My grave Lord-Keeper led the brawls;
The seal and maces danc'd before him.
His bushy beard and shoe-strings green,
His high-crown'd hat and sattin doublet,
Mov'd the stout heart of England's Queen.
Tho' Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it."
The Brawl, a species of dance, here alluded to, is derived from the French word braule, "indicating," observes Mr. Douce, "a shaking or swinging motion.—It was performed by several persons uniting hands in a circle, and giving each other continual shakes, the steps changing with the tune. It usually consisted of three pas and a pied-joint, to the time of four strokes of the bow; which, being repeated, was termed a double brawl. With this dance, balls were usually opened."[173:A]
Shakspeare seems to have entertained as high an idea of the efficacy of a French brawl, as probably did Sir Christopher Hatton, when he exhibited before Queen Elizabeth; for he makes Moth in Love's Labour's Lost ask Armado,—"Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?" and he then exclaims, "These betray nice wenches."[173:B] That several dances were included under the term brawls, appears from a passage in Shelton's Don Quixote:—"After this there came in another artificial dance, of those called Brawles[173:C];" and Mr. Douce informs us, that amidst a great variety of brawls, noticed in Thoinot Arbeau's treatise in dancing, entitled Orchesographie, occurs a Scotish brawl; and he adds that this dance continued in fashion to the close of the seventeenth century.[173:D]
Another dance of much celebrity at this period, was the Pavin or Pavan, which, from the solemnity of its measure, seems to have been held in utter aversion by Sir Toby Belch, who, in reference to his intoxicated surgeon, exclaims,—"Then he's a rogue. After a
passy-measure, or a pavin, I hate a drunken rogue."[174:A] This is the text of Mr. Tyrwhitt; but the old copy reads,—"Then he's a rogue, and a passy measure's pavyn," which is probably correct; for the pavan was rendered still more grave by the introduction of the passamezzo air, which obliged the dancers, after making several steps round the room, to cross it in the middle in a slow step or cinque pace. This alteration of time occasioned the term passamezzo to be prefixed to the name of several dances; thus we read of the passamezzo galliard, as well as the passamezzo pavan; and Sir Toby, by applying the latter appellation to his surgeon, meant to call him, not only a rogue, but a solemn coxcomb. "The pavan, from pavo a peacock," observes Sir J. Hawkins, "is a grave and majestick dance. The method of dancing it was anciently by gentlemen dressed with a cap and sword, by those of the long robe in their gowns, by princes in their mantles, and by ladies in gowns with long trains, the motion whereof in the dance resembled that of a peacock's tail. This dance is supposed to have been invented by the Spaniards, and its figure is given with the characters for the step, in the Orchesographia of Thoinot Arbeau.—Of the passamezzo little is to be said, except that it was a favourite air in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Ligon, in his History of Barbadoes, mentions a passamezzo galliard, which, in the year 1647, a Padre in that island played to him on the lute; the very same, he says, with an air of that kind which in Shakspeare's play of Henry the Fourth was originally played to Sir John Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet, by Sneak, the musician, there named."[174:B]