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.