  Godefroy Dictionnaire svv maschurer masquier, masquillier; OED Supplement sv mascara: used as stage-make up, 1890; cinematic make-up, 1922; ordinary cosmetics, 1927.

⁸¹  W.W. Skeat Etymological Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888) sv grime; Jan de Vries Nederlands Etymologisch Woordenboek (Leiden: Brill, 1971) sv grijm. For earliest cited English use of grime (late fifteenth century) see MED sv grime.

⁸²  ‘Severian’ Sermo CLV bis in Chrysologus Collectio sermonum 3, CCSL 24B: 968; as ‘Maximus of Turin’ Homilia XVI: de calendis lanuarii, PL 58: 255.

⁸³  Horman Vulgaria puerorum (London: Richard Pynson, 1519). Quoted Nicholas Davis ‘“He had Great Pleasure upon an Ape”: William Horman’s Vulgaria’ Medieval English Theatre 7:2 (1985) 101–6, at 103.

⁸⁴  The only possible reference to the larva as a stage mask is in Horace Satires 1.5.64 where it is used of a terrifying tragic mask.

⁸⁵  CCSL 24B: 964.

⁸⁶  Caesarius of Arles CCSL 104: 783; PL 39: 2003.

⁸⁷  See chapter 11 on ‘Ideas and Theories’ 296–8 for the implications of this.

⁸⁸  CCSL 24B: 965; also PL 52: 611.

⁸⁹  Caesarius of Arles CCSL 104: 783, PL 39: 2003.

⁹⁰  Burchard of Worms Decretorum libri XX, PL 140: 652; lib. 2: 161. See chapter on ‘Early Masking’ 51. It is not clear whether the priest is conceived of as seeing the masks in an entertainment, or wearing one himself ‘in front of’ his face.

⁹¹  See Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary and Supplement svv tāl, tǣl.

⁹²  The later French verb talemaschier also means ‘to dirty’: Godefroy Dictionnaire sv mlemaschier. He also cites a gloss talemache de bateau, which suggests, again, a ship’s figurehead. See further Recueil général des lexiques français du Moyen Age edited Mario Roques, 2 vols (Paris: Champion, 1970) 2: 224, from a late fourteenth-century Latin/French glossary derived from the Catholicon in B.N. MS lat. 13032, where the word appears as calemache, glossing larua.

⁹³  Quoted Welsford The Court Masque 95–6. There is no printed edition of Hugutio.

⁹⁴  Promptorium parvulorum and other fifteenth century dictionaries. The thirteenth-century gloss for larvatica imago is ymage babewyne (‘baboonery, grotesque, gargoyle’): Hunt Teaching and Learning Latin 2: 78, 116. A 1468 German glossary says that a Larva Schein vel Schuich est simulachrum concavum et horribile sive imago concavo vel horribilis hominis vel alterius animalis ad terrendum pueros [depicta] and adds the scarecrow meaning: (‘Larva Schein or Schuich is a hollowed and terrifying image or a hollow representation of a terrifying man or other animal [painted] to frighten children’) Hans Moser ‘Zur Geschichte der Maske in Bayern’ 108.

⁹⁵  Chambers Mediaeval Stage 2: 262.

⁹⁶  Chambers Mediaeval Stage 1: 327, 403 note 2.

⁹⁷  See above 337, and chapter 11 on ‘Ideas and Theories’ 284.

⁹⁸  Marshall ‘Theater in the Middle Ages’ 25.

⁹⁹  Chambers Medieval Stage 2: 339. See chapter 9 on ‘Mystery Plays’ 192.

¹⁰⁰  Aquinas Super evangelium S. Matthaei 199.

¹⁰¹  Bromyard Summa praedicantium 1: fol. 152^v.

¹⁰²  REED: York 78, 98.

¹⁰³  ‘Annales Paulini’ in Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II 1: 354.

¹⁰⁴  Ortus vocabularum edited R.C. Alston (English Linguistics Series 123; Menston: Scolar, 1968; facsimile edition of Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, 1500) sv larva.

¹⁰⁵  Elyot Dictionary svv larva, larvatus. See also Richard Huloet Abecedarium anglico – latinum (English Linguistics Series 208; Menston: Scolar, 1970; facsimile of London: W. Riddel, 1552) sv larva.