ABSTRACT
Dressed as Russians, the English king's courtiers served their simple function as agents of royal cheer, and it would be easy to dismiss such an interlude, but Holinshed tells us that when the supper was ended, 'and the tables voided, the king in communication with the ambassadors, the queene with the ladies took their places in their degrees.'5 The moment is significant. Contact with the pseudo Russians held the sexes together in a moment of entertainment before signaling their separation, as Catherine and the ladies 'took their places.' In this way the staging of 'Russians' allowed Henry and his men to distinguish themselves in their masculine Englishness. More than forty years before the English arrived in Muscovy, Henry's little show hinted that contact with Russians would matter to an English understanding of diplomacy and gender.
