Dance Lexicon in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

A Corpus Based Approach

Fabio Ciambella

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000423570
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Dance

This book provides a thorough analysis of terpsichorean lexis in Renaissance drama. Besides considering not only the Shakespearean canon but also the Bard's contemporaries (e.g., dramatists as John Marston and Ben Jonson among the most refined Renaissance dance aficionados), the originality of this volume is highlighted in both its methodology and structure.

As far as methods of analysis are concerned, corpora such as the VEP Early Modern Drama collection and EEBO, and corpus analysis tools such as #LancsBox are used in order to offer the widest range of examples possible from early modern plays and provide co-textual references for each dance. Examples from Renaissance playwrights are fundamental for the analysis of connotative meanings of the dances listed and their performative, poetic and metaphoric role in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama.

This study will be of great interest to Renaissance researchers, lexicographers and dance historians.

Part I

Dancing in early modern England: A historical overview

Dance is a tangible chronotopic manifestation of a well-defined culture in time and space. For this reason, as a cultural product, the terpsichorean art is particularly suited to exploring social, political, and ideological nuances of the multifaceted early modern English “world picture” – as E.M.W. Tillyard famously termed it (1943). Dance studies is a relatively new field of study,¹ which intermingles and benefits from a variety of research branches, such as cultural studies, performance studies, communicative studies, theatre studies, ethnology and anthropology (see Kaeppler 2000), gender studies, and linguistics, among others. Undoubtedly, a paramount contribution to the dissemination of dance studies was made by the so-called body or corporeal turn that, originating in philosophy and the neurosciences in the late 1960s and early 1970s, stresses the importance of the human body and corporeal semiotics in dance and dance performance.² Therefore, when such a complex and transdisciplinary field of studies is analysed from a diachronic perspective, taking into account a likewise complex and culturally rich period in the history of England, it is worth defining the object of research from the outset. In this first chapter, I present some pivotal aspects related to the practice of dance in early modern England, from philological issues that highlight the tension between indigenous and imported dances, to cultural aspects connected to the very complex sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ideological, religious, and political panorama.

First of all, it is necessary to review a series of indigenous as well as continental sources for late Medieval/early modern dances – be they extant manuscripts or printed writings – that directly or indirectly concern the practice of dance in England between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Next, gender-related issues are contextualised in the typical 1500s–1600s Neoplatonists vs Puritans querelle, thus considering arguments in favour of and contrary to dance, claimed by, respectively, Neoplatonic philosophers (and their English devotees) and the steadfast supporters and defenders of the Puritan ethics. Moreover, it is worth reflecting on the relationship between dance and social classes, thus exploring the distinction between court(ly) and folk/popular dances. Lastly, cultural and political issues concerning the practice of dance are explored with reference to the different or similar attitudes Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I adopted under their respective reigns.

1 Continental and indigenous sources for early modern dances in England

As Emily F. Winerock (2011, 260) has pointed out, “there are no known English dancing manuals from the [early modern] period”.³ The scarcity of sixteenth-century British indigenous dance manuals is a long-standing issue that has forced scholars to dispute reliable reconstructions of how choreographies were performed during the early modern era in England. The only two manuals written during that period in Britain, before Playford’s 1651 The English Dancing Master, were compiled in French by two French dancing masters, Barthélémy de Montagut and François de Lauze, who were both in the service of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.⁴ During the reign of James I Stuart, the two dancing masters published, respectively, Louange de la danse (1620–22) and Apologie de la danse (1623). Although de Montagut’s treatise predates de Lauze’s, in the preface to his Apologie, the latter claims that in 1620 he had shown his colleague a manuscript containing a draft of his manual and that his work was then plagiarized by de Montagut, who managed to publish Louange de la danse before de Lauze’s treatise. Whatever the truth, it is undeniable that even at first glance one may easily notice that the structure of the two manuals and the dances recorded in them are almost the same.

De Lauze’s work, considered the source text of Montagut’s plagiarism, is divided into two macro-sections, one for men and one for women, dedicated respectively to George Villiers and his wife Katherine Manners. The first part of the treatise describes the male steps and the most suitable music for dances, such as the Coranto, Branle, and Galliard, with an initial introduction dedicated to the bow that gentlemen must perform when inviting ladies to take part in a ball. The second section describes women’s steps for the same choreographies, plus directions of the Gavotte.

Despite the scarcity of indigenous English treatises, there is a rich tradition of dance manuals in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century continental Europe, where, especially in Italy and France, the art of dancing is industriously practised and theorized. The most authoritative dancing masters in Renaissance Europe were undoubtedly the Italian Marco Fabritio Caroso da Sermoneta and Cesare Negri, and the French Thoinot Arbeau. An overview of their works, presented below, shows a certain continuity and clear similarities between their choreographic directions and the dances described by de Montagut and de Lauze. Therefore, these intertextual references among Italian, French, and (pseudo-)English dance treatises seem to confirm that choreographies had not changed that much over a forty-year time span⁵ in Europe, and that consequently even Apologie de la danse and Louange de la danse can be considered reliable sources for the study of dance in Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline plays.

The first collection of Renaissance choreographies was Fabritio Caroso’s Il ballarino, printed in Venice in 1581 and containing the names and steps of 77 dances, each accompanied by music scores and by a dedicatory poem to a well-known and wealthy Italian noblewoman. Caroso’s treatise, as well as de Lauze’s, is divided into two parts. It opens with a very detailed introduction on reverences and bows, then moves on to a list of dances and steps in the first part, and a series of poems in the second. Il ballarino was then revised and further supplemented by a second edition entitled Nobiltà di dame,⁶ published once again in Venice in 1600 and including ‘only’ 49 dances, 20 of which are the same as Il ballarino, yet revised and corrected.

The French presbyter Thoinot Arbeau, an anagrammed pseudonym of Jehan Tabourot, published his dance manual Orchésographie in Langres, in north-eastern France, in 1589. This treatise is certainly less complete and complex than Caroso’s Il ballarino, being less rich in technicalities and more discursive. Therefore, these characteristics of Orchésographie might well have facilitated its incredible spreading through Renaissance Europe (the second edition was issued in 1596), this manual being suitable also for non-expert dancers. The genre adopted by Arbeau is the Platonic dialogue between his fictional pupil, Capriol,⁷ and Arbeau himself as a dancing master. Hence, this work does not adhere to a well-established tradition of conduct manuals – unlike its Italian counterparts – but turns out to be a small, discursive pedagogical volume about sixteenth-century dancing. Orchésographie opens with some general considerations on dance before analysing eleven dances – Basse Danse, Pavan, Galliard, Tourdion, (La) Volta, Coranto, Allemande, Branle, Moresca, Canary, and Les Bouffons – each with its own variations. Like Caroso before him, Arbeau also inserts musical scores to accompany the various steps during performances.

The last of these three great Renaissance dancing masters, Cesare Negri, printed his treatise Le gratie d’amore in 1602 in Milan, where he had been running a dance school since 1554. In 1604 he republished his manual with the new title Nuove inventioni di balli. The treatise, which owes much to Caroso’s work, is divided into three parts. In the first, the author traces his own autobiographical profile as a dance scholar and teacher; in the second, he describes in detail the performance of the Galliard; and in the last, he provides information about other dances, with a section of music scores for lute. The only novelty of this treatise is its first-ever attested theorisation of the five basic positions of the feet in ballet.

The influence of continental dancing masters in the history of early modern dance in England is undeniable: one need only think about the Italian lemmas pertaining to the semantic sphere of dance that Florio translated into English in his 1598 Italian-English dictionary (reissued in 1611), or the fact that between 1608 and 1611 James I probably owned a copy of Caroso’s Il ballarino purchased by the Royal Library (McManus 2002, 1).

Dancing at the Inns of Court

As already mentioned, there are unfortunately no dance manuals in English compiled by British choreographers or dancing masters. The few sources that deal with the terpsichorean practice in early modern England are sporadic hints in diaries or annals of the time (which will be dealt with in the next chapter) and a corpus of eight manuscripts,⁸ the transcription of six of which appeared for the first time in 1965 by the scholar James P. Cunningham. Brissenden (2001, 6) lists the six documents transcribed by Cunningham in his preface to Shakespeare and the Dance. Nevertheless, in 1992 a seventh manuscript was discovered in Taunton, Somerset, which Brissenden surprisingly does not include in the 2001 revised edition of his book. Moreover, an eighth manuscript was officially transcribed in 2018 as a consequence of forensic evidence attesting that it was not a forgery.

The transcription of the first six manuscripts by Cunningham, however, presented various inaccuracies; hence, in 1986–87 the scholar David R. Wilson published a new and more accurate transcription, while the seventh MS was transcribed by James Stokes and Ingrid Brainard in 1992, and the eighth by Anne Daye and Jennifer Thorpe in 2018. It is worth noting that five out of eight extant manuscripts were certainly compiled by personalities who revolved around the London Inns of Court,⁹ the four most famous and prestigious law schools in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England – i.e., Lincoln’s Inn, Middle Temple, Inner Temple, and Gray’s Inn. One may wonder why personalities connected to the Inns of Court would write down lists of dances that were performed every year in the seasonal revels organised in the schools of law. Detailed information about these MSS will probably help better understand why the writers noted a variable number of choreographies (from a minimum of eight to a maximum of twenty-one), with surprising precision in the sequence of dances and steps, and with little variation from one MS to another. The eight MSS also identify a series of dances – eight to be exact – which always seem to recur on dancing evenings and usually in the same order of performance: the so-called Old Measures. Therefore, the revels at the Inns of Court would begin with this series of eight dances: Quadran Pavan, Turkeylone, Earl of Essex (or Earl of Essex Measure), Tinternell, Old Almain (i.e., Allemande), Queen’s Almain, Madam Sosilia Almain (or Madam Cecilia Almain), and Black Almain.

The list of manuscripts, presumably in chronological order of composition, is as follows:

1. MS Rawlinson Poet. 108, ff. 10r–11r (Bodleian Library, Oxford). The manuscript belongs to Eliner Gunter (whose name appears on the title page), sister to Edward Gunter, a young man admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in February 1563. The text can be dated around 1570 and contains love poems, songs, transcriptions of orations, and other scribbles. A total of fifteen dances are described. Given the different calligraphies that appear in the text, the drafting of the entire document cannot be attributable solely to Eliner, even though it is obvious that it was her brother Edward who could take part in the annual revels at the Inns of Court;

2. MS Dulwich College MSS, 2nd Series XCIV, fol. 28 (Dulwich College, London). According to Daye and Thorp (2018, 30–31), the possible dating of the manuscript ranges from c. 1570 to c. 1590, while the author is unknown. This MS was transcribed by John Payne Collier in 1844 for the first time, but it had always been considered forgery and did not receive the critics’ attention, due to “Collier’s tarnished reputation for forging and altering manuscript sources” (Daye and Thorp 2018, 27). It has been stored in the archives of Dulwich College since 1884 and when forensic evidence by Arthur and Janet Ing Freeman demonstrated that the MS is authentic, Daye and Thorp attempted a new, complete transcription. It lists the eight Old Measures, plus five “New Measures” whose tunes have connection with the Mulliner Book, a sixteenth-century musical commonplace book written by Thomas Mulliner.

3. MS Harleian 367, ff. 178–179 (British Library, London). The author of the list of eight dances, which correspond exactly to the Old Measures, is unfortunately unknown. The annotations about choreographies and steps are part of a collection of notes and miscellaneous fragments written by the antiquarian John Stow(e) (d. 1605), but the handwriting used to list the eight Old Measures is completely different from the calligraphy of the author of the rest of the manuscript. The possible dating of the MS ranges from 1575 to 1625.

4. DD/WO 55/7, item 36 (Somerset Record Office...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Dancing in early modern England: A historical overview
• Part II: Dance and/as language: State of the art and methodological issues
• Part III: Analysis
• Conclusion
• Index