The earliest mention of the play is found in a 1604 Revels Office account, which records that on " Hallamas Day, being the first of Nouembar ... the Kings Maiesties plaiers " performed " A Play in the Banketinghouse att Whit Hall Called The Moor of Venis.

The first recorded mention of Othello is found in a Revels account indicating the play was performed at Whitehall Palace on November 1, 1604.

The first part of Henry IV was probably written and performed in 1596, and the name Oldcastle had almost certainly been allowed by Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney.

More was portrayed as a wise and honest statesman in the 1592 play Sir Thomas More, which was probably written in collaboration by Henry Chettle, Anthony Munday, William Shakespeare, and others, and which survives only in fragmentary form after being censored by Edmund Tylney, Master of the Revels in the government of Queen Elizabeth I ( any direct reference to the Act of Supremacy was censored out ).

Sir George Buck ( or Buc ) ( 1560 – 1622 ) was an antiquarian who served as Master of the Revels to King James I of England.

In the mid-to-late 1590s Buck was in competition with playwright John Lyly for the reversion of the office of the Master of the Revels, then held by Buck's relation Sir Edmund Tilney (" reversion " meaning that the candidate would obtain the office when the present office-holder vacated it — usually by death ).

Upon the start of the new Stuart dynasty in 1603, Buck was knighted ( on 23 July ) and formally received the reversion to the office of Master of the Revels with an appointment as Deputy Master, by a royal patent ( on 23 June ).

The Master of the Revels was responsible for supervising and censoring the plays performed in the public theatres, and for arranging performances of those plays at Court.

Ogilby then went on to establish Ireland's first theatre, the Theatre Royal, Dublin, as a consequence of which he was made deputy-Master of the Revels in 1637.

A year later he was again made Master of the Revels in Ireland and he set about the building of a new theatre in Smock Alley, Dublin.

The Master of the Revels was the holder of a position within the English, and later the British, royal household, heading the " Revels Office " or " Office of the Revels ".

In Henry VIII's court, however, the post became more important, and an officer of the Wardrobe was permanently employed to act under the Master of the Revels.

Under Tylney, the functions of Master of the Revels gradually became extended to a general censorship of the stage, which in 1624 was put directly in the hands of the Lord Chamberlain, thus leading to the licensing act of 1737, when the role was taken over by the Examiner of the Stage, an official of the Lord Chamberlain.

In the year of the Tilney document, the Revels Office had moved to the Whitefriars district outside the western city wall of London, though throughout its history it was located in several other places about the city, including the Blackfriars district.

Edmund Tylney, Master of the Revels, who was in effect the official censor of the time to Queen Elizabeth I, lived in Leatherhead's Mansion House.

The Master of the Revels was in effect the official censor of the time.

He was reluctantly persuaded to go to court, and he went to London under the patronage of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, with the intention of doing so, but soon returned home, resolved to study divinity.

Around 1606, Drayton was also part of a syndicate that chartered a company of child actors, The Children of the King's Revels.

The late quarto is associated with a revival by the Children of the King's Revels, a short-lived troupe of boy players led by Nathan Field, but it was almost certainly written around 1597.

For Jonson, however, Dekker was bumbling hack, a " dresser of plays about town "; Jonson lampooned Dekker as Demetrius Fannius in Poetaster and as Anaides in Cynthia's Revels.

* 1870 – Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U. S. Congress.

* 1901 – Hiram Revels, first African-American to serve in the U. S. Senate ( b. 1822 )

* Extensive visual, textual and musical studies of American May Day customs since the first Maypole Revels were held at the Ma-Re Mount or Merrymount plantation on Massachusetts Bay in May 1627, hosted by Englishman Thomas Morton ; and, last year the state of Massachusetts ' Governor Deval Patrick proclaimed May 1 as Thomas Morton Day.

* February 25 – Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U. S. Congress.

Hiram Revels, the first African-American United States Senator, died on January 16, 1901, while attending a church conference in Aberdeen.

With the patent given to John Farlyon in 1534 as Yeoman of the Revels, what may be considered as an independent office of the Revels ( within the general sphere of the Lord Chamberlain ) came into being ; and in 1544 Sir Thomas Cawarden received a patent as Master of the Revels, he being the first to become head of an independent office.

Hiram R. Revels resigned his seat in the United States Senate to become Alcorn's first president.

Alcorn resigned the governorship to become a U. S. Senator ( 1871 – 1877 ), replacing his ally Hiram Revels, the first African American senator.

The following list includes years of first publication, and of performance if known, and dates of licensing by the Master of the Revels where available.

* Hiram Rhodes Revels, first African-American Senator ( R-MS )

Sen. Hiram Rhodes Revels | Hiram Revels, the first African American Congressman.

On February 25, 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels was seated as the first black member of the Senate, becoming also the first black member of the Congress.

Hiram R. Revels, also of Mississippi, was the first to ever serve in the U. S. Congress, but did not serve a full term.

Alcorn resigned the governorship to become a U. S. Senator ( 1871 – 1877 ), replacing his ally Hiram Revels, the first African American senator.

Hiram Rhodes Revels ( September 27, 1827 – January 16, 1901 ) was the first non-white to serve in the United States Senate.

On November 6, 1875, Hiram Revels, a Mississippi Republican and the first African-American U. S. Senator, wrote a letter to U. S. President Ulysses S. Grant that was widely reprinted.

The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 7 May 1622, and was first published in 1653 by the bookseller Humphrey Moseley.

Chinese women playing flutes, from the 12th-century Song Dynasty remake of the Night Revels of Han Xizai, originally by Gu Hongzhong ( 10th century )

Image: Gu Hongzhong's Night Revels, Detail 1. jpg | Night Revels, a Song Dynasty remake of a 10th-century original by Gu Hongzhong.

Half-section of the Night Revels of Han Xizai, by Chinese art ist Gu Hongzhong, 10th century.

Half-section of the Night Revels of Han Xizai, by Gu Hongzhong, 10th century.

Other famous paintings include The Night Revels of Han Xizai, originally painted by the Southern Tang artist Gu Hongzhong in the 10th century, while the well-known version of his painting is a 12th century remake of the Song Dynasty.

Traditionally, it has been supposed that the quartos lack the deposition scene because of censorship, either from the playhouse or by the Master of the Revels Edmund Tylney and that the Folio version may better reflect Shakespeare's original intentions.

* Cynthia ’ s Revels, play by Ben Jonson ( 1572 – 1637 )

In 1631, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, refused to license an unnamed play by Massinger because of " dangerous matter as the deposing of Sebastian, King of Portugal ," calculated presumably to endanger good relations between England and Spain.

* Thomas Killigrew, ineffective after four years in the office of Master of the Revels, is replaced by his son Charles.

at the University of Cambridge, and possibly saw his hopes of court advancement dashed by the appointment in July of Edmund Tylney to the office of Master of the Revels, a post at which he had been aiming.

Madame Vestris produced burlesques at the Olympic Theatre beginning in 1831 with Olympic Revels by J. R. Planché.