Skeletons fighting over a hanged man

Various masks can be found, left and right, in the painting from 1891. The gruesome scene takes place in an attic room, where two dressed-up skeletons attack each other with rag-brushes. The cause of their fight is the corpse of a hanged man. Around his neck hangs a sign with the inscription CIVET ('hare's pie'). The attitude of the two skeletons corresponds to that of the two protagonists in the foreground of the painting by Pieter Bruegel I, The Fight between Lent and Shrove Tuesday (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) from 1559. Like the allegorical representation in Bruegel's work, Ensor's painting is also ambiguous. One wonders how the man came to his end. Who hanged him, or did he hang himself? Is the hanged man a cryptic alter ego of the painter who fell prey to the hostilities of art critics?