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!”