promptly designated a pantomime, and so has become confused with the distinct kind of performances still presented under that name at our larger theatres at Christmas time. "When one company is too hard for another," writes Cibber, "the lower in reputation has always been forced to exhibit some new-fangled foppery to draw the multitude after them;" which is, however, only a way of saying that managers need the stimulus of opposition to induce them to provide new entertainments. In 1721 there was great rivalry between Drury Lane—Cibber being one of its managers—and the theatre then newly erected in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Of the "new-fangled foppery," which it now became necessary for the one theatre to resort to as a weapon of offence against its rival, singing and dancing had been effectual instances. But singing was not to be thought of under the circumstances; as Cibber writes: "At the time I am speaking of, our English music had been so discountenanced since the taste of Italian operas prevailed, that it was to no purpose to pretend to it. Dancing, therefore, was now the only weight in the opposite scale, and as the new theatres sometimes found their account in it, it could not be safe for us wholly to neglect it. To give even dancing, therefore, some improvement, and to make it something more than motion without meaning, the fable of Mars and Venus was formed into a connected presentation of dances in character, wherein the passions were so happily expressed, and the whole story so intelligibly told by a mute narrative of gesture only, that even thinking spectators allowed it both a pleasing and a rational entertainment." This was certainly a ballet of action, and it is remarkable that the production involved but a small outlay; the managers, distrusting its reception, did not venture "to decorate it with any extraordinary expense of scenes or habits." Great success, however, attended the performance, and from it is to be dated the establishment both of ballet and pantomime upon our stage. "From this original hint, then, but every way unequal to it, sprang forth that succession of monstrous medleys that have so long infested the stage, and which arose upon one another alternately at both houses, outvying in expense, like contending bribes on both sides at an election, to secure a majority of the multitude." Cibber indeed waxes very wrath over the matter, and appears to desire that lawful authority
should "interpose to put down these poetical drams, these gin-shops of the stage, that intoxicate its auditors and dishonour their understanding with a levity for which I want a name." But Cibber's anger is in truth very much that of a manager vying with the liberal outlay of a rival, and in such wise forced to expend large sums in costly entertainments.
At an earlier date ballet-dancers had been imported from France. Some time about 1704 the great Mr. Betterton and his company, suffering from insufficient patronage at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, had been reduced to resort to "foreign novelties." Three of the most famous dancers of the French Opera, L'Abbée, Balon, and Mademoiselle Subligny, were at several times brought over at extraordinary rates to revive that sickly appetite which plain sense and nature had satiated. In Paris, indeed, the ballet was very securely instituted. The Académie Royale de Musique et de Danse had been founded in 1669, and from that date the ballet, as an entertainment of dancing only, may be said to have come into being. There had been earlier ballets, but these were of the nature of old English masques, and consisted of songs and spoken dialogues in addition to dances; the term ballet, it need hardly be explained, being derived from the Italian ballata, the parent of our own ballad. At first the French Opera or Academy suffered from the smallness of its troop; vocalists could be obtained from the church choirs, but for the ballet it was hard to find recruits; and sometimes young boys were pressed into the service, and constrained to personate nymphs, dryads, and shepherdesses—"danseurs," writes a French historian of the Opera, "qui sous un masque et des vêtements féminins, les formes arrondies par l'art et le coton, n'excitaient qu'un enthousiasme modéré." At court there was no lack of dancers of the gentler sex, however, and at court the ballet prospered greatly. A ballet performed in 1681 was at any rate strongly cast, since there appeared among the dancers Madame la Dauphine, the Princesse de Conti, and Mdlle. de Nantes, supported by the Dauphin, the Prince de Conti, and the Duc de Vermandois; but these distinguished personages probably sang more than they danced. Louis XIV. frequently figured in ballets, one of his favourite characters being the Sun in "Flora," said to be the eighteenth ballet in which he had played a part.
Lulli, the composer, director of the Opera, paid great attention to the ballet, occasionally appearing as a dancer; as a singer and comic actor he had already acquired fame. To Lulli has been attributed the introduction of rapid dancing, in opposition to the solemn and deliberate steps favoured by the court during the early part of the reign of Louis XIV. It may be added, that the king held out a measure of encouragement to such of his nobility and courtiers as were disposed to follow his example and exhibit upon the scene. "It is our pleasure," he says in the patent granted to the Abbé Perrin, the first director of the French Opera, 1669, "that all gentlemen and ladies may sing in the said pieces and representations of our Royal Academy, without being considered on that account to derogate from their letters of nobility or from their privileges, rights, and immunities." The dramatic ballet, or ballet of action, is said to have been invented by the Duchesse du Maine, whose theatrical entertainments at Sceaux rivalled the festivities of Versailles, and obtained the preference of many nobles of the court. The lady, however, unfortunately meddled with the Spanish conspiracy—she should have confined herself to the plots of ballets—and forthwith the establishment at Sceaux was broken up. In this way Mouret, her musical director, who also composed several operas and ballets for the Academy, suffered severe loss; eventually he went mad and died in the lunatic asylum at Chârenton.
Mademoiselle de Subligny came to England armed with letters of introduction from Thiriot and the Abbé Dubois to John Locke of all people! Locke probably was not very sympathetic in regard to the lady's art, yet respect for his friends led him to bestow upon her due civility and attention; according to Fontenelle, he constituted himself her homme d'affaires. Another dancer, Mademoiselle Sallé, whose charms and graces Voltaire had celebrated in verse, appeared in London with letters of introduction from Fontenelle to Montesquieu, then ambassador at the court of St. James's. It is clear that the ballet-dancers were becoming personages of real importance.
Mdlle. Sallé, it seems, achieved extraordinary success in the year 1734 at Covent Garden Theatre, which a French journal of that date describes curiously as the Théâtre du Commun Jardin. The lady was an admirable dancer, and brought with her
complete dramatic ballets, the characters in which were appropriately dressed according to the time and place of the story they related; for Mdlle. Sallé was a reformer in the matter of stage costumes. She discarded paniers and hoops and false hair. As Galatea in a ballet upon the story of Pygmalion, she wore nothing, we are told, "in addition to her bodice and under petticoats, but a simple robe of muslin draped after the manner of a Greek statue." She won great applause, too, by her performance of Ariadne in a ballet called "Bacchus and Ariadne," the beauty of her dances, attitudes, and gestures, and her skill in depicting by movements without words, grief, anger, love, and despair, obtaining the warmest approval. She was patronised by the king, queen, and the royal family, and her benefit produced an "overflow" and something more; tickets were sold at most exorbitant prices, and the people fought for places both with swords and fists. There are stories, too, of purses full of gold being flung upon the stage, with showers of bonbons—not ordinary sugar-plums, but rouleaux of guineas tightly wrapped up in bank-notes. The dancer is said to have profited by her benefit to the extent of some £10,000. It must be owned, however, that the story of Mdlle. Sallé's success is of a very highly-coloured description, and can only be credited absolutely by persons largely endowed with credulity.
Satire, of course, found occupation in the successes of the ballet-dancers. In 1742 Hogarth published his "Charmers of the Age," a caricature of the aspects and attitudes of M. Desnoyer and the Signora Barberina, then performing at Drury Lane Theatre. A grotesque air was given to these artists, popularly regarded as personifications of grace and elegance, and a measured line was added to the drawing that their leaps and bounds might be fairly estimated.
It was in France, however, that the ballerina secured her greatest triumph, and the ballet d'action attained its fullest vitality. The dancer became a power in the State, influencing princes, ministers, and people. Poets were her slaves, and oftentimes philosophers were caught in her toils. From Mdlle. la Fontaine of two centuries since, "la première des premières danseuses," who received the title of "La Reine de la Danse," there being at the time, however, but three other professional dancers in Paris, through a long line of most
distinguished artists, the ballerina of to-day may trace her descent. But now, however, there is pause in her success, a cloud over her career. Indeed, it must be said, that for a generation almost there has been no new triumph registered of the ballet and its artists. Here the "opera-dancers," as they were once called, have certainly ceased to be. Once standing, as it were, on the tips of their toes, they supported opera upon their shoulders. But now there are no dancers at the opera. Euterpe has dispensed with the aid of Terpsichore; the ballet has fled from the boards of our lyric theatres. It has been said, indeed, that the ballet d'action has never been really naturalised in this country; that although it has thrived for a while, it was but an exotic, needing careful watching and tending. Still it was for many years a most prosperous entertainment, especially at our Italian opera-house; and it is to be noted that its decline has not been confined to this country. Even in France, its natural home and headquarters, ballet is by no means what it once was. It lives, perhaps, but in a fallen state. There is no danseuse now really of the first class. Has the ballet declined on this account, or is this to be ascribed to the decline of the ballet? Or can it be that the dances of the streets have overcome and ousted from their due position the dances of the stage?