Mark Edward Perugini

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THE ART OF BALLET

OVERTURE
ON THE ART OF BALLET

There may be some who could not agree that Ballet is an “art,” or even that it has, or ever had, any special charm or historic interest. The charm—as in the case of any other art—will probably always remain rather a matter of individual opinion; the historic interest is merely a matter of fact.

No man can hope for agreement with his fellows in all things. The world were flat if it could be so. He may hector, and not convince; he may cajole and not convert; he may tell the simple truth in simple speech and still be misunderstood. So many of his partners in the dance of life speak in different tongues; or, speaking the same, use words and phrases more familiar to them than to himself.

In going to a foreign land we change our currency; but it is hardly to be accounted spurious because it is not as ours. There may be something to be said for the variety; and, also, there may be some common basis of value which can be accepted readily by both. A world-currency has not yet arrived. In opinion it is much the same.

But the sense of “fair play” is so admirable, and so truly British a characteristic, that one may usually rely on it for a considerate hearing. Possible dissentients may be the more inclined to grant this if they are informed at the outset that this book has no specially persuasive purpose, and that I am content that it should be mainly accounted a record of fact.

One of the facts which it chronicles is that Ballet, whether an “art” or not, has existed, in some form or another, for about two thousand years. An interest which can show so long a record may yet not be of such surpassing importance, let us say, as Statecraft or Religion; but one which has thus long and widely appealed to the Æsthetic sense of mankind can hardly be considered worthless. It were a vast and complex matter to decide the relative values of the various “arts,” and, certainly this book is no endeavour to pronounce thereon, nor to persuade any that Ballet is the greatest, though it is unquestionably one of the oldest of the arts. But it will suffice to offer the opinion that, whether it has reached its highest level or not as yet Ballet is an art in itself; one that in the past has had so many judicious and sympathetic exponents, and has so long a record of existence, that there is really some justification for the expenditure of casual leisure by any who cares to play the chronicler or to read such chronicle.

This much said, before setting out to travel the road of the past, let us for a moment reconsider another fact, namely, that we have in London two theatres where for about a quarter of a century Ballet was the main attraction. The fact is unique in the annals of the British stage.

Ballets have been produced elsewhere occasionally. We have seen operas, pantomimes, burlesques, of which they formed a part. At earlier periods—as in the ’forties of last century—they have also been seen as separate items in the programme of an operatic season; and there has been a quite remarkable revival of interest during the past few years. But in all the history of the stage there was never before a time when it could be said that for such a period not one but two theatrical houses in London continuously offered this kind of entertainment as their chief attraction.

It has to be remembered that this sustained existence of Ballet in England has been, as in the case of all “legitimate drama,” without State aid such as it has received in Milan, Rome, Naples, Paris, Vienna, Petrograd, Copenhagen, and elsewhere on the Continent, where the physical advantages of dancing and the artistic value of Ballet are fully appreciated. The arts must flourish haphazard here! We have no national conservatoire in which this art of Ballet is taught as it is abroad. Consequently it has been less generally understood; and, being so, has had to exist in face of considerable prejudice.

Some critics profess to despise it because it ignores the spoken word. Some have decried it because of the presence of dancing. Some will not admit that it is worthy to be called an art at all, and there are possibly still some primly primitive people who pretend to view with moral pain the existence of any such entertainment. They may patronise a theatre or tolerate an actor or actress—but a Ballet or a Ballet-Dancer!

The misunderstanding of the aims and possibilities of the Art of Ballet, as seen at its best, is to be regretted.

Not for such critics are the music of moving lines, the modulating harmonies of colour, the subtleties of mimic expression, nor all the wealth of historic associations and romantic charm which a knowledge of its past recalls.

Austere critics would do well, when deprecating Ballet, to remember that many others have found it, as Colley Cibber regretfully admitted it was found in his time: “a pleasing and rational entertainment.”

That it is “pleasing” many know from witnessing some of the best of modern examples. As to whether it can be considered “rational” depends so much on the kind of meaning that may be given to that word. All rational people speak in prose; constantly to speak in verse might be considered quite irrational. But are we to banish poetry from the world because it is not the common form of speech?

Some people might find it quite irrational to sit in a theatre and laugh or weep at the imaginary joys or woes of imaginary characters impersonated by people who are not seriously concerned therewith, and with whom, personally, we are not at all concerned.

It might be well considered irrational to be moved by any “concord of sweet sounds,” at least in the shape of “opera”; or to be enspelled by the charm of a statue or a painting, or by the wizardry of any form of art; for once it is questioned whether it be “rational,” there need be no end to dispute; and one remembers how poor Tolstoy fared in essaying to decide: “What is Art?”

That of Ballet surely is no less rational than Poetry, than Drama, than Music, Sculpture, Painting—all of which exist by their conventions, all of which in principle it employs; to all of which it is akin. It is not less an art; and when looking at a modern ballet we can hardly fail to consider the long train of reasoned thought and of artistic tradition that lie beyond the entertainment that we see to-day.

What is it that we see? An orchestra of dancers who are also mimes, who represent—one should rather say, realise—the imaginative creations of an author, or a number of authors working harmoniously together, in terms of rhythmic movement and dramatic expression, with the aid also of colour and music and sound.

Every one of these dancers has had to undergo a special and arduous training, the traditions of which reach back through centuries till lost in time’s obscurity.

Each has an allotted place at any given moment in the general scheme. Every grouping and dispersal of a group—like the formation and modulation of chords in music—is part of an ordered plan.

Every step of every dancer, every gesture, every phrase of music, is composed or selected to express particular ideas or series of ideas; every colour and each change of tone in the whole symphony of hues has been appraised. Not a thing that happens is haphazard.

It is probably by reason of the number of people that must be employed, and the labour entailed before a successful result can be achieved, and on account of the difficulties and risks attendant on its production, that we have had so few theatres devoted to an art so thoroughly appreciated abroad, not only as one of ancient institution, but as one that still offers wide scope for the creative genius of poet, artist and musician, apart from the interpretative abilities of dancer and of mime.

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The chief elements of Ballet as seen to-day are—dancing, miming, music and scenic effect, including of course in this last the costumes and colour-schemes, as well as the actual “scenery” and lighting.

It is in the proper harmonising of these elements that the true art of Ballet-composition, or, as it is called, “choreography,” consists. Each has its individual history, and all have been combined in varying proportions at various periods. But it is only in the past hundred and fifty years or so that they have been harmoniously blended in the increasing richness of their development to give us this separate, protean and beautiful art—the Ballet of the Theatre.

These four elements are the material of which Ballet is composed, and the result may be judged by their balance.

We are to think not of the worst examples that have been, but of the best, and of those that yet might be.

Most of the older writers on dancing speak of almost all concerted dances as ballets and refer to the “ballets” of the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. The AbbÉ Menestrier, however, writing in the seventeenth century, wisely observed the distinction between dances that are only “dances,” and those that approximate to “ballet.”

It should be borne in mind that it is possible to dance and not represent an idea save that of dancing, as when a child dances for joy, not in order to represent the joy of another. That is the province of the Mime. It is equally possible to mimic without dancing.

The best ballet-dancer is one who has intelligence and training to do both, whose dancing and mimicry are interpretative.

Speaking of certain Egyptian and Greek figure-dances and the approach of some of them to the Ballet as he knew it towards the end of the seventeenth century, Menestrier wrote: “J’appelle ces Danses Ballets parce qu’elles n’etoient pas de simples Danses comme les autres, mais des Representations ingenieuses, des mouvements du Ciel et des PlanÉtes, et des evolutions du labyrinthe dont ThÉsÉe sortit.” That is a distinction to be remembered by any who may look on the Art of Ballet as simply—dancing.

It is necessary to-day to make another distinction, that between “ballet,” and “the ballet of the theatre.” In a sense the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, indeed all peoples in past ages have had ballets; that is, dances which were “representations ingenieuses,” which represented an idea or told a story.

There have been entertainments, too, of which dancing formed a considerable part—such as our English “masques,” which, contemporaneously, were often spoken of as “ballets.”

But though they may for convenience have been so called, they were never more than partly akin with the ballet of the theatre as we see it to-day. They never exhibited that balance of subordinated and developed arts which the best examples of later times have shown; and were not seen in the public theatre, as a form of dramatic entertainment apart from others.

One has only to consider for an instant what were the musical and scenic resources of the Greek and Roman stage, and compare them with the resources of modern orchestration and scenic effect to realise the difference between antique “ballet” and that of to-day.

Setting aside this difference, which arises from the development of the several elements through the centuries, one may find many an ancient definition of “ballet” that appears apt enough to-day, for the difference is not so much one of principle as this of resources.

AthenÆus, a second-century Greek critic, declared: “Ballet is an imitation of things said and sung,” and Lucian, that—“It is by the gesture, movements and cadences that this imitation or representation is made up, as the song is made up by the inflections of the voice.” This is a happy illustration. Inflections might well be described as “gestures” of the voice.

Menestrier (who, besides writing an exceedingly entertaining history of Ballet, also wrote extensively on Heraldry, and was author of several solid historical works as well as numerous poems and libretti) has said: “Ballet is an imitation like the other arts, and that much has in common with them. The difference is, that while the other arts only imitate certain things, as painting, which expresses the shape, colour, arrangement and disposition of things, Ballet expresses the movement which Painting and Sculpture could not express, and by these movements can represent the nature of things, and those characteristics of the soul which only can find expression by such movements. This imitation is achieved by the movements of the body, which are the interpreters of the passions and of the inmost feelings. And even as the body has various parts composing a whole and making a beautiful harmony, one uses instruments and their accord, to regulate those movements which express the effect of the passions of the soul.”

These definitions have decided value, but hardly quite meet the case of modern Ballet.

Noverre, Blasis, Gardel, and other of the older maÎtres de ballet, have told us in several charming books, essays, letters, dialogues and libretti, much as to what Ballet can and should be, but yet leave something to seek in the matter of brief yet comprehensive definition.

It is with some hesitancy, therefore, that I venture, before talking of its history, to suggest as a simple definition that: “a ballet is a series of solo and concerted dances with mimetic actions, accompanied by music and scenic accessories, telling a story.”

It is by reason of this definition that I propose to pass somewhat lightly over the early dawn of Ballet, or rather of its earliest elements, the dance and miming; and that I propose to deal more fully with the period after the advent of Louis Quatorze—in France and in England—which saw the development of the Ballet du ThÉÂtre.

There have, of course, been modern ballets that did not tell a story. But the true Ballet of the theatre should.

Such have been the best of those of Noverre, of Blasis, of Perrot, Nuittier, ThÉophile Gautier, and of later composers of ballet like Taglioni, Manzotti, Coppi, Mme. Lanner, Wilhelm, Curti, Fokine, and, indeed, all the best ballets of later years; and such will the best always be.

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CHAPTER II
EGYPT

The origin of the drama is hardly to be reckoned among the historic mysteries. By serious triflers debate might be held as to what should be considered the first dramatic representation and when it actually took place.

Some five centuries before the Christian era the first plays of which scholarship has taken note were performed at Athens, those of Thespis, forerunner of the first great dramatists of the world—Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

For convenience the origin of Western drama may be dated from Thespis because it seems first to have assumed then a definite form. That is not its actual origin any more than the origin of any human being is to be dated from its birth. As a possibility it may be said to have existed always. Even Chronology has its limitations, and preceding any given event there must have existed principles or tendencies.

When it is said, therefore, that the origin of the Drama is not an historic mystery it is because we are not very much in the dark as to when it began to assume a somewhat definite form; and, moreover, we can be fairly clear as to what must have preceded it. There seems rather more than a probability that the Drama derived its existence from the Poet, in his capacity as a Narrator.

For some hundreds of years the Drama has been chiefly a representation of character and events, whether real or fictitious. In its earliest forms it was mainly descriptive. It would seem to be the natural order of things that from mere description there should arise in time—possibly from a half-conscious feeling of the need of emphasis, of a desire to impress the hearers—the attempt to illustrate or to represent the scenes or actions described. The mere repetition of any story seems to tend towards that. Have we not observed that no “fish” story is ever quite complete—if not convincing—without histrionic illustrations?

Though in India and China, with their more ancient civilisation, the chronologic origin of the Drama might be more remotely placed, it is probable that in the Homeric bard and the Homeric audience, should be sought the true beginning of the Western theatre; while, all the world over, the evolution of the dramatic form has probably been much the same—namely, a gradual transition from poetic narration to imitative representation. Thus at the back of the Drama is probably the Poet. Beside the Poet, too, is often the Priest.

Greek tragedy is usually said to have had a purely “religious” origin, and certainly it was from early times employed for the purposes of, or in the service of, Religion; but it would, one feels, be rather truer to presume its actual origin to be purely secular, and to be found in the Poet making his appeal to an ordinary audience, in a word, to the People, while sometimes under the patronage of priestly and ruling classes.

When, however, we come to consider the origin of the Dance—first and most important of the “four elements” of Ballet—we are forced to the conclusion that, even though we are on more uncertain ground, it must, nevertheless, be far older than the Drama. Why this should be so, even though we have no approximate date to go upon as in the case of the Thespian theatre, is not difficult to see.

The Drama evolved from, and has always depended on, the faculty of speech, and on the growth of a language. A copious vocabulary and flexibility of verbal expression are not exactly characteristics of the primitive races; and, without both, the Drama, as we have known it for some centuries, could not have existed.

But the Dance (with mimicry, which has always followed close upon its heels) has no need of words, and is itself a kind of speech, in which the whole body is used as a means of expression.

We are none of us old enough to remember, and there is consequently no need to be dogmatic and assert that the Dance actually did precede speech; but it is far from improbable that it could have done; and while one shudders to think of the ardent danse tourbillon our Mother Earth must have danced from the moment of her birth, it is perhaps more amusing—and yet not wholly frivolous—to contemplate a possible origin of the Dance in the sport some Simian ancestors may have found in rhythmically swaying on the flexile branches of some primeval tree, before they had acquired a vocabulary sufficiently copious for the analysis of their sensations.

Seriously, however, and just because it has a rhythmic basis, dancing in some form is among the earliest instincts of mankind, even as it is of children. In all climes, at all periods, men and women have danced; and its origin is lost in the mists of prehistoric years. Non-civilised races still existent may offer evidence as to stages in its evolution; but even among the more primitive races, dancing seems to have some definiteness of form, marking a heritage of long practice.

From some earliest, uncouth leapings and gestures of savage or half savage tribes (the effect of mere exuberant physical energy) may have grown the idea of thus expressing joy and thankfulness; for joy, not sorrow, one feels must surely have been always the first inspirer of the Dance; and possibly a victory over an enemy, or gratitude for a full harvest may have come to be first the inspiration, and then the excuse for repeating such manifestations.

Repetition of an act tends to create a habit, and what may be at first apparently a spontaneous experiment grows by repetition into a cult, with set form and ritual.

The ritual of the Dance seems to be as ancient as the stars, in representing the movements of which, it is supposed by some to have had its origin in Egypt over two thousand years ago. Nowhere is it found without form. All must be done in a certain way, according to the traditions of the locality in which the dance is seen, or according to some wider tradition. Always it has a ritual of its own, but also with religious ritual the origin of the Dance—as also of the Drama—appears in some mysterious manner to be upbound.

Of all the records that we have of dancing, the earliest are, apparently, those of Egypt. Its origin is not there; it must be older; but we know at least that the Egyptians were among the first people with a civilisation that encouraged dancing.

One of the finest among modern historians of the art, divides dancing, for convenience in tracing its evolution, into “sacred” and “profane”; that is, the Dance forming, as so often it did in ancient times, part of a religious ceremonial, and that which in any other of its forms was merely a pleasure of the people. For our purpose in tracing the growth of Ballet, however, it would seem advisable to divide the Dance yet further, into “sacred,” “secular,” and “theatrical.”

The Egyptians had no Ballet of the theatre, because they had no theatre. They had dances which seem to have been “representations ingenieuses,” and to that extent, as mimetic dances, partook of the nature of Ballet; but they were not organised as theatrical spectacles for private or public entertainment.

The Greeks had no Ballet of the theatre because, though they had the theatre, they, like the Egyptians, had merely mimetic dances, not Ballet.

But if Egypt had no popular theatre in which dancing was seen, it appears to have existed, nevertheless, in three distinct forms—as a pleasure of “the man in the street”—just as we see children dance to a barrel-organ in the London streets to-day; again, as an entertainment for the wealthy, just as a popular singer, dancer or other entertainer of to-day is engaged for an “at home” or dinner-party; and, finally, as an element of the elaborate and somewhat theatrical Egyptian religious ceremonial.

Monuments from Thebes and Beni Hassan show pictures of Egyptian dancers performing steps very similar to some we can see to-day. They appear to be performing them for the pleasure of onlookers as well as their own. This acquiring of an audience has, after all, been always of first importance, and without it the Drama could hardly have come into existence.

Most people are interested in seeing others do something they are unable to do themselves, and when they can see it well done, in a manner, that is, suggesting a difficult feat accomplished with ease, they will even pay for the exhibition. That is the popular (with managers the extremely popular) side of the theatrical arts, of which dancing is one. When there arises the desire to see the exhibition repeated frequently, then must follow the special place with special facilities and accessories for the performance, and the theatre, or something like it, thus comes into existence as an institution sustained by popular support. There is first the thing done for pleasure—which is art; then the exploitation of it for profit—which is commerce; that is the brief epitaph of any art as a fruit of civilisation.

The Egyptians did not reach the “theatre” stage. But dancing, essentially a popular art, received encouragement as an element in religious festivals and as an entertainment of the wealthy classes.

Considerable difference of opinion exists as to the “religious” dances of Egypt. Enthusiastic historians of dancing seem rather too prone to expand the little store of fact we possess, and some go to the length of speaking of the religious and popular “ballets” of the Egyptians. But it is certain that they had no regular theatrical spectacles in which dancing was of prime importance; and their popular dances, to any such extent as they could be described as “representations ingenieuses,” were primitive in comparison with any of later times.

Solo-dances and pas de deux were general enough, but the dancing of massed groups, and the dramatic representation of a story, appear to have been unknown, or have passed unrecorded if they were known. The nearest approach to them, though not of course performed as a theatrical spectacle, would seem to have been an “astronomical dance,” which was done by or under the direction of the priests of Apis, and is said to have been—appropriately enough!—a representation of the movements of the stars. It is probable that it was employed mainly as a means of education.

Holy Church in mediÆval times took advantage of the popular craving for theatrical shows, and sought by the aid of “mystery plays,” and “moralities” to extend the knowledge of religious truths. It may be conjectured that the Egyptian hierarchy similarly had some such end in view, and that the priestly caste sought to utilise the popular taste for dancing as a means of influence, and that the actual performance of the dance served to fix more lastingly in the minds of novices the religious and astronomical truths it embodied.

An Egyptian Male Dancer
(From a Theban Fresco).

Egyptian Dancing Girls
(From a mural painting in the British Museum).

A Greek Funeral Dance
(From a coloured plaque in the Louvre).

In addition to the star-dance, the Egyptians are said to have had a “funeral” dance, but it is doubtful if this, the “Maneros”—of which Herodotus speaks—was a solemn dance. The fact is, however, that information both as to the religious and ceremonial uses of dancing among the Egyptians is very scant, and what little record we have of their dancing is mainly on its popular side and is to be gleaned from monuments.

One of the frescoes in the British Museum shows two girls performing, apparently before a select audience of women, one of whom is seen to be applauding, or perhaps marking the time with syncopated clapping, as negroes do to-day.

Another representation of dancing is on a fresco from Thebes showing three figures, the centre of whom is apparently performing an entrechat, as seen to-day, the step in which the dancer crosses feet in mid-air; while a fourth acts as orchestra with a couple of the curious curved maces which were beaten together to mark the rhythm in sonorous fashion.

Other Egyptian monuments also show dancers, one from Beni Hassan depicting several couples, apparently boys, performing a dance that obviously had certain set steps, and suggests that it was used mainly as a rhythmic athletic exercise, as were many of the Greek dances. And yet another monument shows men apparently in the act of performing a pirouette. About them all there is the air of decision, a suggestion of trained performance that in itself, remembering that these monuments are some four thousand years old, and depict steps similar to some performed to-day, is testimony to the antiquity of the art of dancing.

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CHAPTER III
GREECE

There is no lack of testimony, pictorial and literary, to the ancient Greek love of the Dance.

Among the various arts of war and peace that Vulcan engraved upon that wondrous shield which he fashioned at the entreaty of sad Thetis for her son Achilles, the Dance was not forgotten; and the Homeric singer must have been a lover of the art to limn as clear a picture as is given in the eighteenth book of the Iliad.

The “two tumblers” is an interesting detail, but it does not necessarily refer to the sort of acrobatic “tumbling” we are familiar with to-day. There have always been two phases of the Dance which can best be understood by noting the distinction marked by the use of two words in French—at least by their use among the masters and writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—namely, danser and sauter. The former means to dance, “terre-À-terre,” that is, always with the feet, or one foot at least, on or close to the ground; sauter, means invariably to leap into the air, or even to perform steps while both feet are in the air.

We usually speak of “a somersault,” a “double somersault,” and so forth. The word is a corruption from the old French soubresault, from the Latin supra, over, and saltus, leap.

Early historians of the Dance frequently speak of “saltation,” without any reference to the “somersault” as we know it, but to what we should call simply dancing.

The Homeric picture must have been repeated innumerable times since it was first limned, whenever and wherever there has been a gathering of men and maids on a village green, dancing in a circle, with a couple of high-leaping lads in the centre inciting all to quicken the rhythm of the whirling dance. Many an Elizabethan village must have realised such a scene; and for all the artifice of the stage, with its paint and footlights, does it not hold something of the antique tradition in the picture often seen, of a circle of dancing girls enclosing two wildly turning “stars”? Is it impossibly un-Hellenic to presume that the “Two tumblers, in the midst, were whirling round” in pirouettes? At least it may be considered—a presumption!

Far later in Hellenic days we have a gracious picture of the Dance in Theocritus’ eighteenth Idyll, “The Bridal of Helen,” which reads delightfully in Calverley’s translation:

The Greek dance, it should be noted, was almost invariably accompanied by singing; and the poet probably was often indebted to the dance for the rhythm of his verse. The bridal dance was of very ancient institution. Indeed, there were few occasions which were not celebrated with dancing, and the Greeks even followed the Egyptian custom of having “dancers” at their funerals! It is not to be thought, however, that the steps were exactly gay; nor need there have been anything incongruous, for we can be sure the instinctive taste of the people would not have admitted such a thing, and, moreover, a dance and a dancer as they saw it, were rather different from the vision we have recalled by such words.

To the ancient Greeks the Dance was a cult, an element in the religious and physical well-being of the individual and the State: and the dance that was taught to the child became an important and lasting factor in the physical growth and culture of the man.

We who, most of us, are only too apt to look on dancing as a mere trivial pastime, may wonder that it was so seriously considered by the Greeks, and that it should have so earnestly engaged the attentions of such philosophers as Plato and Lucian. But perhaps that is only because we have not considered it sufficiently ourselves and have associated it too closely with theatrical display.

In any form in which it is at its best the theatre is one of the noblest and most influential institutions of civilisation; as dancing, at its best, is one of the finest, because most comprehensive, of the theatrical arts. But there is a vast difference between the dance which was a means of physical and mental development, pursued amid the health-giving surroundings of sunshine and fresh air, and, let us say, some such degradation of art as some examples of the “classic” dance we have seen of recent years, performed in the glare of footlights, amid the smoke-laden atmosphere of a music-hall.

The contrast is an obvious one, but the thing to consider is that we in England have allowed an art which held an important place in Greek national life, and which should be of the greatest educational value to ourselves, to become mainly a spectacle of the theatre, where more often than not it is seen at its best, not necessarily because it is the result of the best system, but because it is the fruit of the greatest practice.

It is obviously impossible to deal very fully with the Hellenic dance in the space of a chapter in a volume which is not intended to trace the evolution of the Dance but of Ballet. An entire book were needed to treat the subject adequately—and we have not such a book in English, as yet. But Emmanuel’s masterly technical review of Hellenic dancing in his volume La Danse Grecque, is invaluable, and is testimony to the sound and catholic scholarship which in France scorns no subject as “trivial” merely because those ignorant of its history dismiss it as such; and which finds sympathetic students in a country where all the arts are treated with a respect that is at least as great as that offered to commercialism.

The Greeks are said to have derived their earlier dances from Egypt. This may be questionable, because it is equally likely that there was a traditional, indigenous dance in Greece. But it was through the Greeks, certainly, that dancing first assumed that variety and perfection of form and style which all the arts seemed destined to attain under their quickening, purifying, and inspiring influence; and it was the Greeks, too, who first began to develop the art of mimicry.

First, as already suggested, there would probably have been some occasion for joy, tending to express itself by dancing; and a victory over an enemy, or gratitude for a full harvest (the more exalted when the harvest was of the grape!) would have been such occasions. Later must have come the idea of representing the victory celebrated, or the imagined characteristics of the being or beings who were supposed to be the cause of the earth’s fruition, and who, if propitiated by this tumultuous acknowledgment of gratitude, perhaps might renew their favours.

Thus, in time, out of the ritual of the Dance would have grown the ritual of representation—Mimicry, miming, or “acting,” as we call it; and little by little, from the wild exuberance of recurring poetic festivals, such as those in honour of Dionysus, would have grown the ordered sense of Drama, the representation of thanksgiving, of feelings, events and things by Mimicry, the actor’s art; either allied with, or separate from, dancing.

The Greeks, improving on the Egyptians, invented and developed the idea of the Theatre. But though the Greeks in their Drama utilised the arts of dancing and mimicry, it would seem that they were quite subordinated to the literary and dramatic art of the all-inspiring Poet, and that words, with a meaning behind them, words representing, as far as words can, thoughts, passions, emotions, actions, things, were the essential medium of Greek Drama, not the art of the Dancer or the Mime.

It should be noted that the Greek orcheisthai (???e?s?a?), to dance, implied more than mere steps with the feet. It included much that goes to make a really good ballet-dancer of to-day—interpretative dancing and mimetic gesture. The Greeks in fact had some of the material, if they did not have as we know it—the Ballet.

The earliest dramatic poets, Thespis, Phrynichus, were called “dancers” because in addition to providing the drama as poets, their function was to train their choruses in the dances which, accompanied by singing, were introduced in the play.

One of the most celebrated of the actors in the plays of Æschylus, Telestes, was said not merely to indicate feelings but to “describe” events with his hands; and this, which was really miming, was considered as part of dancing, which Aristotle defined as “the representation of actions, characters and passions by means of postures and rhythmic movements.”

Plutarch analyses dancing as “Motions, Postures and Indications,” a “posture” being the attitude of the dancer at the moment of arrested movement, and an “indication,” the gesture which indicated an external object referred to in a poet’s lines, such as the sky; or such as an orator would use when raising his hand heavenward invoking the gods.

The chief dances used in the Greek drama were the Emmeleia, a stately measure; Hyporchemata, lively dances; the Kordax, a very coarse and rough comic dance; and finally the Sikinnis, which was attached especially to satyric comedies and parodied as a rule the measure of the Emmeleia.

These were all a part, though a subordinate part, of the classic drama, and, according to some authorities, had their foundation in the rhythm of the poet’s verse as it was sung by the chorus or declaimed by the chief actors.

But apart from these there were mimetic dances. One, in which we may perhaps even see a hint of the origin of dancing itself, is found in Longus’ novel, Daphnis and Chloe, in which Dryas performs a vintage-dance, “pretending to gather grapes, to carry them in panniers, to tread them in a vat and pour the flowing juice into jars, and then to drink of the wine thus newly made”; and all done so cleverly that the spectators were deceived for the time and thought they really saw the grapes, the vats, and the wine the actor made pretence of drinking. This, probably an incident drawn from life, was indeed a “representation ingenieuse,” and even suggests yet another of the many possibilities as to the origin of the Dance, namely—that dancing itself may have originated from the treading of grapes.

The famous Pyrrhic dance was of course mimetic and represented a series of war-like incidents, all of which had an educational purpose, as by their means the youthful soldier was taught how to advance and retreat, how to aim a blow or hurl a javelin and to dodge them; and how to leap and vault, in event of meeting ditches and walls. Apart from military dances in which physical culture and grace were the chief aims, there were many dances of a purely festival character taken part in by young men and girls, and by girls alone.

The close association between religion and the Dance in ancient Hellenic days is seen in the number of festivals in honour of the gods, at which special dances were performed, apart from those which formed part of the classic drama and others which were merely by way of joyous pastime. Certain dances were performed annually in honour of Jupiter; others, such as the ProcharysteriÆ, were in honour of Minerva; then there was the PÆonian dance in honour of Apollo; the Ionic, and the Kalabis and the famous Dance of Innocence, instituted by Lycurgus, and executed to the glory of Diana, by young LacedÆmonian girls before the altar of the goddess. The Delian dance, special to the isle of Delos, was much the same in character and closed with the offering of floral garlands on the altar of Aphrodite. One of the most solemn incidents of the Eleusinian mysteries was the mystical dance-drama representing the search of Ceres for her daughter Proserpine—practically a “ballet,” in the older acceptance of the word.

The secular dance of the Greeks was essentially an individualistic form. Men and women only rarely danced together, and when they did, the joining of hands, or anything like chain-dancing was exceptional. One of these exceptions was the Hormos, or Collar-dance as it was called, which Lucian describes as being danced by youths and maidens advancing one by one in the form of a collar, made up of the alternating jewels of feminine grace and manly strength, the dance being led by a youth. Most of the Greek dances had a leader, and the favour in which the art was held is shown by the fact that they termed their Chief Magistrate Pro-orchestris, or Leader of the Dance. As a rule, chain-dances were performed by one or the other sex.

In another sense also the Hellenic dance was individualistic. We are accustomed to see entire groups, eight, sixteen, or even thirty-two or more dancers all performing the same step simultaneously. It is one of the conventions of Ballet, like the chorus in “musical comedy.” But the Greeks had not that convention.

Although their dance was based on strict rhythm and was governed by rigid rules, they governed the dance of the individual, not of groups. He, or she, was adjudged a good dancer by the grace of line displayed and rhythmic balance of movement, and many a vase painting exhibits groups of dancers who, though dancing in the mass, are each doing different steps; and equally the gestures and mimetic expression of each differed.

The system unquestionably had its advantages, for while the rhythm of the song or poetic verse which accompanied the performers was the common basis of the dance for all, the individuality of expression undoubtedly gave a vitality to the group which accounts for the vividness and charm of their representation on many an antique vase.

Numerous indeed were the various forms of the Hellenic dance, sacred, dramatic, secular—Meursius catalogues some two hundred—but further description would detain us too long en route towards the culmination of all these earlier types of mimetic and other dances in the Ballet of to-day, and we have next to trace the growth of Latin Mime and Pantomime.

CHAPTER IV
MIME AND PANTOMIME: ROME, HIPPODROME—OBSCURITY

If to Greece modern Ballet owes much for the encouragement of the Dance, to Rome it is even more indebted for the development of the art of Pantomime.

By many the word Pantomime is associated solely with that time-honoured entertainment which children, home for the Christmas holidays, are supposed to be too blasÉ to care for, but which they go to by way of obliging parents who feel it their duty to take them.

The Christmas pantomime has long been one of our cherished institutions, though, like the British Constitution, it has undergone many changes. It is still given at Christmas. That much of tradition remains. But most of its original features have all but disappeared. Time was, two hundred years ago, when it was mainly “Harlequinade,” and Harlequin and his gay comrades of Italian comedy were the heroes of the play. Then classical plots and allusions, with an elaboration of scenic effect and “machines,” brought about a gradual change. In the early nineteenth century a “topical” and “patriotic” element had crept in; but the Harlequinade, although shortened, and, shall we say, broadened, still remained.

Then a craze for “transformation” scenes set in because the extreme gorgeousness of the tinsel productions of Kemble and Macready—the archÆological and historic “accuracy” of which was always emphasised!—forced the pantomime producers in self-defence to go one better.

And then came Grimaldi to give a new life to the whimsies of that Clown whose prototype dates back to ancient Rome; and for half a century or more the Christmas pantomime continued much the same—a familiar nursery-story played out to the accompaniment of fairy-like and glittering scenic accessories, concluding with a rough-and-tumble Harlequinade, until in recent years the introduction of the Music-hall performer gave us the entertainment we have to-day.

Not thus, however, was the antique “pantomime,” which, evolving from the more ancient and spoken “Mimes,” became, because it took all nature for its province—pan-mimicry, or pantomime; the stage representation, without the spoken word, of all that eye could see or mind of man conceive.

Now, it is a far step from narrative to impersonation—marking an advance in the technique of acting; and it was some time before the Greek Drama had achieved this. But it was not so much the impressive and noble side of the Greek Drama that taught the actors, not merely to declaim situations but to act them; it must have been the popular, the comic side; and it was probably the Doric farce, and later the early Latin comedy derived therefrom, that really brought to perfection under the Roman Empire the art of Miming apart from the art of Dancing.

The comic is so much nearer to life as we see it every day than the tragic; and it was this ability to see the more familiar comic side of life, and the desire to travesty the serious—whether in Greece or Rome—that first gave flexibility and variety to the art of miming, or “acting,” as we call it nowadays.

It is because of this nearness to the life of the time, because of the travesty of contemporary types and public affairs, that the Latin actors made their wide appeal.

From public encouragement would come the increasing endeavour of popular actors to outshine each other in technical tours de force; and from playing the familiar types of Latin Comedy, such as Maccus, with his double hump, prototype of our Punch; Pappus, forerunner of Pantaloon, and other characters (some from the early Mimi, some from the AtellanÆ and TogatÆ of tradition), the Latin Actors of the first and second centuries A.D. ultimately aspired to the wordless representation of the gods and heroes of myth and legend.

According to one authority, “the Latin Pantomime grew out of the custom at this period—the first century of the Christian era—of having lyrical solos, such as interludes to flute accompaniment, between the acts of the Latin comedies.” According to that admirable historian of the stage, Mr. Charles Hastings, “this new mode (Pantomime) was a kind of mime, in which poses and gestures constituted the fundamental portion of the play. Words occupied a secondary place, and eventually disappeared altogether. Only the music was preserved, and in order that the audience might understand the gestures of the actors, little books were distributed in Greek text, intelligible only to the learned and to the upper classes. Later on the mask—rejected by the mime—was adopted, and a chorus was employed to accompany the comedian with their voices, and to explain the multiple gestures by which the actors created the different characters in turn. Moreover, there was a company of mute players. The libretti left almost unlimited liberty of detail. Sometimes the music broke off to enable the actor to finish his fioritura and variations. Sometimes, on the other hand, the comedian paused, or left the stage, while the story was taken up by the recitative and the instruments.”

All this reads much like a description of a modern “mimodrame,” such as “L’Enfant Prodigue,” or “Sumurun.” Again it reads not unlike a description of a modern ballet, for with these do we not often have printed synopses distributed, though not in Greek text? But we have to remember that the music was primitive, the scenic effect, though often remarkable, was different from that of our modern stage, with its greater mechanical resources; and, finally, that all this was an innovation of the Roman stage, for we are talking of the period that saw the dawn of the Christian era.

Among the more famous of the Latin pantomimists were Pylades, who was the inventor of tragic pantomimes; and Bathyllus, who was the composer of livelier episodes. For some time they joined forces and had a theatre of their own, where they staged comedies and tragedies composed by themselves without words or any other aid in telling the story of the play than dancing, pantomime and music.

The innovation struck the popular fancy, and all Rome flocked to support the new venture. The two actors were received at the Emperor’s Court, and became the spoilt darlings of the Roman “smart” set. The inevitable happened. They began to intrigue at Court, and were made the centre of intrigue; they became as jealous of each other as rival opera singers, and in time a financially happy partnership was dissolved, and there were two theatres devoted to pantomimes instead of one.

But as this form of drama was a novelty, and pleased the “connoisseurs,” who were numerous and increasing in numbers, both theatres were equally successful, perhaps the more so in that the public is always specially interested in ventures that appear to be in rivalry. The taste for existing stage-productions slackened in favour of those offered by Pylades and Bathyllus. Their “ballets” whether tragic, comic or satiric were looked on as the very perfection of tragedy, comedy or satire.

It was no longer a matter of declamatory style to enjoy or to criticise, it was a matter of steps, movements, gestures, attitudes, figures or positions that were discussed by wise connoisseurs of “the new thing,” who in Rome, as elsewhere to-day, had much to say on what they presumed to understand because—it was new! And such, it is said, was the genius of the “producers” of this novel form of entertainment; the effect was so natural, the stage-pictures were so convincing, the pathos was so moving or the gaiety so free and infectious, that the audiences forgot they had ears while using enchanted eyes; and expressive gestures took the place of vocal inflections, of the power of words and the magic of poetic verse.

Pylades before long found a rival star arise in the person of Hylas, whose greatest performance was said to be in Œdipus. If Pylades and Bathyllus had quarrelled, there was evidently no love lost between Pylades and Hylas.

Hylas on one occasion was giving a representation of Agamemnon and, at a particular line referring to that historic personage as “the great,” he rose up on tip-toe. “That,” said Pylades scornfully, “is being tall, not ‘great’”; a criticism not only just, but giving an excellent insight into the methods and ideas of the famous Latin pantomimist.

It is somewhat uncertain whether it was the Court intrigues of Bathyllus or of Hylas or of both which ultimately secured from the Emperor the sentence of banishment for Pylades, or whether it was the daring, not to say impudence of the actor in representing well-known people, or whether again it may not have been the increasing danger of the constant brawls which were taking place daily in the streets of Rome between the rival factions—the Pyladians and the Bathyllians.

But whatsoever the reason, the probability is that the perpetual strife between the parties supporting the adored actors (worse than ever was that between the Piccinists and Gluckists of the eighteenth century), with the constant blood-shed it involved, was made the excuse for the convenient removal of one of the principal factors in the disorder, and that the influence of Bathyllus, possibly backed up by that of Hylas, was able to secure the removal of the tragic actor.

Pylades, however, had his revenge, for such was the uproar in Rome on his banishment that the Emperor was practically forced to recall him, and he returned in triumph.

It is time, however, to leave the affairs of popular actors of the ancient world, since it is less the details of their personal history we need to consider than their importance as the virtual inventors of the second element of Ballet, the art of the mime, or, to use for a moment the more comprehensive word—pantomime. Thus we can see that it is largely due to the perfecting by the Italians of that art which seems to have been even more natural to them than to the Greeks—miming, that we have the Ballet of to-day.

From the dawn of the Christian era, comedy gave place to a perfect craze, first for the mime, and then for its offspring, pure pantomime. But, finally, the mimetic art as a standing entertainment of the Roman public, came to suffer neglect in favour of circuses; then, together with the circuses, it was opposed by the Churches. There were spasmodic revivals in the fourth and fifth centuries, but from the fifth century mime and pantomime practically ceased to exist in Constantinople, to which the seat of the Roman Empire had by that time been removed; and the arts both of the dancer and the mime fell upon a period of obscurity, though they went into retirement with all the reluctance of a modern “star.”

CHAPTER V
CHURCH THUNDER AND CHURCH COMPLAISANCE

It is a truism of history that opposition towards the amusements of a people only increases the desire for them, and that the undue pressure of a law, or of a too rigid majority, only stimulates the invention of evasions. In dramatic history there is ample proof of this.

In England during the seventeenth century the force of Puritan opinion and of law did not crush the Drama, but led to unseemly licence.

When, in the early eighteenth century, Paris was enlivened by the spectacle of the majestic Royal Opera, endeavouring by legal thunder to suppress the lively vaudeville performances of the too popular Paris Fairs, and even going to the length of obtaining decrees forbidding the Fair theatres to perform musical plays in which words were sung, were the managers of the little theatres downhearted?

No! they merely evaded the law and made a mockery of pompous interference by having the music of their songs played, while the meaning was acted in dumb-show, and—the actual words, printed very large, were displayed on a screen let down to the stage from above! Their audiences, catching the spirit of the thing, enjoyed the wit of the evasion and supported the performances all the more.

There are many people who can only relish that which they have been told is wrong.

Much the same spirit was abroad about sixteen hundred years ago, when the growing power of the Christian Church began to be a calculable factor in “practical politics,” and the embarrassment of successive Roman emperors in trying to rule an unwieldy and decaying Empire was increased by the moral warfare between the more rigid sects of the new Church and the pleasures of the people.

It should, however, be said in justice to the early Churchmen that many of the pleasures of the people had become entirely scandalous, and detrimental to the manhood of the Empire, at least as seen in the Empire’s capital. Over such let us draw a veil!

While, in these “democratic” days, it may be doubted if there are any of the English-speaking race who “dearly love a lord” (though there is really no reason why they should not!), there were certainly some thousands of the Byzantine populace in the third and fourth centuries to whom a successful circus-rider or gladiator, actor or dancer, was of far more interest than any peer of their period.

The histrionic favourites lacked, of course, the advantages of picture-postcard fame, and had to be content with immortality in verse. But as for the now hackneyed “stage romance” of the marriage of a youthful scion of a noble house with some resplendent star of the theatrical firmament, did not a Byzantine Emperor, Justinian, marry Theodora, once a popular dancer at the Hippodrome!

Yet he it was who made one of the more effective moves to suppress some of his people’s excessive opportunities for amusement, by abolishing the laws under which the expense of the performances in the Hippodrome, and some of the less important theatres had been met by the Imperial treasury. This, however, was mainly due to his beautiful wife, who had seen all the vilest side of theatrical life in a time when the older dramatic culture had given place to banal and vulgar entertainments involving a horrible servitude of those engaged in providing them.

Before this, however, the Church’s thunder had been launched at the grosser theatrical spectacles, and the Theatre had retaliated by mocking the adherents of the then new religion. Where fulmination failed, control by influence was essayed. But for all the attacks of the more advanced and severer leaders of the early Church, there must have been something of confusion for at least the first five centuries of the Christian era. Indeed, in the endeavour of the Church to transmute the popular love of theatrical spectacles into something higher, and to awaken the public interest in the service of the Church, what with the introduction of choral song, with strophe and antistrophe, and of solemn processionals, even it is said of ceremonial dances performed by the choir—such as the Easter dances still seen in Spain to-day—the Church itself must have come at times to seem perilously sympathetic towards the very things it was professing to condemn.

Did not Gregory Nazianzen implore Julian, before he became “the Apostate,” to be more discreet, saying in effect: “If you must dance, and if you must take part in these fÊtes, for which you seem to have such a passion, then dance, if you must; but why revive the dissolute dances of the daughter of Herodias, and of the pagans? Dance rather as King David did before the Ark; dance to the glory of God. Such exercises of peace and of piety are worthy of an Emperor and a Christian.”

In short, wise cleric as he was, he found no fault with the healthy exercise of the dance itself, but only with such dance and other Byzantine entertainment as had tended, or might tend, to become merely an exhibition of depraved taste.

Indeed, how could he have inveighed against the dance as an expression of clean rejoicing when it had been recorded: “And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances”?[1] Had not the servants of Achish said: “Is not this David the king of the land? did not they sing one to another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands?”[2] Had it not, too, been written: “And David danced before the Lord with all his might.”[3]

No, the Church thunder had been directed against the licence by which the arts of dancing and miming had been corrupted, and against, not wholesome athleticism and healthy sport, but the hysterical brutalities and “professionalism” of the arena.

And if further proof were required of ecclesiastical interest in and practice of the thing it only attacked when seen in degraded form, it is to be found in the fact that in 744, the Pope Zacharias promulgated a Bull suppressing all so-called “religious dances,” or “baladoires” as he called them, which were showing signs of becoming “degenerate.”

These were dances which were performed in, or within the precincts of cathedrals and churches at certain festivals such as Easter, Midsummer and Christmas; and of which the old English bonfire dances of St. John’s Eve, were (and the modern carnival, and the Eastertide ceremonial seen in Seville to-day, are) probably survivals, though, to be sure, they should be accounted originally as survivals of earlier pagan dances in honour of the sun, and of the harvest, and not as originating with the Christian Church.

It may seem a far cry from the date of Pope Zacharias’ edict of 744, to 1462, when the first of the ballets ambulatoires is recorded, but it must not be supposed that dancing, if not miming, is entirely lacking in history during those seven hundred odd years. Any history of dancing would aid us in at least partly bridging such a gap; but it will be convenient in a chapter dealing more especially with early ecclesiastical influence on the evolution of Ballet, to deal now with a form of entertainment or of religious festival which was essentially a creation of the earlier Church.

The famous procession of the FÊte Dieu which King RenÉ d’Anjou, Count of Provence, established at Aix in 1462, was, as an old historian tells us, an “ambulatory” ballet, “composed of a number of allegorical scenes, called entremets.” This word entremets, which was later replaced by “interludes,” designated a miming spectacle in which men and animals represented the action. Sometimes jugglers and mountebanks showed their tricks and danced to the sound of their instruments. These entertainments were called entremets because they were instituted to occupy the guests agreeably at a great feast, during the intervals between the courses. “The entre-actes of our first tragedies,” the writer adds, “were arranged in this manner, as one sees in the works of Baif, the interludes in the tragedy of Sophonisbie. More than five hundred mountebanks, Merry Andrews, comedians and buffoons, exhibited their tricks and prowess at the full Court which was held at Rimini to arm the knights and nobles of the house of Malatesta and others.”

As the fÊtes and tournaments, given on these occasions, were accompanied by acts of devotion, the festivals of the Church often displayed also something of the gallant pomp of the tournaments.

These ballets ambulatoires, however, with all their richer pageantry, were yet to be outshone by the two secular entertainments to which we must devote our next chapter—the banquet-dance of Bergonzio di Botta, of 1489, and the still more famous “Ballet Comique de la Reine,” of 1581, the last of which, there can be little doubt, had important effect in the development if not creation of our English masque, which, in turn, had an immense influence on the evolution of modern Ballet.

CHAPTER VI
THE BANQUET-BALL OF BERGONZIO DI BOTTA, 1489, AND THE FAMOUS “BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE,” 1581

A superb and ingenious festivity was that arranged by Bergonzio di Botta, a gentleman of Tortona, in honour of the wedding of Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, with Isabella of Aragon.

The good Bergonzio was a lover of all the best things of life, but especially of dining and of dancing. That historic gourmet, Brillat Savarin, commends him for his taste in the former matter, as may we for the bright idea of combining a dinner with a dance, one of somewhat nobler plan than any modern example!

The dinner was of many courses and each was introduced by the servers and waiters with a dance in character, the whole constituting a sort of dinner-ballet. In the centre of a stately salon, which was surrounded by a gallery where various musicians were distributed, there was a large table.

As the Duke and his lady entered the salon by one door, from another approached Jason and the Argonauts who, stepping proudly forth to the sound of martial music and by dance and gestures expressing their admiration of so handsome a bride and bridegroom, covered the table with the Golden Fleece which they were carrying.

This group then gave place to Mercury who, in recitative, described the cunning which he had used in stealing from Apollo, who guarded the flocks of Admetus, a fat calf, with which he came to pay homage to the newly married pair. While he placed it on the table three “quadrilles” who followed him executed a graceful entrÉe.

Diana and her nymphs then succeeded Mercury. The Goddess was followed by a kind of litter on which was a hart. This, she explained, was ActÆon, who, although no longer alive, was happy in that he was to be offered to so amiable and fair a nymph as Isabella of Aragon. At this moment a melodious symphony attracted the attention of the guests. It announced the singer of Thrace, who was seen playing on his lyre while chanting the praises of the young duchess.

“I mourned,” he sang, “on Mount Apennine the death of tender Eurydice. Now, hearing of the union of two lovers worthy to live for one another, I have felt, for the first time since my sorrow, an impulse of joy. My songs have changed with the feelings of my heart. A flock of birds has flown to hear my song. I offer them to the fairest princess on earth, since the charming Eurydice is no more.”

A sudden clamour interrupted his song as Atalanta and Theseus, heading a nimble and brilliant troupe, represented by lively dances the glories of the chase. The mimic hunt was terminated by the death of the wild boar of Calydon, which was offered to the young Duke, with triumphal “ballets.”

A magnificent spectacle then succeeded this picturesque entrance. On one side was Iris, seated on a car drawn by peacocks and followed by several nymphs, covered in light gauze and carrying dishes of superb birds. The youthful Hebe appeared on the other side, carrying the nectar which she poured for the gods. She was accompanied by Arcadian shepherds, laden with all kinds of food and by Vertumnus and Pomona who offered all manner of fruits. At the same time the shade of that famous gourmet Apicius rose from the earth, presenting to this superb feast all the delicacies he had invented and which had given him the reputation of the most voluptuous among ancient Romans. This spectacle disappeared and then there was a wondrous ballet of all the gods of the sea and rivers of Lombardy; who carried the most exquisite fish and served them while executing dances of different characters.

This extraordinary repast was followed by a yet more singular spectacle opened by Orpheus, who headed a procession of Hymen and a troop of Loves, followed by the Graces who surrounded Conjugal Faith, whom they presented to the Princess, while offering, themselves, to serve her.

At this moment, Semiramis, Helen, Medea and Cleopatra interrupted a recitative by Conjugal Faith to sing of the delights of Passion. Then a Vestal, indignant that the recital of pure and true marriages should be sullied by such guilty songs, ordered the notorious queens to withdraw. At her voice, the Loves, who accompanied her, joined in a lively dance, pursuing the wicked queens with lighted torches and setting fire to the gauze veils of their headdress! Lucretia, Penelope, Thomiris, Porcia and Sulpicia replaced them and presented to the young Princess that palm for chastity which they had merited during their lives. Their “modest and noble” dance, however, was interrupted by Bacchus, with a troop of revellers who came to celebrate so illustrious a bridal, and the festival terminated in a manner as gay as it was ingenious.

The fÊte achieved a prodigious fame throughout Italy. It was the talk of every city and a full description of its glories was published, while crowds of “society hostesses” of the period endeavoured to emulate the ingenuity of its originators, and the vogue of the dinner-ballet “arrived.”

One effect of its fame was that for a century it set the fashion for the Royal and Ducal Courts throughout Europe. Every Court had its “ballets,” in which lords and ladies of highest degree took part; and the movement was greatly fostered by Catherine de Medici, who sought to divert the attention of her son, Henry III, from political affairs towards the more congenial ways of social amusement, of which Court-ballets formed considerable part.

The culmination of these sumptuous entertainments came, however, in 1581, when in celebration of the betrothal of the Duc de Joyeuse and Marguerite of Lorraine, sister of the Queen of France, a spectacle was arranged, the splendour of which had never been seen in the world before. This was Beaujoyeux’s famous “Ballet Comique de la Royne”—or de la Reine in modern spelling—which set all cultured Europe aglow with praise of its designer. A special account of it, with many charming engravings, was printed by order of the King to send to foreign Courts. So much did it set a fashion that the elaborate masked balls and the numerous Court-masques and entertainments which followed in the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth and James were directly inspired by the success of Beaujoyeux’s ballet, even as they in turn influenced the subsequent productions of Louis XIV in France.

The author and designer was an Italian, by name Baltasarini, famous as a violinist. He was introduced by the Duc de Brissac to the notice of Catherine de Medici, who appointed him a valet de chambre, and subsequently he became official organiser of the Court fÊtes, ballets and concerts, assuming the name of Baltasar de Beaujoyeux.

The account of the ballet was sumptuously published. The title-page read as follows:

BALET COMIQUE

After a courtly dedication “Au Roy de France, et de Pologne,” full of praise for his prowess in arms and his taste in art, full of graceful compliment by classic implications, he follows with an address:

AU LECTEUR.

Although the quaint spelling of the old French may offer a passing difficulty to some readers, I have felt it advisable to give the address as it stands, for it presents several points of extraordinary interest.

First and foremost is the fact that it claims Beaujoyeux’s ballet to be the first ever printed!

His description of a ballet as “meslanges geometriques de plusieurs personnes dansans ensemble” is extremely interesting. Pylades the Latin dancer-mime declared that no man could become a perfect mime who did not understand music, painting, sculpture and geometry! And in recent years a well-known Italian maÎtre with whom I was discussing Ballet remarked, as he held up a case of drawing instruments, “Here is the whole art of choreography,” or ballet-composition. This may seem a somewhat exaggerated assertion, but it is a fact that without some knowledge of geometry it would be difficult for a composer of Ballet to tell the effect that would be produced by lines and groups of dancers in the sight of a huge audience all looking at the stage from different angles.

Beaujoyeux’s claim to appeal to and satisfy “l’oeil, l’oreille, et l’entendement” is also interesting, and quite in accord with modern ideas of the Ballet.

The entertainment itself must have been a remarkable affair. It began with a fine water display by a fountain with twelve sides, on each of which were two naiads, with musical instruments, for the “concert,” which accompanied the singers. Above the fountain-basin, which was full of fish, rose another on pillars, where twelve niches made seats for so many nymphs. In the middle, dolphins carried a crown and formed a throne for the Queen. Two other basins rose again above, formed of other dolphins grouped, which spouted great jets of water, and the whole was topped by a golden ball five feet in diameter.

It was from this “machine,” drawn by sea-horses and accompanied by twelve tritons and as many sirens with their instruments, that there descended the Queen, the Princesse de Lorraine, the Duchesses de Mercueil, de Guise, de Nevers, d’Aumale and de Joyeuse, Marechal de Raiz, and de l’Archant and the Demoiselles de Pons, de Bourdeille and de Cypierre—who had all been seated in golden cars, and who were dressed in silver cloth and crÊpe encrusted with gold bullion and precious stones. Thus they made the first entrance, arranging themselves in twelve different figures. At the first entrance they were six abreast and three in front in a triangle, of which the Queen formed the first point.

After this impressive opening the ballet meandered through the story of Circe, with musical interludes, songs and dances, and elaborate allegory. But as the first act began at ten in the evening and the last did not finish till after five in the morning, it will be seen that the production was as lengthy as it was magnificent. Some idea of the splendour of the fÊte, indeed, may be gathered from the fact that it cost something over three and a half million francs. The conclusion was graceful. The Queen and the Princesses, who had represented naiads and nereids, presented gold medals to the princes and seigneurs who, in the guise of tritons, had danced with them—presumably as a reward for their patience! This presentation of gifts became quite a custom at these courtly ballets, and doubtless the modern cotillon is a survival.

The “Ballet Comique” set a fashion throughout Europe, and various Courts vied with each other in similar entertainments. The English Court had, of course, already had its ceremonial balls, masked balls and “masques,” but their splendour had been nothing to this, and the subsequent fÊtes at the Courts of Elizabeth and James were directly influenced by the example of the French in this direction, as we shall see when we come to deal with the English masque as a form of Ballet.

Let us first, however, consider the dances of the period, for which we have an excellent authority in the work of Thoinot Arbeau.

CHAPTER VII
THOINOT ARBEAU’S “ORCHÉSOGRAPHIE,” 1588

“In Spring,” we know, “the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” In the winter of life it would seem that an old man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of the dances that his time-stiffened limbs can no more achieve with their earlier agility and grace, and he takes to—writing about them. For it is strange but true that some of the most entertaining volumes on the subject are those written on the history of the dance by “grave and reverend seigneurs”; who, one would imagine, had long foregone all thought of youthful pastimes and turned their minds to solemner affairs. Three such, at least, I can recall—Thoinot Arbeau, Bonnet, and Baron.

Over three centuries ago—nay, nearly four, we come upon a somewhat sage and elderly gentleman, Thoinot Arbeau, whose book with its strange title, OrchÉsographie, was published in 1588.

Was it shyness, or sheer fraud that made him write it under a false name, a nom de thÉÂtre it would almost seem. For Thoinot Arbeau was not his name, but a sort of anagram on his real one, which was Jehan Tabourot. Moreover, he was sixty-seven when he wrote it, and was a Canon of the Church! He was born at Dijon in 1519, and was the son of one Estienne Tabourot, a King’s Counsellor! Think of it—born four hundred years ago, yet he speaks to our time, telling us, albeit in somewhat stiff and difficult French, of the dances that were in vogue in his dancing days.

As to the strange title of his work, its meaning will of course be apparent to all who know anything of the history of the subject, for they will remember that the Greek word for the dance was Orcheisthai (the Orchestra being the floor-space where the dancers performed); and so OrchÉsographie is merely a treatise on the writing of dances; that is, the setting of them down in such form that subsequent readers could study the dances therefrom.

The recording of the actual steps of dances has always been a problem, and other leading masters in France (such as Beauchamps, PÉcourt, Feuillet) and in England (such as Weaver) had several more or less successful shots during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at inventing a sort of dance-shorthand.

The very first author to attempt such a thing with any real success was apparently our friend Arbeau; for earlier works, such as that of Caroso, are very poor. Into the full details of his system, however, I do not propose to enter now, for the matter is somewhat technical. The interest of Arbeau’s work, however, is by no means mainly technical.

The book, which was published at Lengres in 1588, is written in the form of a dialogue “by which everyone can easily learn and practise the honest exercise of the dances,” to give the quaint phraseology of the original, the two speakers being Arbeau the author, and Capriol, a youth who some few years earlier had left Lengres to go to Paris and Orleans and now, on his return, has sought out Arbeau to learn from him all that he can of dancing. Thoinot at first does not recognise him because, as he says, “You have grown so, and I believe that you have also enlarged your spirit by virtue and knowledge.” He asks the young man’s opinion of the study of Law, remarking that he was also once a law-student.

Capriol expresses his admiration for the law as a necessary institution, but complains that his neglect of the polite arts, while in the company of the Orleans law-students, has made him dull and wooden. He says that his knowledge of fencing and tennis makes him an acceptable companion with other youths, but he fails as a dancer to please the demoiselles, a point on which, it seems to him, depends the whole reputation of a young man who contemplates marriage. Then follows some sound advice, with curious details, from Arbeau, on the advantages of dancing as a matrimonial agent, and he acclaims the art as one necessary to social welfare.

Capriol agrees and expresses his disgust that the dance should have been so subject to bitter attacks, of which he quotes historic instances. Arbeau neatly responds that, “For one who has blamed, an infinity have esteemed and praised the art,” also following with quoted examples, saying, indeed, that “Le S. prophete royal dauid daÇa au deuat de l’arche de Dieu,” or, in other words, that “the holy prophet, King David, danced before the Ark of God.”

In the course of their conversation, Arbeau makes learned references to the derivation of the word “Dance,” mentioning others then in use that were allied to it, such as saulter (from the Latin saltare), caroler (hence our “carols,” or songs which, originally, accompanied certain religious dances), baler, and trepiner, Capriol remembers that the ancients had three kinds of dances: the sedate Emmeleia, the gay Kordax, and the mixed Sikinnis, the first of which Arbeau likens (quite unhistorically) to the pavanes and basse-dance of his own period; the second, to the gaillardes, voltas, corantos, gavottes (note that—a reference to the gavotte in 1588!) and branles (or, as Elizabethan Englishmen called them, “brawls”); while the third, he declares, must have been similar to the branles doubles and to “the dance which we call bouffons or matachins.”

Then, very wisely, he points out that most objections to dancing have been provoked not by decent but by—objectionable dancing! And as Capriol hastily assures his austere but kindly teacher that he wants none of that sort, but that he is anxious to teach his twelve-year-old sister what Arbeau is good enough to teach him, the old man proceeds on most polite and methodical lines.

Arbeau, truly remarking that rhythm is the basis of the dance, as it was always of all military marching and evolutions, then goes on to give a wonderful disquisition on that glorious instrument, the drum, and a masterly analysis of its rhythmic possibilities, both as an inspirer of soldiers on the march and as a stimulus to the dance.

The old man’s enthusiasm for an instrument that has never really received its due homage is truly fine, and he gives no less than seventy-six examples of drum-beat on a common-time basis. He follows this with an exposition of fife-playing (with musical examples); his earnest plea for this study of drum (tambour) and fife being only preparatory to a study of the basse-dances, which were properly accompanied by both instruments.

As several of these dances of three centuries agone have been revived in our time, it is of interest to consider them in some detail, more especially as they formed the choregraphic basis of all the ballets subsequently for some two centuries. Arbeau informs us that most of what he calls the “recreative” dances (or as we might say “social,” as opposed to the more ceremonial affairs necessitating an orchestra) were performed in his forebears’ time to the music of the flute and little drum.

Capriol asks: “Tell me, what are these dances and how are they done?”

To which Arbeau replies that they danced, in his father’s days, “pavanes, basse-dances, branles and courantes, which have been in use some forty or fifty years.”

Capriol asks: “How did our fathers dance the basse-dance?”

Arbeau replied that they had two sorts, the one common and regular, the other irregular, the former being danced to “chansons rÉgulieres,” and the latter to “chansons irrÉgulieres,” and proceeds to explain that, for the former songs, there were sixteen bars which were repeated, making thirty-two to commence with; then a middle part of sixteen bars; and a close of sixteen, repeated; making eighty bars in all. If the air of the song was longer than this, the basse-dance played on it was termed “irregular.” He then explains that the basse-dance proper was in three parts, the term being really only applied to the first; the second being called “retour de la basse-dance,” and the third and last being termed “tordion.”

Then comes the following:

“Memoire des mouvements pour la basse-dance.

R b ss d r d r b ss ddd r d
r b ss d r b c.”

Not unnaturally Capriol, who is for ever asking quite intelligent questions, wants a translation of this cryptic-looking array of letters. It is better understood when one hears that “R” stands for reverence, “b” for a branle, “ss” for deux simples, “d” for a double (or three “ddd” for three “doubles”); the small “r” stands for a rÉprise, and “c” for congÉ; all of which are terms understood by dancers of to-day.

He gives very careful directions not only for performing the “reverence,” the “simple,” the “double,” the “rÉprise,” and the “congÉ,” but for performing the various movements of the basse-dance, the retour, and the tordion; as, for instance, when he remarks that “You begin the dance of the tordion, which is in triple time, just like the basse-dance: but it is (to give his own words) plus legiere and concitÉe.”

He describes the Pavane as “easy” to dance, and gives details of its performance, together with the music of that famous and lovely example, “Belle qui tiens ma vie captive,” the words being given in full, for four voices and tambour accompaniment.

The Gaillarde, he says, is so-called “parce qu’il fault estre gaillard and dispos pour la dancer,” and with much detail as to its performance explains that while danced somewhat like the tordion the latter is done “plus doulcement and avec actions and gestes moings violents.”

He gives nearly a dozen musical examples for the gaillarde, one called “La traditors my fa morire”; another “Anthoinette”; another, with the charming title “Baisons nous belle”; another, “Si j’ayme ou non.”

Capriol, by the way, remarks apropos after the second-named, that “At Orleans when we give Aubades we always play on our lutes and guiternes a gaillarde called ‘La Romanesque,’” but that it seemed so hackneyed and trivial that he and his companions took to “Anthoinette” as being livelier and having a better rhythm.

The Gaillarde was in triple time, and was made up of five steps (or four steps and a leap) and one “position”; the term cinq pas also being alternatively applied to it, hence the Shakespearean “cinque-pace” and “sink-a-pace.”

The Volte, from which is derived the modern valse, was described by Arbeau as “a species of gaillarde familiar to the ProvenÇals,” danced, like the tordion, in triple time, and consisting of two steps and a leap. The Volte, or Volta, as it was as often called, was popular in England, as was the Gaillarde, and references to it are found in Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida) and in the one really great work on the Dance in English literature, namely, Sir John Davies’ richly imaginative and finely musical poem, Orchestra, or a Poeme on Daunciny, which was published in 1596, only eight years after Arbeau’s OrchÉsographie.

The Courante, Arbeau describes as very different from the Volte. It is also (in contrast to the Pavanes and Basse-dances) a danse sautÉe, but in twelve time, with running steps, requiring from time to time not the quick, light leaping of a volte, but the sort of slow soaring for which Vestris was famous in the eighteenth century and Volinin and Bohn can perform so superbly to-day.

Arbeau says that in his youth the dance was given as a kind of “ballet,” by three young men and three girls, with grace and dignity and he bewails its subsequent decadence. The old English term was “current traverse.” In Sir John Davies’ Orchestra one finds the following reference:

In Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, too, is the following:

and Sir Toby Belch, it will be recalled, asks: “Why dost thou go to church in a galliard and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig ... sink-a-pace.”

There seems, however, considerable ground for question as to what the courante, or coranto, really was, whether a slow or quick dance. Arbeau’s directions are, for once, not quite clear. He speaks of it being a more graceful affair in his younger days; and he was an old man at the time his OrchÉsographie was published. In England it certainly seems to have become a fairly lively dance, of which the main feature was its “running” steps.

In France that characteristic seems to have been the same though the tempo may have been slower. Certainly it became slower there, for the courante under Louis Quatorze was considered a dull dance, disappearing in favour of newer types requiring a more developed and quicker technique.

However, dances alter in character, like everything else, in the course of time. The waltz or valse has considerably altered since it was first introduced into London drawing-rooms—and considered shocking!—in the first decade of the nineteenth century; and even to-day there is considerable difference between the valse as danced by Swiss or German peasants, and as seen in the London ball-room. It is probable that the courante of Arbeau’s day was as varied in performance as the tango of our later time.

Let us return, however, to his description of other dances of the period. The Allemande, he explains, “est une dance plaine de mediocre gravitÉ, familiere aux AllemÂds, et croy qu’elle soit de noz plus anciennes car nous sommes desendus des Allemandes.” But his authority for the latter statement he does not give! It was danced by two or more people, in twelve time, and later was a very popular dance with Louis the Thirteenth.

A lengthy description follows of the Branle, which is also sometimes spelt Bransle, and from which comes our English word Brawl, the meaning of which has sadly degenerated from its original significance.

Saying that, “since you know how to dance the Pavane and the Basse-dance, it will be easy for you to dance the branles,” he then proceeds to give account of over a score, including two which seem later to have assumed a right to be considered as separate dances, namely, the Triory de Bretagne (or simply, the Triory) and the Branle de la Haye, sometimes called merely the Haye, Hay, or Hey, which was an interlacing chain-dance.

Among the examples he gives is a Branle d’Escosse, of which he says: “Les branles d’Escosse estoient en vogue y a environ vingt ans,” and it is much like the customary Scotch reel. The Branles des LavandiÈres, he explains, is so-called because the dancers make a noise by clapping their hands to represent that made by the washerwomen who wash their clothes on the banks of the Seine. Another, the Branle du Chandelier, was danced with lighted candles.

A description of the Gavotte follows, and it is interesting to note that this dance which is still seen on the stage sometimes to-day, was an established favourite as far back as 1588. Then comes an account of the “Morisque” dance, the origin of which Arbeau places in the Saturnalia of the ancient world, not without reason, one fancies; and then he gives account of the Canaries, which, he says, some say takes its name from the Canary Isles, while others derive it “from a ballet composed for a masquerade in which the dancers were dressed as kings and queens of Mauretania, or even as savages therefrom, with headdress of varied plumage.” The last chapter is devoted to the dance of Bouffons, a dance with sword and buckler supposedly derived from ancient Rome and a never-failing source of delight to French playgoers and opera-lovers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Before the “Dialogue” actually closes, young Capriol politely thanks Monsieur Arbeau for the trouble he has taken to teach him dancing, and Arbeau responds by promising a second volume (alas! never written) dealing with the ballets of the masquerades “made” at Lengres. He urges him meanwhile to practise “les dances honnestement,” and so become a worthy comrade of the planets “qui dancent naturellement”: and he closes his discourse very prettily with the words, “Je prie Dieu vous en donne la grace.”

We have lingered somewhat over this old manual of dancing, but there are some half-dozen points in the history of ballet that it is of vital importance to emphasise, and Arbeau’s book is one of them.

Dancing itself of course had continued to exist through all time. But from the decadence of Rome until fairly late in the fifteenth century, ballet had only a precarious sporadic existence; and the production of Beaujoyeux’s volume of the Ballet Comique de la Royne in 1582, and Arbeau’s OrchÉsographie in 1588, made a turning-point in the history of ballet—the point where a popular amusement was once again taken up by men of intellect and given a new form and a new spirit. Beaujoyeux created an interest in ballet, Arbeau assisted an advance in the technique of one of the chief elements of the art, namely, dancing; and there can be little doubt that both men were largely instrumental in forwarding that movement towards popular delight in the theatrical masque and ballet which were to become an outstanding feature of the next two centuries, the seventeenth and the eighteenth.

CHAPTER VIII
SCENIC EFFECT: THE ENGLISH MASQUE AS BALLET

In considering di Botta’s elaborate feast, and Beaujoyeux’s “ballet,” one is struck by their similarity to the English “disguisings” and masques, which, first introduced to the Court of Henry the Eighth in 1512 as a novelty from Italy, only began to assume definite literary form about a century later. That century contributed towards the development of scenic effect.

In studying Arbeau’s manual of contemporary dance and music, one is struck by another thing: he is dealing with a social amusement of the upper classes. The dances he describes were mainly the proper accomplishment of the well born, or were such of lower origin as might with adaptation become worthy of performance by more courtly dancers. It is certain he does not describe all the types of dance known to his period. The old ProvenÇal “Rigaudon” which was later to come into such favour owing to Camargo, is not referred to by Arbeau; nor the languorous “Sarabande,” which was probably of Moorish origin derived through Spain—or possibly earlier through Augustan Rome; the lively “Chaconne” is another omission; the “Tresca” yet another. These, and perhaps others, must have existed in Arbeau’s time and long before; but would be among the traditional amusements of the people, and were not yet elected to the company of courtly dances.

It is needful to linger over these points here, for they account for much that we find in the subsequent development of theatrical ballets in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Speaking of Beaujoyeux’s “Ballet Comique,” Castil Blaze, the scholarly historian of the Paris opera, remarks that it “became the model on which were composed a number of ballets, sung and danced, a kind of piece which held the place of Opera among the French and English for about a century.” That century was, roughly, from about 1500 to 1600. And he adds: “The English gave them the name of masque.”

In the few years after Henry VIII came to be crowned the young monarch spent considerable time and spared no expense in entertaining himself and his Queen with “disguisings,” “revels” and masqued balls.

On Twelfth Night, 1511, before the banquet in the Hall at Richmond, so records the contemporary chronicler, Edward Hall, there “was a pageant devised like a mountain, glistering by night as though it had been all of gold and set with stones; on the top of which mountain was a tree of gold, the branches and boughs frysed with gold, spreading on every side over the mountain with roses and pomegranates; the which mountain was with (de) vices brought up towards the King, and out of the same came a lady apparelled in cloth of gold, and the children of honour, called the henchmen, which were freshly disguised and danced a Morris before the King, and that done re-entered the mountain: and then was the wassail brought in and so brake up Christmas.”

The next year the King himself took part in a similar pageant; and in the next, i.e. in 1513, so Hall tells us, “the King with eleven others were disguised after the manner of Italy, called a Mask, a thing not seen before in England. They were apparelled in garments long and broad, wrought with gold, with visors and caps of gold; and after the banquet these masquers came in with six gentlemen disguised in silk, bearing staff-torches, and desired the ladies to dance.”

A little later came the introduction of singing, and dialogue as well as dancing, some allegorical story forming the basis of the masque. In Beaujoyeux’s “ballet” of 1582, we have all this. Up to then in England the masque made no great advance beyond those of Henry VIII’s early years. In Beaujoyeux’s “ballet,” however, we have all that had been, and more. We have dancing, singing, dialogue, elaborate scenic effect, all in illustration of a mythic and allegorical story; and achieving a definiteness and grandeur of form hitherto unequalled, as well as publicity which made it famous throughout Europe. In some ways it was as much masque as “ballet,” and as much opera as masque. Actually it did stimulate the development of the Masque in England; and Opera in France.

At the English Courts of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, the masque developed in the direction of scenic elaboration and splendour (with music) that made up for its literary shortcomings, at least in its earlier period.

At the French Courts of Henry IV and Louis XIII, what were known as Opera-ballets (later to be separated as opera and ballet) developed a musical richness (with scenic effect) that made up for similar literary shortcomings. Yet again came another form in the Comedie Ballet of MoliÈre.

With the accession of James I of England came the real efflorescence of the English masque, which under the hands of Ben Jonson was to become a fairly balanced harmony of the three arts—the poet’s, the musician’s, and the painter-designer’s.

It must of course be understood that in both the masque and ballet there was dancing; but at the period with which we are now dealing, namely the last decade of the sixteenth and first few decades of the seventeenth centuries, the technique of that art was—for stage purposes—comparatively so primitive as to make it almost a negligible quantity. There was dancing of course—that of “henchmen” and men and boys who performed a Morris, or bouffon-dances; and that of courtier, Court-lady, or even, it might be, a Royal personage, who would take part in the stately Pavane or Almain, now and then unbending sufficiently to dance a Trenchmore (once Queen Elizabeth’s favourite) or Canary.

But it was all either an intrusion, alien to the general purport of the production, or else vastly overshadowed by the chief design, which was to present, with the aid of “disguisings” and elaborate “machines,” a sort of living picture or series of living pictures, expressing some mythological, allegorical episodes or complimentary idea.

The chief aim was splendid pageantry; something mainly to please the eye; and secondarily to charm the ear; without making too great claims upon the intellect.

Among the leading English masque writers during the period we are considering were George Gascoigne, Campion, Samuel Daniel, Dekker, Chapman, William Browne, Beaumont and Fletcher and Jonson.

In France, at the Court of Henri Quatre, and under the direction of his famous minister, the great and grave Sully—who himself took part in them—some eighty ballets were given between 1589 and 1610, apart from state balls and bals masquÉs.

In England among the more notable masques produced during about the same period were the following:—

All these were elaborate productions; those of Jonson being indeed beautiful. Their literary value has long been realised, and one sees in them some of his finest work. The introductory descriptions and the stage-directions are singularly minute and careful, and, in their way, are quite as well worth study as the beauties of his strong and noble verse.

He writes of scenes and costumes as if he loved them: as when, in “The Masque of Blackness,” he describes the Moon, “triumphant in a silver throne.... Her garments white and silver, the dressing of her head antique, and crowned with a luminary or sphere of light; which, striking on the clouds, and brightened with silver, reflected, as natural clouds do, the splendour of the moon. The heaven about her was vaulted with blue silk, and set with stars of silver, which had in them their several lights burning.”

And again: “The attire of the masquers was alike in all, without difference: the colours azure and silver; but returned on the top with a scroll and antique dressings of feathers, and jewels interlaced with ropes of pearl. And for the front, ear, neck, and wrists the ornament was of the most choice and Orient pearl: best setting off from the Black.”

For the scenery and mechanical effects or “machines” as they were called—there was Inigo Jones, the travelled artist-architect who had seen many a masking in Italy; for the music there was Alfonso Ferrabosco, son of the Italian composer, appointed music-master at the Court of James I; and for MaÎtre de danse, there were Thomas Giles and Hieronimus Herne.

It was a noble company who took part in the performances. In “The Masque of Blackness,” though there were only three speaking parts, Oceanus, Niger and Æthiopia—the impersonators of which are not recorded—there was no less a personage than Queen Anne herself, Consort of King James, who appeared as Euphoris, supported by the Countess of Bedford (Aglaia), Lady Herbert (Diaphane), the Countess of Derby (Eucampse), Lady Rich (Ocyte), Countess of Suffolk (Kathare) and other fair ladies of title.

The “Masque of Beauty,” a superb spectacle given at the Court some three years later by express command of Her Majesty, had for speaking parts only three, namely those of Boreas—“in a robe of russet and white mixed, full and bagged; his hair and beard rough and horrid; his wings grey, and full of snow and icicles; his mantle borne from him with wires and in several puffs”; Januarius—“in a throne of silver; his robe of ash colour, long, fringed with silver; a white mantle; his wings white and his buskins”; and Vulturnus—“in a blue coloured robe and mantle, puft as the former, but somewhat sweeter; his face black, and on his head a red sun, showing he came from the East.”

Following the entrance of Vulturnus, bringing—in reference to the former “Masque of Blackness”—the good news of his discovery of a lost isle whereon the black but lovely daughters of Niger had been languishing in obscurity, there came a fine pageant.

“Here,” as Jonson’s stage directions describe it, “a curtain was drawn in which the night was painted, and the scene was discovered which (because the former was marine, and these, yet of necessity, to come from the sea) I devised should be an island floating on a calm water. In the midst thereof was a Seat of State, called the Throne of Beauty, erected; divided into eight squares, and distinguished by so many Ionic pilasters. In these squares, the sixteen masquers were placed by couples; behind them in the centre of the throne was a tralucent pillar, shining with several coloured lights, that reflected on their backs. From the top of which pillar went several arches to the pilasters, in front, little Cupids in flying posture, waving of wreaths and lights, bore up the cornice; over which were eight figures, representing the elements of Beauty, which advanced upon the Ionic, and, being females, had the Corinthian order.”

They were: Splendour, Serenitas, Germinatio, LÆtitia, Temperies, Venustas, Dignitas, and Perfectio. Minute description is given of their garments, but is too lengthy for inclusion here. The stage directions then proceed:

After a chorus with echoing refrain, “Vulturnus the wind spake to the river Thamesis, that lay along between the shores, leaning upon his urn, that flowed with water, and crowned with flowers; with a blue cloth of silver robe about him; and was personated by Master Thomas Giles, who made the dances.

“SONG.

These quotations, though necessarily brief, illustrate the characteristic elements in the construction of the masque—dancing, music, song, spoken verse and elaborate scenic effect.

The reference to Thomas Giles, “who made the dances,” to the dances themselves, “galliards and corantos,” and that charming admission as to “a third most elegant and curious dance” not to be described again “by any art but that of their own footing”; the reference to the arbours in which “were placed the musicians, who represented the shades of the old poets, and were attired in a priest-like habit of crimson and purple, with laurel garlands”; the song of the “first tenor”—“Had those that dwelt ...” and January’s speech apostrophising women’s beauty; above all the loving descriptions of the scenery and mechanical effects, must all be of uncommon interest to those who know anything of the history of the French ballet, because it is so closely paralleled in the descriptions given some seventy years later by the AbbÉ Menestrier of the entertainments at the Court of Louis XIV. The English “masques” of the early seventeenth were, in effect, the French “ballets” of the early eighteenth century. To return, however, to the English Court of James I.

The Queen and Ladies of her Court once again took part in the entertainment of His Majesty as representatives of the various types of Beauty introduced in the course of the masque, and yet again were they found in the noble “Masque of Queens,” celebrated from the House of Fame, by the Queen of Great Britain with her Ladies, at Whitehall, February 2nd, 1609, which was dedicated to the young Prince Henry, as to the origin of which Ben gives the following interesting note: “It increasing,” he says, “to the third time of my being used in these services to Her Majesty’s personal presentations, with the ladies whom she pleaseth to honour; it was my first and special regard, to see to the dignity of their persons. For which reason I chose the argument to be A celebration of honourable and true Fame bred out of Virtue.”

All of which in a sense foreshadowed the various symbolic ballets later at the Court of France, such as La VeritÉ, ennemie des apparences, which we shall come to consider in due course. The thing to realise now is that these masques of Ben Jonson and of other men of his period were the finest flowering of a form of entertainment which had been struggling for definite shape throughout the previous century, indeed from the days of di Botta’s fÊte in 1489, and had received its most recent and most effective stimulus from France in the production of Beaujoyeux’s wondrous symbolic and mythologic “ballet” some twenty odd years before Ben Jonson’s first “masque” was produced. The English masque—partly dramatic “interlude” with song, music and dance introduced, was in effect a ballet, and was a direct influence in the formation of the “opera-ballets” which were subsequently to be the delight of the French Court for a century or more.

CHAPTER IX
BALLET ON THE MOVE

If the masque was a kind of ballet that did not move from its appointed place within sight of the Royal and Courtly audience, by whom it was commanded as a spectacle for private entertainment, there was a “ballet” which did, and became, like the “carrousels” and “triumphs,” a very public spectacle, namely the ballet-ambulatoire, or peripatetic “ballet,” said to have originated among the Portuguese, and much encouraged by the Church.

The Beatification of Ignatius Loyola in 1609 is an instance of peripatetic “ballet” famous in the history of the dance.

Interesting account of it is given by the invaluable Menestrier, who writes:

“As the Jesuits had a war-like character, they chose the Siege of Troy for the subject of their ballet. The first act took place before the church of Notre Dame de Lorette. It was there they stood the wooden horse. Full of Jesuits, the machine began to move, while numerous dancers acted the most remarkable feats of arms of Achilles, Ajax, Hector and Æneas. The monstrous horse and its retinue advanced, preceded by a brilliant orchestra. They arrived at the Place St. Roch, where the Jesuits had their church. The city of Troy, or at least a part of its towers and ramparts, constructed of wood, occupied a third of this place. A piece of wall was broken down, to give entrance to the horse, the Greeks descended from the machine and the Trojans attacked them with guns. The enemy defended with the same arms, and the two sides fought—while dancing! Eighteen great staves filled with fireworks caused the burning and the ruin of Troy!”

One might be puzzled to know how the author of such a drama would introduce Saint Ignatius Loyola on the scene. The maker of the “book,” however, had no qualms, and, leaving the Greeks and Trojans buried beneath the ruins of Ilium, on the following day, he led the spectators to the seashore. “Four brigantines,” the chronicler proceeds, “richly decorated and fenced, painted and gilded, covered with dancers and ‘choirs of music,’ present themselves at the Port. They bring four ambassadors, who, in the name of the four quarters of the globe, come to swear homage and fidelity, to offer presents to the newly beatified, to thank him for his benefits and to beg his protection for the future. All the artillery of the Forts and of the vessels salute the brigantines on their entrance. The ambassadors then mount the cars in waiting and advance towards the College of the reverend fathers, with an escort of three hundred Jesuits on horseback, dressed as Greeks! Four troops of inhabitants of the four quarters of the world, dressed in national costumes, dance round the cars. The realms, the provinces, represented by their genii loci, march before their ambassador. The troop from America is the first, and among the dancers are many children disguised as monkeys and parrots, and twelve dwarfs, mounted on little nags. The car of Asia is drawn by two elephants. Six superb horses form the team of the others.” The diversity, the richness of the costumes was not the least ornament of this singular ballet, for it is said that several of the actors had on their garments precious stones of great value.

It is the Portuguese who claim to have invented the true ambulatory ballets, which—designed in imitation of the Thyrennian “pomp” described by Appius Alexander—were danced in the streets of a town proceeding from place to place, with movable stages and properties. The performances were given on saints’ days and with the greatest solemnity.

In the year 1610 Pope Paul V. canonised Cardinal St. Charles BorromÉe, who, under the pontificate of Pius IV., his uncle, was patron of the kingdom of Portugal, and that grateful nation wished to honour him publicly.

In order that it should be done with the greater solemnity, they put his image on board a ship, as if he were coming back once more to assume the protection of the kingdom of Portugal.

“A richly decorated vessel with flying sails of divers colours and silk cordage of magnificent hues, carried the image of the saint under a canopy of gold brocade. On its appearance in the roads all the vessels in port, superbly arrayed, advanced to meet it, and rendering military honours, brought it back with great pomp, and a salute from the guns of Lisbon and all the vessels in Port. The reliquaries of the patron Saints of Portugal, carried by the nobles of state and followed by the religious, civil and military bodies, received the new Saint on disembarcation.”

As soon as the image was landed, it was received by all the monks and the whole of the ecclesiastical body, who went to meet it in procession with four large chariots containing different tableaux. The first car represented Fame, the second the town of Milan, the third Portugal, and the fourth the Church. Besides the chariots, each company of monks and each Brotherhood carried its own particular Saint on rich litters, called by the Portuguese “andarillas.” The image of St. Charles was ornamented with precious stones to the value of twenty-six to twenty-seven thousand crowns; several others to the value of sixty, seventy and eighty thousand crowns, and the jewels that were displayed at this fÊte were estimated at more than four millions.

Between each chariot were troops of dancers, who represented, in dancing, the more notable of the acts of the Saints. Octavio Accoromboni, Bishop of Fossombrone, who obtained these honours for St. Charles, was at this time in the town of Lisbon, where he had gone to collect certain monies that Portugal was giving to the Pope. He has left us a description of this fÊte, in which he remarks that “the Italians and more especially the Romans, should not be surprised to read that dances and ballets formed a part of so sacred a ceremony, because in Portugal processions and fÊtes would not seem elevated nor serious enough unless accompanied by these manifestations of joy.”

In order to prepare for these fÊtes, dances, ballets and processions, the Lisbon folk had decorated, several days beforehand, big masts erected at the doors of the churches where the service was to be held, and at different places on the roads where the processions and performances would pass. “These masts were of pine, gilded and decked with crowns, streamers and banners of different colours, similar to the masts put up in France at the doors of the magistrates’ houses on the first of May in several towns of the kingdom, a custom which has given to these masts the name of ‘Maypole.’ The Spaniards call them ‘Mayos,’ or ‘Arboles de Enamorados’ (Lovers’ trees) because young men plant them on the first of May at the door of their mistresses’ houses.” The procession passed through triumphant arches, and the streets were hung with tapestries and strewn with flowers.

Three masts were planted at the places of the actual performance, one at the spot at the port where the procession was to start after the landing of the image of St. Charles, another in the middle of the route, and the third at the door of the church where the procession was to end, and where the image of the saint was to be placed. These masts marked the places for the performances, for it was there the procession stopped, and the dancers made their chief entrances in the “ballet.” Needless to say immense sums were spent on the fÊte.

These are but two instances of the ballet-ambulatoire. More might be given, but these will suffice to afford some idea of a type of spectacle which the older historians speak of as a “ballet,” but which is of special interest to us by reason of the contrast it forms to the masque, which was the reverse of “ambulatory,” and from the fact that though in direct contrast on another score, namely, that it was not a private but a public spectacle, it was under the “immediate patronage” of the Church!

Neither the masque nor the ballet-ambulatoire, was yet a theatrical entertainment; but it is curious, is it not, to note that they had a certain kinship with theatrical tradition, for these magnificent peripatetic “ballets” of the ecclesiastics had had a primitive forerunner in the performance of Thespis with his travelling car in Grecian towns and villages some six centuries before the Christian era! Even as, later, we in fourteenth-century England had our Mystery and Miracle plays travelling from “station” to “station” in similar fashion, and our “mummers” or mimers; while, on the other hand, the masque itself, as a private entertainment of the English Court, with its stage, and “machines,” scenery, dancing, music and song, not to mention its Royal and Courtly audience, was forerunner of similar entertainments which a century later were to become the features of the Courts of Louis XIV and XV, and from that to develop under Royal Patronage into the Ballet of the Theatre.

CHAPTER X
COURT BALLETS ABROAD: 1609-1650

While the English Court was enjoying its masques, during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth and James, and the French were labouring forth their heroic ballets under Henri Quatre—more than eighty having been given from 1589 to 1610, without counting insignificant balls and masquerades—Italy was similarly keeping up in the movement which her example had originally inspired.

It was the custom there to celebrate the birthday of the Princess by an annual public fÊte. As one old historian records, the more usual spectacles of these celebrations were in the form of “Carrousels, Tournois, des Comedies, des Actions en Musique, des Festins, des Feux d’Artifice, des Mascarades quand ces FÊtes se trouvent au temps du Carnaval, des Presens, des Illuminations, des Chasses, des Courses sur la Neige et sur la Glace suivant la saison, des Promenades et des Jeux sur les Eaux.”

The Court of Savoy was particularly devoted to such entertainments.

In 1609 there was a ballet d’armes, entitled, “Il Sol nascente nell’ oscuritÀ dell Tile,” danced by the “Serene” Princes of Savoy, the occasion being the anniversary of the birth of their Royal father, the Duke Charles Emannuel.

Again, in 1611, the Prince of Piedmont gave a fÊte in honour to his father’s birthday, representing “The Taking of the Isle of Cyprus.”

In the year 1615 was produced a mounted ballet at this same Court (Savoy) for the arrival of the Prince d’Urbin. This was an attack and a combat to music against three hundred men on foot, who formed different companies of various shapes, lunated, oval, square and triangular. They had drilled their horses so well that they were never out of step with the rhythm of the music. There were numerous cars drawn by lions, stags, elephants, rhinoceroses, etc., and as they represented the triumph of Love over War, the Four Quarters of the World followed the cars of the victors mounted in as many chariots. The Car of Europe was drawn by horses, that of Africa by elephants, that of Asia by camels, that of America by “unicorns”! The cars of this festival had engraved work on them by Callot.

In 1618, “The Elements,” a grand ballet and tourney was represented by the Duke of Savoy and his son, the Prince of Piedmont, on the former’s birthday.

“The Temples of Peace and War on Mount Parnassus,” a ballet and tourney “avec un Festin À la Chinoise,” formed the entertainment of the following year.

“The Judgment of Flora on the Dispute of the Nymphs over the Crown of Flowers presented to Mme. Royale on her Birthday,” is the long and stately title of a fÊte given at Turin in 1620.

“The Tribute of the Divinities of the Sky, Air, Sea and Infernal regions,” was a grand ballet and tourney of 1621. “The Ballet of the Seven Kings of China” was another.

“The Joy of Heaven and Earth,” a fÊte in honour of the Duke’s birthday in 1624, was followed by “Bacchus triomphant des Indes, avec une Action en Musique et une Chasse Pastorale,” in the same year. This was a fÊte in honour of the Duke Charles Emmanuel’s birthday, and was performed by the pages of the Prince Cardinal Maurice of Savoy, at Rome on January 22nd, 1624.

“Mount Parnassus and the Muses,” “The Quarrel of the Defenders and the Enemies of the Muses,” took place in February, 1624. “Cadmus, victorieux du Serpent,” and “Prometheus” were notable ballets in 1627.

One of the most remarkable, and, according to contemporaries, beautiful mounted ballets ever composed was that of “Æolus, King of the Winds,” which Alfonso Ruggieri Sansoverino presented at the wedding of the Prince of Tuscany in the year 1628 in the St. Croix Square, in Florence. On one of the sides of this square was a large reef with a cave hollowed out of its rock and closed by a great door secured with padlocks.

Don Anthony de Medici, who took the part of master of the combat, having reconnoitred the course, Æolus, King of the Winds, entered, accompanied by twelve watermen to whom he “had taught the use of sails and the nature of the winds.” Twelve Tritons walked before him blowing their trumpets. Eight Sirens replied on other instruments, accompanied by Hoar-frost. Eight pages represented the many effects of the Winds, causing cold, hot, damp, dry, clear, dull, serene or cloudy weather.

The two sponsors walked behind their pages. The chariot of the Ocean followed, drawn by two big whales. It represented a rock covered with seaweed, coral and different kinds of shells. Nymphs of the sea, rivers and springs were seated on this rock, and gave a musical concert with wind instruments presided over by Dolopea, wife of Æolus. Æolus, having passed in his chariot and arrived in front of the Prince’s box, saluted the bride, and after offering her his kingdom and all his troops, took a lance in his hand; then, suddenly departing, went and thrust against the door of the Cave of the Winds. The padlocks broke, and the door being opened, thirty-two mounted men and a hundred and twenty-eight on foot were set at liberty. The men, rushing like the winds they represented, ran to the other side of the square. Here Æolus stopped them and gave them orders to arrange themselves into a triangular figure. He led them in this order to salute the Princess for whom the fÊte was arranged. After having taken their places, they began to manoeuvre their horses in a ring on the right; they went in single file to make a chain, and sixteen of them having broken it, they formed a smaller one, from which eight more detached themselves, making a still smaller one. The first horsemen, curveting, manoeuvred their horses to perform voltes and half-voltes, joining again without a halt, and, forming twos, fours and eights, “they mingled capers at the galop, with caracolling in figures, performing a marvellous labyrinth with their intertwinings and evolutions.”

In the year 1628, the students of the College at Rheims danced a ballet in joyful commemoration of the taking of La Rochelle, the design of which, after ancient Roman models, was “The Conquest of the Car of Glory by the great Theander.”

Unlike modern musical comedy, or “revue,” there purported to be a plot. The Giants of the Black Tower, trusting in the might of their magic, published a challenge “full of empty pride,” by which they summoned all Knights-errant to the conquest of the Car of Glory.

Lindamor, wishing to chastise the insolence of these fiends, arranges with three of his friends to go and fight them. The Black Tower is full of sorceries, and there was no means of opening it, except by the sounding of an enchanted horn which the Giants had fastened to the Gate. Lindamor sounds it; the Giants issue forth upon him and his comrades, and the contest being unequal, Lindamor is compelled to withdraw and to leave his comrades in the hands of the Giants, who load them with chains, and fasten them to the Castle Gate to serve as a trophy to their vanity.

Some country shepherds who had seen the adventure of Lindamor and the Giants, persuade Caspis to take a part in favour of these unhappy knights. This shepherd, who was above the power of all magic, presents himself before the captives, and first of all breaks their chains and sets them at liberty. Lindamor, well pleased at the courtesy of Caspis, discusses with him the means of avenging himself on the Giants of the Black Tower. He learns from this shepherd that the sword of Cloridan is necessary for this enterprise, and that, in order to get it, it is necessary to put to sleep the Dragon to whom the Giants have given the charge of it. The shepherd offers, himself, to do this and succeeds. But to get the sword of Cloridan something more was wanted than to put the Dragon to sleep. The shepherd evokes the shade of Cloridan to find out from him what must be done to make use of this sword successfully.

The shade when called forth, informs him that Theander alone is capable of using it. The rumour of this oracular response having got abroad, Vulcan with his Cyclops prepares arms for Theander, who being preceded by Renown and followed by Lindamor, reaches the place where the sword of Cloridan is guarded, seizes the sword, after having chained the Dragon, presents himself with it at the gate of the Black Tower, causes the gate to open at the sound of the horn, defeats the Giants, draws from the Tower the Car of Glory, harnesses the Giants to it and triumphs finally over the arms and the enchantments of his enemies.

The story, which smacks of some mediÆval romance of Chivalry, was really allegorical of the capture of La Rochelle. The late king was Theander; the shepherd Caspis was the Cardinal Richelieu, his prime minister; Lindamor, the King, Henry III, who, being as yet only Duc d’Anjou, had attempted this siege in vain. The sword of Cloridan was that of Clovis; the Black Tower was La Rochelle; and the magic charms were Heresy and Rebellion.

Again, in the year 1628, a ballet of “The Court of the Sun,” by an AbbÉ Scotto, was danced at the Court of Savoy. Night played the overture, and at her command spirits and goblins made a “pleasing” entrance, coming on from different directions. Night, however, warning them to be careful that Day did not surprise them, they retired into their caves, when the Morning Star introduced visions of the Morning, bright Dreams issuing from the ivory gate. The Star of Venus rose from the sea to announce the arrival of the loveliest Aurora ever seen, and ordered the Zephyrs to rise and to strew flowers, the Dew to sprinkle perfumed water and the sweetest and most healthful influences.

Aurora followed them, and having descended from Heaven, suddenly caused the Palace of the Sun (in Ionic architecture) to appear; the seven Planets and the twelve Hours were seen in niches, from which they emerged to dance; the Muses in other niches performed concerted movements, Time, the Year, the Seasons, the Months and the Weeks providing the music in the boxes of this palace.

From the last examples, it is seen that philosophic, poetical and classic allegories were often used as the basis of ballets. The philosophic were “those in which causes and effects, peculiar qualities and the origin of things, were expressed in a suitable story by the devices of the ballet.” Several ballets of this kind were seen at the theatre of the College of Clermont, principally, those of “Curiosity,” “Dreams,” “Comets,” “Illusion,” “The Empire of the Sun,” “Fashion.” In that of “Curiosity” it was desired to show that the good or bad use made of it contributes to the perfecting or spoiling of the mind. Curiosity was represented by four characters, each forming a part of the ballet. The first of these was Useless Curiosity, which occupies itself only with trifles; the second, Dangerous Curiosity, which seeks forbidden and harmful things, and it was shown that these are the two kinds of curiosity to be avoided!

Among Useless Curiosities, was seen Idleness, with a troop of loiterers who ran about hunting for gossip and false rumours, merely to pass the time and “to find out what was going on in the world”; others who consulted almanacks to discover what the weather would be; and also sleepers, who, awakening, entertained each other with their dreams, from which they foretold what was about to happen! Mistakes, New Opinions, Alchemy, Sorcery, Magic and Superstition were some of the “characters” in the scene showing Dangerous Curiosity.

The third and fourth parts showed Useful and Necessary Curiosity, respectively. Useful Curiosity was represented by travellers whose desire to learn all about the manners and customs of different nations drove them into foreign countries; also “by physicians who work to gain experience.” In Necessary Curiosity was introduced the art of navigation, instanced by sailors, who, under the guidance of Tiphys, helmsman of the Argo, set out “to discover new worlds”; another example of “necessary curiosity” being the fire brought from Heaven by Prometheus for people eager to discover its use. The poetical allegories were not less ingenious than the philosophic, although “they did not pretend,” as one old chronicler informs us, “to so much precision.”

In the same year at the Savoy Court, “AlcÉe,” a ballet of fishermen, with intermezzi and some superb presents brought to Mme. Royale for her birthday by the Prince of Piedmont and his Cavaliers, was a grand water entertainment in which appeared, to quote an old historian, “Le Vaisseau de la FelicitÉ accompagnÉ de toutes les Deitez (sic) avec les Concerts de Musique, des quatres Elemens avec leur machines; de la Representation en Music (sic), d’Arion, du Temps avec les annÉes heureuses, des quatres parties du monde avec des EntrÉes de Ballets, des quatres Saisons avec le tribut de toutes leurs douceurs pour le Festin.” This was given by the Duke in honour of Mme. Royale on her birthday, and it was declared that a fÊte “plus complette, plus magnifique et plus agrÉable” had never been seen.

“Eternity” was the title of a ballet given in 1629; “Le Temps Eternel” following next year; “La FelicitÉ Publique” the next; and in 1632, “La Chasse Theatrale, representÉe en Ballet,” by the Cardinal of Savoy at his country mansion was given in honour of his brother, the Duke’s birthday.

Among the “moral” ballets, there is hardly one more pleasing than that composed to commemorate the birthday of the Cardinal of Savoy in 1634. The subject of this ballet was “Truth, the Enemy of Appearance, as proved by Time”—La Verita Nemica della Apparenza sollevata dal Tempo.

This ballet opened with a chorus of False Rumours and Suspicions, followed by Appearance and Lies! They were curiously represented by characters dressed as cocks and hens, who sang a dialogue half in Italian and half in French, mingled with the cluckings of cocks and hens. The chorus by the latter ran as follows:

The cocks replied:

After this quaint song, the scene opened, and a large Cloud was seen, accompanied by the Winds. “Appearance” also made her entrance at this moment. She had wings and a long peacock’s tail and her dress was hung with a number of mirrors. She was brooding over some eggs, from which hatched out—Pernicious Lies, Deceits and Frauds, White-Lies, Flatteries, Intrigues, Mockeries, Ridiculous Lies and Idle Tales! An eternal crew!

The Deceits were dressed in dark colours with serpents concealed among flowers; the Frauds, clothed in hunters’ nets, struck bladders as they danced; the Flatteries were dressed as monkeys, Intrigues as lobster-catchers with lanterns in their hands and on their heads; Ridiculous Lies were represented by beggars who pretended to be cripples with wooden legs.

Time, having driven away Appearance with all her Lies, opened the nest on which she had been sitting and there appeared a great hour-glass from which Time ordered Truth to come forth; the latter then calling back all the Hours, danced with them the finale of the “grand ballet.”

Surely, the time is ripe for a revival of such a production!

“PÂris” (1635), “Le ThÉÂtre de la Gloire” (1637) and “La Bataille des Vents” (1640) were notable productions at the Court of Savoy; but one of the most interesting of these seventeenth-century entertainments was that on February 19th, 1640, when at the same Court was given a “Ballet of Alchemists” in which, under a charming allegory, they made fun of those seekers of the philosopher’s stone who pretend to make gold.

Hermes Trismegistus, dressed as a philosopher, with the master’s ring, introduces some of the most celebrated chemists of different nations: Morieno, an Italian; Bauzan, a Greek; KÖrner, a German; Untser, a Swede; Calid, a Turk; Sandivoge, a Pole; Raymond Lulli and Hortulaus, Spaniards; Dolcon and Beguin, Frenchmen; Pierre, a Lorrainer; Rasis, a Jew; and Geber, an Arab.

The Italian and the Greek brought in a furnace of five storeys and octagonal in shape. The German and the Swede brought in the alembics; the Turk and the Pole came with flowers for distilling, which they carried in baskets; the two Spaniards brought charcoal; the French came with bellows to blow up the fire; the Lorrainer carried sieves for sifting; the Jew and the Arab had in front of them leathern aprons with various pockets, where they carried alum, vitriol, sulphur and ingots of metal.

For the grand ballet they all worked together around the furnace, whence they drew a thousand pretty novelties to give to the ladies in the audience—essences, liqueurs, glass jewellery, mirrors, bracelets, Cyprus powder, paint and other treasures, very much as presents are given at Cotillons and big fancy dress balls to-day.

Yet another delightful production of this period must be chronicled, namely, the “Ballet of Tobacco,” danced at Turin, the last day of Carnival, 1650. The scene represented the Isle of Tobago, “from which tobacco took its name, and gave happiness to the nations to whom the gods had given this plant. First entered four High Priests of that country, who drew forth snuff from certain golden boxes which they carried, and threw this powder in the air to appease the Winds and Tempests. Then with long pipes they smoked around an altar, making of their smoking tobacco a sort of sacrifice to their favourite Deities. For the second entry two Indians were twisting into a rope tobacco leaves. Two others were pounding it in mortars to reduce it to powder, and made the third entrance scene. The fourth was of snuff-takers, who sneezed and presented the snuff to each other, taking it in pinches with amusing ceremony; while the fifth was a band of smokers gathered together in an Academy or place set apart for smoking, wherein Turks, Spaniards, Poles and other nationalities received the tobacco from the Indians and proceeded to take it in their different ways.”

Such, in brief, were some of the continental ballets of the first half of the seventeenth century, a period, it must be admitted, not lacking in ingenuity, or resource in means of entertainment.

CHAPTER XI
THE TURNING POINT: LE ROI SOLEIL AND HIS ACADEMY OF DANCING, 1651-1675

For some two centuries Italy had amused herself with Ballet as a courtly entertainment; and so, during one, had England and France.

Now, in 1651, it was France who was to give the lead to Europe, for in February of that year Louis-Quatorze, then a lad of thirteen, appeared in a ballet by Benserade, entitled “Cassandra,” and this was the first of many in which he took part until, at the age of thirty, he withdrew from the stage and gave his farewell performance in the ballet of “Flora” in 1669. Strange, is it not, to think of a king as a ballet-dancer? Yet, had not our own King Henry VIII been among the joyous masquers?

But Louis XIV was to become more than a mere participant in Ballet—he was to become the virtual founder of modern Ballet as seen on the stage; for it was he—universal patron of the arts—who was to found a Royal Academy of Dance and Music, to the existence and encouragement of which the modern development of both arts is largely due.

All these ballets had been either the principal object or the supplement of superb fÊtes given at Versailles or in the other royal palaces. Historians have described the fÊtes which Fouquet, the Comptroller of Finances, offered to Louis XIV. As a sidelight on the Comptroller’s magnificence and extravagance, the following is of interest.

The king left Fontainebleau one evening in September, 1660, with his entire Court, in order to have supper at the castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte. The route, five leagues long, was illuminated with waxen torches; and booths, put up at intervals, were laden with all kinds of refreshment for the travellers. The castle, blazing with light, seemed to Louis like some palace of faerie. A magnificently furnished suite was set apart for His Majesty, and the Court was put up in the minister’s house. An immense sideboard, laden with gold and silver plate, was a feature of the room in which the king was to have supper, with a fountain playing in the middle. A splendid banquet was served, and a band placed in a gallery discoursed sweet music. Numerous other tables were set out for the Court; and the whole of the king’s guard, even to the famous livery servants, were entertained most sumptuously during the two days that the fÊte lasted.

After supper the king took a walk by a lake the shores of which were decorated with orange trees, lemon trees, and pomegranates, planted in gilded tubs, the fruit being available to all who wanted any. Thousands of torches diffused a brilliant light. A theatre, built in the middle of the lake, offered yet further entertainment with a representation of “The Triumph of Venus,” a ballet of a new kind, in which Tritons and Nereids, having swum about in the waves, afterwards proceeded to sing eulogies of King Louis. All the best musicians of Paris had been added to the king’s orchestra, and they were hidden behind the scenery of the theatre, and in the neighbouring thickets. On the following day there was a royal hunt, with tables served at all the meeting-places. There was fishing in the lake, from which the net brought in enormous fish; there was a play, then a ball, and finally fireworks; not to mention the sumptuous and delicate fare; the exquisite wines and delicious liqueurs which were provided on the same scale of unlimited extravagance.

On the first day Louis, whilst admiring the gardens and park from his window, had remarked on its beauty, but said that the view would be still more lovely if it were not shut in by a wood of tall trees that he pointed out. Next morning Fouquet drew the king to the same window and led the conversation in such a way that Louis might repeat the remark he had made the evening before.

“Sire, since that wood has the misfortune to displease you, it shall fall immediately.”

Then at a given signal the forest disappeared with a crash as if by magic, and the royal eye could see to the horizon. Sawn through during the night and attached to ropes that a hidden army of peasants pulled all at the same time, the trees fell at the voice of command.

All this magnificence and extravagance astonished the courtiers, but served also to arouse considerable suspicion. The king’s brother remarked that the name of the castle should rather be Vol-le-Roi than Vaux-le-Vicomte. This fÊte, an act of homage, as imprudent as it was ambitious, hastened the downfall of its author, and from that very day his doom was assured.

Among the many ballets in which Louis XIV himself took part, the more notable were “Le Triomphe de Bacchus,” “Le Temps,” “Les Plaisirs,” “L’Amour Malade,” “Alcibiade,” “La Raillerie,” “L’Impatience,” “Vincennes,” and “Les Amours DÉguisÉs,” as well as some of the comÉdie-ballets of MoliÈre.

Louis represented only the more exalted characters, such as Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo; though on occasion, to display the variety of his talent, he essayed an experiment in genre bouffonesque. Among the entrÉes in the “Triomphe de Bacchus,” for instance, there was one for some filous, traÎneurs d’ÉpÉe, sortant du palais de SilÈne, ÉchauffÉs par le vin, and the King playing the rÔle of one of the “filous,” sang the following stanza:

The Duc Mercour, the Marquis de Montglas, the Messieurs Sanguin and Lachesnaye, garbed as attendants on Bacchus, addressed the following verses to the ladies of the Court, and the author had carefully indicated that they were to be spoken to the “demoiselles”:

Copies of the “book” of the ballet are, I believe, extant; and the designs for the costumes of the actors are still more curious.

The members of His Majesty’s ballet, if they were not expert ballet dancers, could at least give ample proof of their nobility. Louis XIV counted marquises and marchionesses, dukes and duchesses, even princes and princesses and queens among his subjects, that is, his dancing subjects.

It was in 1661 that the king founded the Dancing Academy. A room in the Louvre was assigned to this learned society, which, however, preferred to gilded ceilings the smoky walls of an inn having for its sign “L’EpÉe de Bois.” It was in this favourite retreat that the members of the new Academy met together. It was here that the interests of the kingdom of the rigaudon and the minuet were regulated, where elections were held, and, without breaking up the session, without even leaving their academic chairs, dinner was served to the members on the table where each had just cast his vote. A tablecloth covered the green cloth; the bottle followed the inkhorn; supper replaced the ballot-box; and the assembly drank long draughts to the health of the new member.

The letters patent for the foundation of the Dancing Academy read curiously. In the preamble, for instance, the king thus expressed himself:

“Although the art of dancing has always been recognised as one of the most honourable, and the most necessary for the training of the body, to give it the first and most natural foundations for all kinds of exercises and amongst others to those of arms; and as it is, consequently, one of the most useful to our nobility and others who have the honour of approaching us, not only in times of war in our armies, but also in times of peace, in the performance of our ballets, nevertheless, during the disorder of the last wars, there have been introduced into the said art, as in all others, a great number of abuses likely to bring them to irretrievable ruin.

“Many ignorant people have tried to disfigure the dance and to spoil it, as exhibited in the personal appearance of the majority of people of quality: so that we see few among those of our Court and suite who would be able to take part in our ballets, whatever scheme we drew up to attract them thereto. It being necessary, therefore, to provide for this, and wishing to re-establish the said art in its perfection, and to increase it as much as possible, we deemed it opportune to establish in our good town of Paris a Royal Academy of Dancing, comprising thirteen of the most experienced men in the said art, to wit:

These, let us note, are the names of the patriarchs of the French dance.

In 1669 the AbbÉ Perrin, who was official introducer of Ambassadors to Gaston, Duc d’OrlÉans?, having obtained exclusive rights from the king, went into theatrical management, taking as his colleagues the Marquis de Sourdeac to direct the scenic and mechanical effects, and Cambert to supply the music. A certain Champeron advanced the money, and on March 28th, 1671, “Pomone,” a pastoral in five acts, words by Perrin, music by Cambert, dances by Beauchamps, was produced at the theatre of the Rue Mazarine.

The whole thing was poor, but this did not prevent the house being crowded for eight months, so that at the end of this time Perrin drew out thirty thousand francs as his share: but the various members of the little syndicate disagreed when it came to sharing out. Lulli profited by their disputes, cleared out Perrin and his partners, and started again in a disused tennis-court known as the Bel Air, situated in the Rue de Vaugirard, near the Luxembourg. He had as colleagues Quinault for the poetic libretti, and an Italian named Vigarani for the mechanical effects, one of the cleverest stage managers in Europe at the time. They produced there in 1672 the “FÊtes de Bacchus et de l’Amour.” When MoliÈre died in the following year, the hall of the Palais-Royal, which he had occupied, was given to Lulli.

Louis XIV, by letters patent, dated 1672, concerning the non-forfeiture of nobility of ladies and nobles who were prepared to figure in the scene at the opera, authorises his “faithful and well-beloved Jean-Baptiste Lulli to add to the Royal Academy of Music and Dancing, instituted by these presents, a school suitable to educate pupils as much for dancing as for singing and also to train bands of violins and other instruments.”

The Sun-King, in fact, exerted his care to such a point that he himself superintended and wrote with his own hand the budget of the corps de ballet at the Opera.

There were besides:

The king busied himself even with the author’s royalties, and it must be confessed that he showed himself more generous proportionately towards the authors than towards the artists. According to a rate fixed by him, a hundred and twenty francs were paid for a ballet for each of the first ten performances and sixty francs for each following.

La BruyÈre, author of “Les CaractÈres,” has spoken of the virtuosi of the dance who shone in his time, and in criticising their methods, he sheds light on the difficulties which had already been surmounted in 1675. “Would the dancer Cobus please you, who, throwing up his feet in front, turns once in the air, before regaining the floor?” Again, “Do you ignore the fact that he is no longer young?” says La BruyÈre, when speaking to the susceptible ladies of the Court. It was Beauchamps or Le Basque, dancers at the Opera, that he meant. The famous PÉcourt is also described under the name of Bathyle. “Where will you find, I do not say in the order of knights which you look down upon, but among the players in a farce, a young man, who leaps higher into the air whilst dancing, or who cuts better capers? As for him, the crowd is too great, he refuses more women than he accepts.”

PÉcourt, the adored of the beauties of the time, was the favoured lover of Ninon de l’Enclos. One day, the MarÉchal de Choiseul, his rival, met, at the house of their common mistress, the popular dancer, who was dressed in what was apparently a uniform.

“Ah,” said he ironically, “since when have you turned soldier, M. PÉcourt? And in what corps are you serving?”

“Marshal,” was the reply, “I command a corps in which you have long served.”

Blondi, Beauchamps’ nephew; Feuillet, Desaix, Ballon, Baudiery-Laval, and his son Michel-Jean, a good dancer and an excellent mechanical contriver; Mesdemoiselles Subligny, PrÉvÔt, Carville, and Le Breton, were also stars of the period, of some of whom there will be more to say presently.