 It has been suggested that the tradition of rural English dancers blackening their faces may be a form of disguise, or a reference either to the Moors or to miners;
the origins of the practice remain unclear and are the subject of ongoing debate.While the earliest (15th-century) references place the Morris dance in a courtly setting, it appears that the dance became part of performances for the lower classes by the later 16th century; in 1600, the Shakespearean actor William Kempe Morris danced from London to Norwich, an event chronicled in his "Nine Daies Wonder" (1600).Almost nothing is known about the folk dances of England prior to the mid-17th century.