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Rh according to Halle, that 'the Kyng with xi other wer disguised, after the maner of Italie, called a maske, a thyng not seen afore in Englande, thei were appareled in garmentes long and brode, wrought all with gold, with visers and cappes of gold, and after the banket doen, these maskers came in, with sixe gentlemen disguised in silke bearyng staffe torches, and desired the ladies to daunce, some were content, and some that knew the fashion of it refused, because it was not a thyng commonly seen. And after thei daunced and commoned together, as the fashion of the maskes is, thei toke their leave and departed, and so did the Quene, and all the ladies.' There has been much dispute as to what the precise nature of the innovation of 1512 was. I formerly thought that it lay in the introduction of some Italian detail of costume, probably the 'long gowns and hoods with hats' of which the contemporary Revels Account speaks. But after a careful review of the earlier descriptions of disguisings, I now feel little doubt that those are right who find the point precisely in that 'commoning' between maskers and spectators which remained a characteristic feature of the mask throughout the days of its most sumptuous development, and which the good Halle could hardly be expected to recognize as merely a reversion to a fourteenth-century English usage. Nor is there any reason to doubt that the impulse to the new-old mode, and perhaps also the name which, although in an English form, accompanied it, had an immediate origin in Italy. Ronsard makes a similar acknowledgement for France: