The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Art of Ballet, by Mark Edward Perugini

THE ART OF BALLET

Adolph Bolm in “Carnival.”
from a photograph by E. O. Hoppé

THE
ART OF BALLET

BY MARK E. PERUGINI

LONDON: MARTIN SECKER

NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI

First published 1915

TO
MY WIFE

PREFACE

Some may possibly wonder to find here no record of Ballet in Italy, or at the Opera Houses of Madrid, Lisbon, Vienna, Buda-Pest, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Warsaw, or Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg), not to speak of the United States and South America. This, however, would be to miss somewhat the author’s purpose, which is not to trace the growth of Ballet in every capital where it has been seen. To do so effectively were hardly possible in a single volume. A whole book might well be devoted to the history of the art in Italy alone, herein only touched upon as it came to have vital influence on France and England in the nineteenth century. We have already had numerous volumes dealing with Russian Ballet; and since the ground has been extensively enough surveyed in that direction there could be no particular advantage in devoting more space to the subject than is already given to it in this work, the purpose of which only is to present—as far as possible from contemporary sources—some leading phases of the history of the modern Art of Ballet as seen more particularly in France and England.

A brief series of biographical essays “Cameos of the Dance,” by the same writer, was published in The Whitehall Review in 1909; various articles on the subject also being contributed to The Evening News, Lady’s Pictorial, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, Pall Mall Gazette and other London journals during 1910 and 1911; and a series of “Sketches of the Dance and Ballet,” coming from the same hand, appeared in The Dancing Times, 1912, 1913 and 1914. They were based on portions of the manuscript of the present work which, begun some years ago by way of pastime, and written during the scant leisure of a crowded business life, was completed at the publisher’s request, and was—save for a few brief insertions in the proofs—ready, and announced for publication before the Great War began in August 1914.

The preparation of this book has involved the marshalling of a vast array of facts and dates, the delving into and comparison of some three hundred or more ancient and modern volumes on dancing and on theatrical and operatic history, the study of scores of old newspaper-files and long-forgotten theatrical “repositories” and souvenirs. Error is always possible in spite of care, and if it should have happened here the writer will be grateful for correction. In covering so wide a field a full bibliography becomes impossible from limits of space; but to those interested the following list of leading authorities—supplemented by those referred to in the text—may be of service. “La Danse Grecque Antique,” by M. Emmanuel; “Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire,” by L. Friedländer; “Dramatic Traditions of the Dark Ages,” by Joseph S. Tunison (University of Chicago Press); “Orchésographie,” by Thoinot Arbeau (1588); “Des Ballets Anciens et Modernes,” by Père Menestrier (1682); “La Danse Antique et Moderne,” by De Cahuzac (1754); “The Code of Terpsichore,” by Carlo Blasis (1823); “Dictionnaire de la Danse,” by G. Desrat (1895); “Dancing in all Ages,” by Edward Scott (1899); “Histoire de la Danse,” by F. de Menil (1905); and “The Dance: Its Place in Art and Life,” by T. and M. W. Kinney (1914).

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BOOK I: THE FIRST ERA

THE ART OF BALLET

OVERTURE
ON THE ART OF BALLET

There may be some who could not agree that Ballet is an “art,” or even that it has, or ever had, any special charm or historic interest. The charm—as in the case of any other art—will probably always remain rather a matter of individual opinion; the historic interest is merely a matter of fact.

No man can hope for agreement with his fellows in all things. The world were flat if it could be so. He may hector, and not convince; he may cajole and not convert; he may tell the simple truth in simple speech and still be misunderstood. So many of his partners in the dance of life speak in different tongues; or, speaking the same, use words and phrases more familiar to them than to himself.

In going to a foreign land we change our currency; but it is hardly to be accounted spurious because it is not as ours. There may be something to be said for the variety; and, also, there may be some common basis of value which can be accepted readily by both. A world-currency has not yet arrived. In opinion it is much the same.

But the sense of “fair play” is so admirable, and so truly British a characteristic, that one may usually rely on it for a considerate hearing. Possible dissentients may be the more inclined to grant this if they are informed at the outset that this book has no specially persuasive purpose, and that I am content that it should be mainly accounted a record of fact.

One of the facts which it chronicles is that Ballet, whether an “art” or not, has existed, in some form or another, for about two thousand years. An interest which can show so long a record may yet not be of such surpassing importance, let us say, as Statecraft or Religion; but one which has thus long and widely appealed to the æsthetic sense of mankind can hardly be considered worthless. It were a vast and complex matter to decide the relative values of the various “arts,” and, certainly this book is no endeavour to pronounce thereon, nor to persuade any that Ballet is the greatest, though it is unquestionably one of the oldest of the arts. But it will suffice to offer the opinion that, whether it has reached its highest level or not as yet Ballet is an art in itself; one that in the past has had so many judicious and sympathetic exponents, and has so long a record of existence, that there is really some justification for the expenditure of casual leisure by any who cares to play the chronicler or to read such chronicle.

This much said, before setting out to travel the road of the past, let us for a moment reconsider another fact, namely, that we have in London two theatres where for about a quarter of a century Ballet was the main attraction. The fact is unique in the annals of the British stage.

Ballets have been produced elsewhere occasionally. We have seen operas, pantomimes, burlesques, of which they formed a part. At earlier periods—as in the ’forties of last century—they have also been seen as separate items in the programme of an operatic season; and there has been a quite remarkable revival of interest during the past few years. But in all the history of the stage there was never before a time when it could be said that for such a period not one but two theatrical houses in London continuously offered this kind of entertainment as their chief attraction.

It has to be remembered that this sustained existence of Ballet in England has been, as in the case of all “legitimate drama,” without State aid such as it has received in Milan, Rome, Naples, Paris, Vienna, Petrograd, Copenhagen, and elsewhere on the Continent, where the physical advantages of dancing and the artistic value of Ballet are fully appreciated. The arts must flourish haphazard here! We have no national conservatoire in which this art of Ballet is taught as it is abroad. Consequently it has been less generally understood; and, being so, has had to exist in face of considerable prejudice.

Some critics profess to despise it because it ignores the spoken word. Some have decried it because of the presence of dancing. Some will not admit that it is worthy to be called an art at all, and there are possibly still some primly primitive people who pretend to view with moral pain the existence of any such entertainment. They may patronise a theatre or tolerate an actor or actress—but a Ballet or a Ballet-Dancer!

The misunderstanding of the aims and possibilities of the Art of Ballet, as seen at its best, is to be regretted.

Not for such critics are the music of moving lines, the modulating harmonies of colour, the subtleties of mimic expression, nor all the wealth of historic associations and romantic charm which a knowledge of its past recalls.

Austere critics would do well, when deprecating Ballet, to remember that many others have found it, as Colley Cibber regretfully admitted it was found in his time: “a pleasing and rational entertainment.”

That it is “pleasing” many know from witnessing some of the best of modern examples. As to whether it can be considered “rational” depends so much on the kind of meaning that may be given to that word. All rational people speak in prose; constantly to speak in verse might be considered quite irrational. But are we to banish poetry from the world because it is not the common form of speech?

Some people might find it quite irrational to sit in a theatre and laugh or weep at the imaginary joys or woes of imaginary characters impersonated by people who are not seriously concerned therewith, and with whom, personally, we are not at all concerned.

It might be well considered irrational to be moved by any “concord of sweet sounds,” at least in the shape of “opera”; or to be enspelled by the charm of a statue or a painting, or by the wizardry of any form of art; for once it is questioned whether it be “rational,” there need be no end to dispute; and one remembers how poor Tolstoy fared in essaying to decide: “What is Art?”

That of Ballet surely is no less rational than Poetry, than Drama, than Music, Sculpture, Painting—all of which exist by their conventions, all of which in principle it employs; to all of which it is akin. It is not less an art; and when looking at a modern ballet we can hardly fail to consider the long train of reasoned thought and of artistic tradition that lie beyond the entertainment that we see to-day.

What is it that we see? An orchestra of dancers who are also mimes, who represent—one should rather say, realise—the imaginative creations of an author, or a number of authors working harmoniously together, in terms of rhythmic movement and dramatic expression, with the aid also of colour and music and sound.

Every one of these dancers has had to undergo a special and arduous training, the traditions of which reach back through centuries till lost in time’s obscurity.

Each has an allotted place at any given moment in the general scheme. Every grouping and dispersal of a group—like the formation and modulation of chords in music—is part of an ordered plan.

Every step of every dancer, every gesture, every phrase of music, is composed or selected to express particular ideas or series of ideas; every colour and each change of tone in the whole symphony of hues has been appraised. Not a thing that happens is haphazard.

It is probably by reason of the number of people that must be employed, and the labour entailed before a successful result can be achieved, and on account of the difficulties and risks attendant on its production, that we have had so few theatres devoted to an art so thoroughly appreciated abroad, not only as one of ancient institution, but as one that still offers wide scope for the creative genius of poet, artist and musician, apart from the interpretative abilities of dancer and of mime.

CHAPTER I
A DISTINCTION, AND SOME DIFFERENCES

The chief elements of Ballet as seen to-day are—dancing, miming, music and scenic effect, including of course in this last the costumes and colour-schemes, as well as the actual “scenery” and lighting.

It is in the proper harmonising of these elements that the true art of Ballet-composition, or, as it is called, “choreography,” consists. Each has its individual history, and all have been combined in varying proportions at various periods. But it is only in the past hundred and fifty years or so that they have been harmoniously blended in the increasing richness of their development to give us this separate, protean and beautiful art—the Ballet of the Theatre.

These four elements are the material of which Ballet is composed, and the result may be judged by their balance.

We are to think not of the worst examples that have been, but of the best, and of those that yet might be.

Most of the older writers on dancing speak of almost all concerted dances as ballets and refer to the “ballets” of the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. The Abbé Menestrier, however, writing in the seventeenth century, wisely observed the distinction between dances that are only “dances,” and those that approximate to “ballet.”

It should be borne in mind that it is possible to dance and not represent an idea save that of dancing, as when a child dances for joy, not in order to represent the joy of another. That is the province of the Mime. It is equally possible to mimic without dancing.

The best ballet-dancer is one who has intelligence and training to do both, whose dancing and mimicry are interpretative.

Speaking of certain Egyptian and Greek figure-dances and the approach of some of them to the Ballet as he knew it towards the end of the seventeenth century, Menestrier wrote: “J’appelle ces Danses Ballets parce qu’elles n’etoient pas de simples Danses comme les autres, mais des Representations ingenieuses, des mouvements du Ciel et des Planétes, et des evolutions du labyrinthe dont Thésée sortit.” That is a distinction to be remembered by any who may look on the Art of Ballet as simply—dancing.

It is necessary to-day to make another distinction, that between “ballet,” and “the ballet of the theatre.” In a sense the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, indeed all peoples in past ages have had ballets; that is, dances which were “representations ingenieuses,” which represented an idea or told a story.

There have been entertainments, too, of which dancing formed a considerable part—such as our English “masques,” which, contemporaneously, were often spoken of as “ballets.”

But though they may for convenience have been so called, they were never more than partly akin with the ballet of the theatre as we see it to-day. They never exhibited that balance of subordinated and developed arts which the best examples of later times have shown; and were not seen in the public theatre, as a form of dramatic entertainment apart from others.

One has only to consider for an instant what were the musical and scenic resources of the Greek and Roman stage, and compare them with the resources of modern orchestration and scenic effect to realise the difference between antique “ballet” and that of to-day.

Setting aside this difference, which arises from the development of the several elements through the centuries, one may find many an ancient definition of “ballet” that appears apt enough to-day, for the difference is not so much one of principle as this of resources.

Athenæus, a second-century Greek critic, declared: “Ballet is an imitation of things said and sung,” and Lucian, that—“It is by the gesture, movements and cadences that this imitation or representation is made up, as the song is made up by the inflections of the voice.” This is a happy illustration. Inflections might well be described as “gestures” of the voice.

Menestrier (who, besides writing an exceedingly entertaining history of Ballet, also wrote extensively on Heraldry, and was author of several solid historical works as well as numerous poems and libretti) has said: “Ballet is an imitation like the other arts, and that much has in common with them. The difference is, that while the other arts only imitate certain things, as painting, which expresses the shape, colour, arrangement and disposition of things, Ballet expresses the movement which Painting and Sculpture could not express, and by these movements can represent the nature of things, and those characteristics of the soul which only can find expression by such movements. This imitation is achieved by the movements of the body, which are the interpreters of the passions and of the inmost feelings. And even as the body has various parts composing a whole and making a beautiful harmony, one uses instruments and their accord, to regulate those movements which express the effect of the passions of the soul.”

These definitions have decided value, but hardly quite meet the case of modern Ballet.

Noverre, Blasis, Gardel, and other of the older maîtres de ballet, have told us in several charming books, essays, letters, dialogues and libretti, much as to what Ballet can and should be, but yet leave something to seek in the matter of brief yet comprehensive definition.

It is with some hesitancy, therefore, that I venture, before talking of its history, to suggest as a simple definition that: “a ballet is a series of solo and concerted dances with mimetic actions, accompanied by music and scenic accessories, telling a story.”

It is by reason of this definition that I propose to pass somewhat lightly over the early dawn of Ballet, or rather of its earliest elements, the dance and miming; and that I propose to deal more fully with the period after the advent of Louis Quatorze—in France and in England—which saw the development of the Ballet du Théâtre.

There have, of course, been modern ballets that did not tell a story. But the true Ballet of the theatre should.

Such have been the best of those of Noverre, of Blasis, of Perrot, Nuittier, Théophile Gautier, and of later composers of ballet like Taglioni, Manzotti, Coppi, Mme. Lanner, Wilhelm, Curti, Fokine, and, indeed, all the best ballets of later years; and such will the best always be.

CHAPTER II
EGYPT

The origin of the drama is hardly to be reckoned among the historic mysteries. By serious triflers debate might be held as to what should be considered the first dramatic representation and when it actually took place.

Some five centuries before the Christian era the first plays of which scholarship has taken note were performed at Athens, those of Thespis, forerunner of the first great dramatists of the world—Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

For convenience the origin of Western drama may be dated from Thespis because it seems first to have assumed then a definite form. That is not its actual origin any more than the origin of any human being is to be dated from its birth. As a possibility it may be said to have existed always. Even Chronology has its limitations, and preceding any given event there must have existed principles or tendencies.

When it is said, therefore, that the origin of the Drama is not an historic mystery it is because we are not very much in the dark as to when it began to assume a somewhat definite form; and, moreover, we can be fairly clear as to what must have preceded it. There seems rather more than a probability that the Drama derived its existence from the Poet, in his capacity as a Narrator.

For some hundreds of years the Drama has been chiefly a representation of character and events, whether real or fictitious. In its earliest forms it was mainly descriptive. It would seem to be the natural order of things that from mere description there should arise in time—possibly from a half-conscious feeling of the need of emphasis, of a desire to impress the hearers—the attempt to illustrate or to represent the scenes or actions described. The mere repetition of any story seems to tend towards that. Have we not observed that no “fish” story is ever quite complete—if not convincing—without histrionic illustrations?

Though in India and China, with their more ancient civilisation, the chronologic origin of the Drama might be more remotely placed, it is probable that in the Homeric bard and the Homeric audience, should be sought the true beginning of the Western theatre; while, all the world over, the evolution of the dramatic form has probably been much the same—namely, a gradual transition from poetic narration to imitative representation. Thus at the back of the Drama is probably the Poet. Beside the Poet, too, is often the Priest.

Greek tragedy is usually said to have had a purely “religious” origin, and certainly it was from early times employed for the purposes of, or in the service of, Religion; but it would, one feels, be rather truer to presume its actual origin to be purely secular, and to be found in the Poet making his appeal to an ordinary audience, in a word, to the People, while sometimes under the patronage of priestly and ruling classes.

When, however, we come to consider the origin of the Dance—first and most important of the “four elements” of Ballet—we are forced to the conclusion that, even though we are on more uncertain ground, it must, nevertheless, be far older than the Drama. Why this should be so, even though we have no approximate date to go upon as in the case of the Thespian theatre, is not difficult to see.

The Drama evolved from, and has always depended on, the faculty of speech, and on the growth of a language. A copious vocabulary and flexibility of verbal expression are not exactly characteristics of the primitive races; and, without both, the Drama, as we have known it for some centuries, could not have existed.

But the Dance (with mimicry, which has always followed close upon its heels) has no need of words, and is itself a kind of speech, in which the whole body is used as a means of expression.

We are none of us old enough to remember, and there is consequently no need to be dogmatic and assert that the Dance actually did precede speech; but it is far from improbable that it could have done; and while one shudders to think of the ardent danse tourbillon our Mother Earth must have danced from the moment of her birth, it is perhaps more amusing—and yet not wholly frivolous—to contemplate a possible origin of the Dance in the sport some Simian ancestors may have found in rhythmically swaying on the flexile branches of some primeval tree, before they had acquired a vocabulary sufficiently copious for the analysis of their sensations.

Seriously, however, and just because it has a rhythmic basis, dancing in some form is among the earliest instincts of mankind, even as it is of children. In all climes, at all periods, men and women have danced; and its origin is lost in the mists of prehistoric years. Non-civilised races still existent may offer evidence as to stages in its evolution; but even among the more primitive races, dancing seems to have some definiteness of form, marking a heritage of long practice.

From some earliest, uncouth leapings and gestures of savage or half savage tribes (the effect of mere exuberant physical energy) may have grown the idea of thus expressing joy and thankfulness; for joy, not sorrow, one feels must surely have been always the first inspirer of the Dance; and possibly a victory over an enemy, or gratitude for a full harvest may have come to be first the inspiration, and then the excuse for repeating such manifestations.

Repetition of an act tends to create a habit, and what may be at first apparently a spontaneous experiment grows by repetition into a cult, with set form and ritual.

The ritual of the Dance seems to be as ancient as the stars, in representing the movements of which, it is supposed by some to have had its origin in Egypt over two thousand years ago. Nowhere is it found without form. All must be done in a certain way, according to the traditions of the locality in which the dance is seen, or according to some wider tradition. Always it has a ritual of its own, but also with religious ritual the origin of the Dance—as also of the Drama—appears in some mysterious manner to be upbound.

Of all the records that we have of dancing, the earliest are, apparently, those of Egypt. Its origin is not there; it must be older; but we know at least that the Egyptians were among the first people with a civilisation that encouraged dancing.

One of the finest among modern historians of the art, divides dancing, for convenience in tracing its evolution, into “sacred” and “profane”; that is, the Dance forming, as so often it did in ancient times, part of a religious ceremonial, and that which in any other of its forms was merely a pleasure of the people. For our purpose in tracing the growth of Ballet, however, it would seem advisable to divide the Dance yet further, into “sacred,” “secular,” and “theatrical.”

The Egyptians had no Ballet of the theatre, because they had no theatre. They had dances which seem to have been “representations ingenieuses,” and to that extent, as mimetic dances, partook of the nature of Ballet; but they were not organised as theatrical spectacles for private or public entertainment.

The Greeks had no Ballet of the theatre because, though they had the theatre, they, like the Egyptians, had merely mimetic dances, not Ballet.

But if Egypt had no popular theatre in which dancing was seen, it appears to have existed, nevertheless, in three distinct forms—as a pleasure of “the man in the street”—just as we see children dance to a barrel-organ in the London streets to-day; again, as an entertainment for the wealthy, just as a popular singer, dancer or other entertainer of to-day is engaged for an “at home” or dinner-party; and, finally, as an element of the elaborate and somewhat theatrical Egyptian religious ceremonial.

Monuments from Thebes and Beni Hassan show pictures of Egyptian dancers performing steps very similar to some we can see to-day. They appear to be performing them for the pleasure of onlookers as well as their own. This acquiring of an audience has, after all, been always of first importance, and without it the Drama could hardly have come into existence.

Most people are interested in seeing others do something they are unable to do themselves, and when they can see it well done, in a manner, that is, suggesting a difficult feat accomplished with ease, they will even pay for the exhibition. That is the popular (with managers the extremely popular) side of the theatrical arts, of which dancing is one. When there arises the desire to see the exhibition repeated frequently, then must follow the special place with special facilities and accessories for the performance, and the theatre, or something like it, thus comes into existence as an institution sustained by popular support. There is first the thing done for pleasure—which is art; then the exploitation of it for profit—which is commerce; that is the brief epitaph of any art as a fruit of civilisation.

The Egyptians did not reach the “theatre” stage. But dancing, essentially a popular art, received encouragement as an element in religious festivals and as an entertainment of the wealthy classes.

Considerable difference of opinion exists as to the “religious” dances of Egypt. Enthusiastic historians of dancing seem rather too prone to expand the little store of fact we possess, and some go to the length of speaking of the religious and popular “ballets” of the Egyptians. But it is certain that they had no regular theatrical spectacles in which dancing was of prime importance; and their popular dances, to any such extent as they could be described as “representations ingenieuses,” were primitive in comparison with any of later times.

Solo-dances and pas de deux were general enough, but the dancing of massed groups, and the dramatic representation of a story, appear to have been unknown, or have passed unrecorded if they were known. The nearest approach to them, though not of course performed as a theatrical spectacle, would seem to have been an “astronomical dance,” which was done by or under the direction of the priests of Apis, and is said to have been—appropriately enough!—a representation of the movements of the stars. It is probable that it was employed mainly as a means of education.

Holy Church in mediæval times took advantage of the popular craving for theatrical shows, and sought by the aid of “mystery plays,” and “moralities” to extend the knowledge of religious truths. It may be conjectured that the Egyptian hierarchy similarly had some such end in view, and that the priestly caste sought to utilise the popular taste for dancing as a means of influence, and that the actual performance of the dance served to fix more lastingly in the minds of novices the religious and astronomical truths it embodied.

An Egyptian Male Dancer
(From a Theban Fresco).

Egyptian Dancing Girls
(From a mural painting in the British Museum).

A Greek Funeral Dance
(From a coloured plaque in the Louvre).

In addition to the star-dance, the Egyptians are said to have had a “funeral” dance, but it is doubtful if this, the “Maneros”—of which Herodotus speaks—was a solemn dance. The fact is, however, that information both as to the religious and ceremonial uses of dancing among the Egyptians is very scant, and what little record we have of their dancing is mainly on its popular side and is to be gleaned from monuments.

One of the frescoes in the British Museum shows two girls performing, apparently before a select audience of women, one of whom is seen to be applauding, or perhaps marking the time with syncopated clapping, as negroes do to-day.

Another representation of dancing is on a fresco from Thebes showing three figures, the centre of whom is apparently performing an entrechat, as seen to-day, the step in which the dancer crosses feet in mid-air; while a fourth acts as orchestra with a couple of the curious curved maces which were beaten together to mark the rhythm in sonorous fashion.

Other Egyptian monuments also show dancers, one from Beni Hassan depicting several couples, apparently boys, performing a dance that obviously had certain set steps, and suggests that it was used mainly as a rhythmic athletic exercise, as were many of the Greek dances. And yet another monument shows men apparently in the act of performing a pirouette. About them all there is the air of decision, a suggestion of trained performance that in itself, remembering that these monuments are some four thousand years old, and depict steps similar to some performed to-day, is testimony to the antiquity of the art of dancing.

CHAPTER III
GREECE

There is no lack of testimony, pictorial and literary, to the ancient Greek love of the Dance.

Among the various arts of war and peace that Vulcan engraved upon that wondrous shield which he fashioned at the entreaty of sad Thetis for her son Achilles, the Dance was not forgotten; and the Homeric singer must have been a lover of the art to limn as clear a picture as is given in the eighteenth book of the Iliad.

“There, too, the skilful artist’s hand had wrought

With curious workmanship, a mazy dance,

Like that which Dædalus in Knossos erst

At fair-haired Ariadne’s bidding framed.

There, laying each on other’s wrists their hand,

Bright youths and many-suitored maidens danced.”

“Now whirled they round with nimble practised feet,

Easy, as when a potter, seated, turns

A wheel, new-fashioned by his skilful hand

And spins it round, to prove if true it run:

Now featly moved in well-beseeming ranks.

A numerous crowd, around, the lovely dance

Surveyed, delighted; while an honoured Bard

Sang, as he struck the lyre, and to the strain

Two tumblers, in the midst, were whirling round.”

The “two tumblers” is an interesting detail, but it does not necessarily refer to the sort of acrobatic “tumbling” we are familiar with to-day. There have always been two phases of the Dance which can best be understood by noting the distinction marked by the use of two words in French—at least by their use among the masters and writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—namely, danser and sauter. The former means to dance, “terre-à-terre,” that is, always with the feet, or one foot at least, on or close to the ground; sauter, means invariably to leap into the air, or even to perform steps while both feet are in the air.

We usually speak of “a somersault,” a “double somersault,” and so forth. The word is a corruption from the old French soubresault, from the Latin supra, over, and saltus, leap.

Early historians of the Dance frequently speak of “saltation,” without any reference to the “somersault” as we know it, but to what we should call simply dancing.

The Homeric picture must have been repeated innumerable times since it was first limned, whenever and wherever there has been a gathering of men and maids on a village green, dancing in a circle, with a couple of high-leaping lads in the centre inciting all to quicken the rhythm of the whirling dance. Many an Elizabethan village must have realised such a scene; and for all the artifice of the stage, with its paint and footlights, does it not hold something of the antique tradition in the picture often seen, of a circle of dancing girls enclosing two wildly turning “stars”? Is it impossibly un-Hellenic to presume that the “Two tumblers, in the midst, were whirling round” in pirouettes? At least it may be considered—a presumption!

Far later in Hellenic days we have a gracious picture of the Dance in Theocritus’ eighteenth Idyll, “The Bridal of Helen,” which reads delightfully in Calverley’s translation:

“Whilom in Lacedæmon tripped many a maiden fair

To gold-pressed Menelaus’ halls with hyacinths in her hair,

Twelve to the painted chamber, the queenliest in the land,

The clustered loveliness of Greece came dancing hand-in-hand.

With woven steps they beat the ground in unison and sang

The bridal hymn of triumph till all the Palace rang.”

The Greek dance, it should be noted, was almost invariably accompanied by singing; and the poet probably was often indebted to the dance for the rhythm of his verse. The bridal dance was of very ancient institution. Indeed, there were few occasions which were not celebrated with dancing, and the Greeks even followed the Egyptian custom of having “dancers” at their funerals! It is not to be thought, however, that the steps were exactly gay; nor need there have been anything incongruous, for we can be sure the instinctive taste of the people would not have admitted such a thing, and, moreover, a dance and a dancer as they saw it, were rather different from the vision we have recalled by such words.

To the ancient Greeks the Dance was a cult, an element in the religious and physical well-being of the individual and the State: and the dance that was taught to the child became an important and lasting factor in the physical growth and culture of the man.

We who, most of us, are only too apt to look on dancing as a mere trivial pastime, may wonder that it was so seriously considered by the Greeks, and that it should have so earnestly engaged the attentions of such philosophers as Plato and Lucian. But perhaps that is only because we have not considered it sufficiently ourselves and have associated it too closely with theatrical display.

In any form in which it is at its best the theatre is one of the noblest and most influential institutions of civilisation; as dancing, at its best, is one of the finest, because most comprehensive, of the theatrical arts. But there is a vast difference between the dance which was a means of physical and mental development, pursued amid the health-giving surroundings of sunshine and fresh air, and, let us say, some such degradation of art as some examples of the “classic” dance we have seen of recent years, performed in the glare of footlights, amid the smoke-laden atmosphere of a music-hall.

The contrast is an obvious one, but the thing to consider is that we in England have allowed an art which held an important place in Greek national life, and which should be of the greatest educational value to ourselves, to become mainly a spectacle of the theatre, where more often than not it is seen at its best, not necessarily because it is the result of the best system, but because it is the fruit of the greatest practice.

It is obviously impossible to deal very fully with the Hellenic dance in the space of a chapter in a volume which is not intended to trace the evolution of the Dance but of Ballet. An entire book were needed to treat the subject adequately—and we have not such a book in English, as yet. But Emmanuel’s masterly technical review of Hellenic dancing in his volume La Danse Grecque, is invaluable, and is testimony to the sound and catholic scholarship which in France scorns no subject as “trivial” merely because those ignorant of its history dismiss it as such; and which finds sympathetic students in a country where all the arts are treated with a respect that is at least as great as that offered to commercialism.

The Greeks are said to have derived their earlier dances from Egypt. This may be questionable, because it is equally likely that there was a traditional, indigenous dance in Greece. But it was through the Greeks, certainly, that dancing first assumed that variety and perfection of form and style which all the arts seemed destined to attain under their quickening, purifying, and inspiring influence; and it was the Greeks, too, who first began to develop the art of mimicry.

First, as already suggested, there would probably have been some occasion for joy, tending to express itself by dancing; and a victory over an enemy, or gratitude for a full harvest (the more exalted when the harvest was of the grape!) would have been such occasions. Later must have come the idea of representing the victory celebrated, or the imagined characteristics of the being or beings who were supposed to be the cause of the earth’s fruition, and who, if propitiated by this tumultuous acknowledgment of gratitude, perhaps might renew their favours.

Thus, in time, out of the ritual of the Dance would have grown the ritual of representation—Mimicry, miming, or “acting,” as we call it; and little by little, from the wild exuberance of recurring poetic festivals, such as those in honour of Dionysus, would have grown the ordered sense of Drama, the representation of thanksgiving, of feelings, events and things by Mimicry, the actor’s art; either allied with, or separate from, dancing.

The Greeks, improving on the Egyptians, invented and developed the idea of the Theatre. But though the Greeks in their Drama utilised the arts of dancing and mimicry, it would seem that they were quite subordinated to the literary and dramatic art of the all-inspiring Poet, and that words, with a meaning behind them, words representing, as far as words can, thoughts, passions, emotions, actions, things, were the essential medium of Greek Drama, not the art of the Dancer or the Mime.

It should be noted that the Greek orcheisthai (ὀρχεῖσθαι), to dance, implied more than mere steps with the feet. It included much that goes to make a really good ballet-dancer of to-day—interpretative dancing and mimetic gesture. The Greeks in fact had some of the material, if they did not have as we know it—the Ballet.

The earliest dramatic poets, Thespis, Phrynichus, were called “dancers” because in addition to providing the drama as poets, their function was to train their choruses in the dances which, accompanied by singing, were introduced in the play.

One of the most celebrated of the actors in the plays of Æschylus, Telestes, was said not merely to indicate feelings but to “describe” events with his hands; and this, which was really miming, was considered as part of dancing, which Aristotle defined as “the representation of actions, characters and passions by means of postures and rhythmic movements.”

Plutarch analyses dancing as “Motions, Postures and Indications,” a “posture” being the attitude of the dancer at the moment of arrested movement, and an “indication,” the gesture which indicated an external object referred to in a poet’s lines, such as the sky; or such as an orator would use when raising his hand heavenward invoking the gods.

The chief dances used in the Greek drama were the Emmeleia, a stately measure; Hyporchemata, lively dances; the Kordax, a very coarse and rough comic dance; and finally the Sikinnis, which was attached especially to satyric comedies and parodied as a rule the measure of the Emmeleia.

These were all a part, though a subordinate part, of the classic drama, and, according to some authorities, had their foundation in the rhythm of the poet’s verse as it was sung by the chorus or declaimed by the chief actors.

But apart from these there were mimetic dances. One, in which we may perhaps even see a hint of the origin of dancing itself, is found in Longus’ novel, Daphnis and Chloe, in which Dryas performs a vintage-dance, “pretending to gather grapes, to carry them in panniers, to tread them in a vat and pour the flowing juice into jars, and then to drink of the wine thus newly made”; and all done so cleverly that the spectators were deceived for the time and thought they really saw the grapes, the vats, and the wine the actor made pretence of drinking. This, probably an incident drawn from life, was indeed a “representation ingenieuse,” and even suggests yet another of the many possibilities as to the origin of the Dance, namely—that dancing itself may have originated from the treading of grapes.

The famous Pyrrhic dance was of course mimetic and represented a series of war-like incidents, all of which had an educational purpose, as by their means the youthful soldier was taught how to advance and retreat, how to aim a blow or hurl a javelin and to dodge them; and how to leap and vault, in event of meeting ditches and walls. Apart from military dances in which physical culture and grace were the chief aims, there were many dances of a purely festival character taken part in by young men and girls, and by girls alone.

The close association between religion and the Dance in ancient Hellenic days is seen in the number of festivals in honour of the gods, at which special dances were performed, apart from those which formed part of the classic drama and others which were merely by way of joyous pastime. Certain dances were performed annually in honour of Jupiter; others, such as the Procharysteriæ, were in honour of Minerva; then there was the Pæonian dance in honour of Apollo; the Ionic, and the Kalabis and the famous Dance of Innocence, instituted by Lycurgus, and executed to the glory of Diana, by young Lacedæmonian girls before the altar of the goddess. The Delian dance, special to the isle of Delos, was much the same in character and closed with the offering of floral garlands on the altar of Aphrodite. One of the most solemn incidents of the Eleusinian mysteries was the mystical dance-drama representing the search of Ceres for her daughter Proserpine—practically a “ballet,” in the older acceptance of the word.

The secular dance of the Greeks was essentially an individualistic form. Men and women only rarely danced together, and when they did, the joining of hands, or anything like chain-dancing was exceptional. One of these exceptions was the Hormos, or Collar-dance as it was called, which Lucian describes as being danced by youths and maidens advancing one by one in the form of a collar, made up of the alternating jewels of feminine grace and manly strength, the dance being led by a youth. Most of the Greek dances had a leader, and the favour in which the art was held is shown by the fact that they termed their Chief Magistrate Pro-orchestris, or Leader of the Dance. As a rule, chain-dances were performed by one or the other sex.

In another sense also the Hellenic dance was individualistic. We are accustomed to see entire groups, eight, sixteen, or even thirty-two or more dancers all performing the same step simultaneously. It is one of the conventions of Ballet, like the chorus in “musical comedy.” But the Greeks had not that convention.

Although their dance was based on strict rhythm and was governed by rigid rules, they governed the dance of the individual, not of groups. He, or she, was adjudged a good dancer by the grace of line displayed and rhythmic balance of movement, and many a vase painting exhibits groups of dancers who, though dancing in the mass, are each doing different steps; and equally the gestures and mimetic expression of each differed.

The system unquestionably had its advantages, for while the rhythm of the song or poetic verse which accompanied the performers was the common basis of the dance for all, the individuality of expression undoubtedly gave a vitality to the group which accounts for the vividness and charm of their representation on many an antique vase.

Numerous indeed were the various forms of the Hellenic dance, sacred, dramatic, secular—Meursius catalogues some two hundred—but further description would detain us too long en route towards the culmination of all these earlier types of mimetic and other dances in the Ballet of to-day, and we have next to trace the growth of Latin Mime and Pantomime.

CHAPTER IV
MIME AND PANTOMIME: ROME, HIPPODROME—OBSCURITY

If to Greece modern Ballet owes much for the encouragement of the Dance, to Rome it is even more indebted for the development of the art of Pantomime.

By many the word Pantomime is associated solely with that time-honoured entertainment which children, home for the Christmas holidays, are supposed to be too blasé to care for, but which they go to by way of obliging parents who feel it their duty to take them.

The Christmas pantomime has long been one of our cherished institutions, though, like the British Constitution, it has undergone many changes. It is still given at Christmas. That much of tradition remains. But most of its original features have all but disappeared. Time was, two hundred years ago, when it was mainly “Harlequinade,” and Harlequin and his gay comrades of Italian comedy were the heroes of the play. Then classical plots and allusions, with an elaboration of scenic effect and “machines,” brought about a gradual change. In the early nineteenth century a “topical” and “patriotic” element had crept in; but the Harlequinade, although shortened, and, shall we say, broadened, still remained.

Then a craze for “transformation” scenes set in because the extreme gorgeousness of the tinsel productions of Kemble and Macready—the archæological and historic “accuracy” of which was always emphasised!—forced the pantomime producers in self-defence to go one better.

And then came Grimaldi to give a new life to the whimsies of that Clown whose prototype dates back to ancient Rome; and for half a century or more the Christmas pantomime continued much the same—a familiar nursery-story played out to the accompaniment of fairy-like and glittering scenic accessories, concluding with a rough-and-tumble Harlequinade, until in recent years the introduction of the Music-hall performer gave us the entertainment we have to-day.

Not thus, however, was the antique “pantomime,” which, evolving from the more ancient and spoken “Mimes,” became, because it took all nature for its province—pan-mimicry, or pantomime; the stage representation, without the spoken word, of all that eye could see or mind of man conceive.

Now, it is a far step from narrative to impersonation—marking an advance in the technique of acting; and it was some time before the Greek Drama had achieved this. But it was not so much the impressive and noble side of the Greek Drama that taught the actors, not merely to declaim situations but to act them; it must have been the popular, the comic side; and it was probably the Doric farce, and later the early Latin comedy derived therefrom, that really brought to perfection under the Roman Empire the art of Miming apart from the art of Dancing.

The comic is so much nearer to life as we see it every day than the tragic; and it was this ability to see the more familiar comic side of life, and the desire to travesty the serious—whether in Greece or Rome—that first gave flexibility and variety to the art of miming, or “acting,” as we call it nowadays.

It is because of this nearness to the life of the time, because of the travesty of contemporary types and public affairs, that the Latin actors made their wide appeal.

From public encouragement would come the increasing endeavour of popular actors to outshine each other in technical tours de force; and from playing the familiar types of Latin Comedy, such as Maccus, with his double hump, prototype of our Punch; Pappus, forerunner of Pantaloon, and other characters (some from the early Mimi, some from the Atellanæ and Togatæ of tradition), the Latin Actors of the first and second centuries A.D. ultimately aspired to the wordless representation of the gods and heroes of myth and legend.

According to one authority, “the Latin Pantomime grew out of the custom at this period—the first century of the Christian era—of having lyrical solos, such as interludes to flute accompaniment, between the acts of the Latin comedies.” According to that admirable historian of the stage, Mr. Charles Hastings, “this new mode (Pantomime) was a kind of mime, in which poses and gestures constituted the fundamental portion of the play. Words occupied a secondary place, and eventually disappeared altogether. Only the music was preserved, and in order that the audience might understand the gestures of the actors, little books were distributed in Greek text, intelligible only to the learned and to the upper classes. Later on the mask—rejected by the mime—was adopted, and a chorus was employed to accompany the comedian with their voices, and to explain the multiple gestures by which the actors created the different characters in turn. Moreover, there was a company of mute players. The libretti left almost unlimited liberty of detail. Sometimes the music broke off to enable the actor to finish his fioritura and variations. Sometimes, on the other hand, the comedian paused, or left the stage, while the story was taken up by the recitative and the instruments.”

All this reads much like a description of a modern “mimodrame,” such as “L’Enfant Prodigue,” or “Sumurun.” Again it reads not unlike a description of a modern ballet, for with these do we not often have printed synopses distributed, though not in Greek text? But we have to remember that the music was primitive, the scenic effect, though often remarkable, was different from that of our modern stage, with its greater mechanical resources; and, finally, that all this was an innovation of the Roman stage, for we are talking of the period that saw the dawn of the Christian era.

Among the more famous of the Latin pantomimists were Pylades, who was the inventor of tragic pantomimes; and Bathyllus, who was the composer of livelier episodes. For some time they joined forces and had a theatre of their own, where they staged comedies and tragedies composed by themselves without words or any other aid in telling the story of the play than dancing, pantomime and music.

The innovation struck the popular fancy, and all Rome flocked to support the new venture. The two actors were received at the Emperor’s Court, and became the spoilt darlings of the Roman “smart” set. The inevitable happened. They began to intrigue at Court, and were made the centre of intrigue; they became as jealous of each other as rival opera singers, and in time a financially happy partnership was dissolved, and there were two theatres devoted to pantomimes instead of one.

But as this form of drama was a novelty, and pleased the “connoisseurs,” who were numerous and increasing in numbers, both theatres were equally successful, perhaps the more so in that the public is always specially interested in ventures that appear to be in rivalry. The taste for existing stage-productions slackened in favour of those offered by Pylades and Bathyllus. Their “ballets” whether tragic, comic or satiric were looked on as the very perfection of tragedy, comedy or satire.

It was no longer a matter of declamatory style to enjoy or to criticise, it was a matter of steps, movements, gestures, attitudes, figures or positions that were discussed by wise connoisseurs of “the new thing,” who in Rome, as elsewhere to-day, had much to say on what they presumed to understand because—it was new! And such, it is said, was the genius of the “producers” of this novel form of entertainment; the effect was so natural, the stage-pictures were so convincing, the pathos was so moving or the gaiety so free and infectious, that the audiences forgot they had ears while using enchanted eyes; and expressive gestures took the place of vocal inflections, of the power of words and the magic of poetic verse.

Pylades before long found a rival star arise in the person of Hylas, whose greatest performance was said to be in Œdipus. If Pylades and Bathyllus had quarrelled, there was evidently no love lost between Pylades and Hylas.

Hylas on one occasion was giving a representation of Agamemnon and, at a particular line referring to that historic personage as “the great,” he rose up on tip-toe. “That,” said Pylades scornfully, “is being tall, not ‘great’”; a criticism not only just, but giving an excellent insight into the methods and ideas of the famous Latin pantomimist.

It is somewhat uncertain whether it was the Court intrigues of Bathyllus or of Hylas or of both which ultimately secured from the Emperor the sentence of banishment for Pylades, or whether it was the daring, not to say impudence of the actor in representing well-known people, or whether again it may not have been the increasing danger of the constant brawls which were taking place daily in the streets of Rome between the rival factions—the Pyladians and the Bathyllians.

But whatsoever the reason, the probability is that the perpetual strife between the parties supporting the adored actors (worse than ever was that between the Piccinists and Gluckists of the eighteenth century), with the constant blood-shed it involved, was made the excuse for the convenient removal of one of the principal factors in the disorder, and that the influence of Bathyllus, possibly backed up by that of Hylas, was able to secure the removal of the tragic actor.

Pylades, however, had his revenge, for such was the uproar in Rome on his banishment that the Emperor was practically forced to recall him, and he returned in triumph.

It is time, however, to leave the affairs of popular actors of the ancient world, since it is less the details of their personal history we need to consider than their importance as the virtual inventors of the second element of Ballet, the art of the mime, or, to use for a moment the more comprehensive word—pantomime. Thus we can see that it is largely due to the perfecting by the Italians of that art which seems to have been even more natural to them than to the Greeks—miming, that we have the Ballet of to-day.

From the dawn of the Christian era, comedy gave place to a perfect craze, first for the mime, and then for its offspring, pure pantomime. But, finally, the mimetic art as a standing entertainment of the Roman public, came to suffer neglect in favour of circuses; then, together with the circuses, it was opposed by the Churches. There were spasmodic revivals in the fourth and fifth centuries, but from the fifth century mime and pantomime practically ceased to exist in Constantinople, to which the seat of the Roman Empire had by that time been removed; and the arts both of the dancer and the mime fell upon a period of obscurity, though they went into retirement with all the reluctance of a modern “star.”

CHAPTER V
CHURCH THUNDER AND CHURCH COMPLAISANCE

It is a truism of history that opposition towards the amusements of a people only increases the desire for them, and that the undue pressure of a law, or of a too rigid majority, only stimulates the invention of evasions. In dramatic history there is ample proof of this.

In England during the seventeenth century the force of Puritan opinion and of law did not crush the Drama, but led to unseemly licence.

When, in the early eighteenth century, Paris was enlivened by the spectacle of the majestic Royal Opera, endeavouring by legal thunder to suppress the lively vaudeville performances of the too popular Paris Fairs, and even going to the length of obtaining decrees forbidding the Fair theatres to perform musical plays in which words were sung, were the managers of the little theatres downhearted?

No! they merely evaded the law and made a mockery of pompous interference by having the music of their songs played, while the meaning was acted in dumb-show, and—the actual words, printed very large, were displayed on a screen let down to the stage from above! Their audiences, catching the spirit of the thing, enjoyed the wit of the evasion and supported the performances all the more.

There are many people who can only relish that which they have been told is wrong.

Much the same spirit was abroad about sixteen hundred years ago, when the growing power of the Christian Church began to be a calculable factor in “practical politics,” and the embarrassment of successive Roman emperors in trying to rule an unwieldy and decaying Empire was increased by the moral warfare between the more rigid sects of the new Church and the pleasures of the people.

It should, however, be said in justice to the early Churchmen that many of the pleasures of the people had become entirely scandalous, and detrimental to the manhood of the Empire, at least as seen in the Empire’s capital. Over such let us draw a veil!

While, in these “democratic” days, it may be doubted if there are any of the English-speaking race who “dearly love a lord” (though there is really no reason why they should not!), there were certainly some thousands of the Byzantine populace in the third and fourth centuries to whom a successful circus-rider or gladiator, actor or dancer, was of far more interest than any peer of their period.

The histrionic favourites lacked, of course, the advantages of picture-postcard fame, and had to be content with immortality in verse. But as for the now hackneyed “stage romance” of the marriage of a youthful scion of a noble house with some resplendent star of the theatrical firmament, did not a Byzantine Emperor, Justinian, marry Theodora, once a popular dancer at the Hippodrome!

Yet he it was who made one of the more effective moves to suppress some of his people’s excessive opportunities for amusement, by abolishing the laws under which the expense of the performances in the Hippodrome, and some of the less important theatres had been met by the Imperial treasury. This, however, was mainly due to his beautiful wife, who had seen all the vilest side of theatrical life in a time when the older dramatic culture had given place to banal and vulgar entertainments involving a horrible servitude of those engaged in providing them.

Before this, however, the Church’s thunder had been launched at the grosser theatrical spectacles, and the Theatre had retaliated by mocking the adherents of the then new religion. Where fulmination failed, control by influence was essayed. But for all the attacks of the more advanced and severer leaders of the early Church, there must have been something of confusion for at least the first five centuries of the Christian era. Indeed, in the endeavour of the Church to transmute the popular love of theatrical spectacles into something higher, and to awaken the public interest in the service of the Church, what with the introduction of choral song, with strophe and antistrophe, and of solemn processionals, even it is said of ceremonial dances performed by the choir—such as the Easter dances still seen in Spain to-day—the Church itself must have come at times to seem perilously sympathetic towards the very things it was professing to condemn.

Did not Gregory Nazianzen implore Julian, before he became “the Apostate,” to be more discreet, saying in effect: “If you must dance, and if you must take part in these fêtes, for which you seem to have such a passion, then dance, if you must; but why revive the dissolute dances of the daughter of Herodias, and of the pagans? Dance rather as King David did before the Ark; dance to the glory of God. Such exercises of peace and of piety are worthy of an Emperor and a Christian.”

In short, wise cleric as he was, he found no fault with the healthy exercise of the dance itself, but only with such dance and other Byzantine entertainment as had tended, or might tend, to become merely an exhibition of depraved taste.

Indeed, how could he have inveighed against the dance as an expression of clean rejoicing when it had been recorded: “And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances”?[1] Had not the servants of Achish said: “Is not this David the king of the land? did not they sing one to another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands?”[2] Had it not, too, been written: “And David danced before the Lord with all his might.”[3]

No, the Church thunder had been directed against the licence by which the arts of dancing and miming had been corrupted, and against, not wholesome athleticism and healthy sport, but the hysterical brutalities and “professionalism” of the arena.

And if further proof were required of ecclesiastical interest in and practice of the thing it only attacked when seen in degraded form, it is to be found in the fact that in 744, the Pope Zacharias promulgated a Bull suppressing all so-called “religious dances,” or “baladoires” as he called them, which were showing signs of becoming “degenerate.”

These were dances which were performed in, or within the precincts of cathedrals and churches at certain festivals such as Easter, Midsummer and Christmas; and of which the old English bonfire dances of St. John’s Eve, were (and the modern carnival, and the Eastertide ceremonial seen in Seville to-day, are) probably survivals, though, to be sure, they should be accounted originally as survivals of earlier pagan dances in honour of the sun, and of the harvest, and not as originating with the Christian Church.

It may seem a far cry from the date of Pope Zacharias’ edict of 744, to 1462, when the first of the ballets ambulatoires is recorded, but it must not be supposed that dancing, if not miming, is entirely lacking in history during those seven hundred odd years. Any history of dancing would aid us in at least partly bridging such a gap; but it will be convenient in a chapter dealing more especially with early ecclesiastical influence on the evolution of Ballet, to deal now with a form of entertainment or of religious festival which was essentially a creation of the earlier Church.

The famous procession of the Fête Dieu which King René d’Anjou, Count of Provence, established at Aix in 1462, was, as an old historian tells us, an “ambulatory” ballet, “composed of a number of allegorical scenes, called entremets.” This word entremets, which was later replaced by “interludes,” designated a miming spectacle in which men and animals represented the action. Sometimes jugglers and mountebanks showed their tricks and danced to the sound of their instruments. These entertainments were called entremets because they were instituted to occupy the guests agreeably at a great feast, during the intervals between the courses. “The entre-actes of our first tragedies,” the writer adds, “were arranged in this manner, as one sees in the works of Baif, the interludes in the tragedy of Sophonisbie. More than five hundred mountebanks, Merry Andrews, comedians and buffoons, exhibited their tricks and prowess at the full Court which was held at Rimini to arm the knights and nobles of the house of Malatesta and others.”

As the fêtes and tournaments, given on these occasions, were accompanied by acts of devotion, the festivals of the Church often displayed also something of the gallant pomp of the tournaments.

These ballets ambulatoires, however, with all their richer pageantry, were yet to be outshone by the two secular entertainments to which we must devote our next chapter—the banquet-dance of Bergonzio di Botta, of 1489, and the still more famous “Ballet Comique de la Reine,” of 1581, the last of which, there can be little doubt, had important effect in the development if not creation of our English masque, which, in turn, had an immense influence on the evolution of modern Ballet.

CHAPTER VI
THE BANQUET-BALL OF BERGONZIO DI BOTTA, 1489, AND THE FAMOUS “BALLET COMIQUE DE LA REINE,” 1581

A superb and ingenious festivity was that arranged by Bergonzio di Botta, a gentleman of Tortona, in honour of the wedding of Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, with Isabella of Aragon.

The good Bergonzio was a lover of all the best things of life, but especially of dining and of dancing. That historic gourmet, Brillat Savarin, commends him for his taste in the former matter, as may we for the bright idea of combining a dinner with a dance, one of somewhat nobler plan than any modern example!

The dinner was of many courses and each was introduced by the servers and waiters with a dance in character, the whole constituting a sort of dinner-ballet. In the centre of a stately salon, which was surrounded by a gallery where various musicians were distributed, there was a large table.

As the Duke and his lady entered the salon by one door, from another approached Jason and the Argonauts who, stepping proudly forth to the sound of martial music and by dance and gestures expressing their admiration of so handsome a bride and bridegroom, covered the table with the Golden Fleece which they were carrying.

This group then gave place to Mercury who, in recitative, described the cunning which he had used in stealing from Apollo, who guarded the flocks of Admetus, a fat calf, with which he came to pay homage to the newly married pair. While he placed it on the table three “quadrilles” who followed him executed a graceful entrée.

Diana and her nymphs then succeeded Mercury. The Goddess was followed by a kind of litter on which was a hart. This, she explained, was Actæon, who, although no longer alive, was happy in that he was to be offered to so amiable and fair a nymph as Isabella of Aragon. At this moment a melodious symphony attracted the attention of the guests. It announced the singer of Thrace, who was seen playing on his lyre while chanting the praises of the young duchess.

“I mourned,” he sang, “on Mount Apennine the death of tender Eurydice. Now, hearing of the union of two lovers worthy to live for one another, I have felt, for the first time since my sorrow, an impulse of joy. My songs have changed with the feelings of my heart. A flock of birds has flown to hear my song. I offer them to the fairest princess on earth, since the charming Eurydice is no more.”

A sudden clamour interrupted his song as Atalanta and Theseus, heading a nimble and brilliant troupe, represented by lively dances the glories of the chase. The mimic hunt was terminated by the death of the wild boar of Calydon, which was offered to the young Duke, with triumphal “ballets.”

A magnificent spectacle then succeeded this picturesque entrance. On one side was Iris, seated on a car drawn by peacocks and followed by several nymphs, covered in light gauze and carrying dishes of superb birds. The youthful Hebe appeared on the other side, carrying the nectar which she poured for the gods. She was accompanied by Arcadian shepherds, laden with all kinds of food and by Vertumnus and Pomona who offered all manner of fruits. At the same time the shade of that famous gourmet Apicius rose from the earth, presenting to this superb feast all the delicacies he had invented and which had given him the reputation of the most voluptuous among ancient Romans. This spectacle disappeared and then there was a wondrous ballet of all the gods of the sea and rivers of Lombardy; who carried the most exquisite fish and served them while executing dances of different characters.

This extraordinary repast was followed by a yet more singular spectacle opened by Orpheus, who headed a procession of Hymen and a troop of Loves, followed by the Graces who surrounded Conjugal Faith, whom they presented to the Princess, while offering, themselves, to serve her.

At this moment, Semiramis, Helen, Medea and Cleopatra interrupted a recitative by Conjugal Faith to sing of the delights of Passion. Then a Vestal, indignant that the recital of pure and true marriages should be sullied by such guilty songs, ordered the notorious queens to withdraw. At her voice, the Loves, who accompanied her, joined in a lively dance, pursuing the wicked queens with lighted torches and setting fire to the gauze veils of their headdress! Lucretia, Penelope, Thomiris, Porcia and Sulpicia replaced them and presented to the young Princess that palm for chastity which they had merited during their lives. Their “modest and noble” dance, however, was interrupted by Bacchus, with a troop of revellers who came to celebrate so illustrious a bridal, and the festival terminated in a manner as gay as it was ingenious.

The fête achieved a prodigious fame throughout Italy. It was the talk of every city and a full description of its glories was published, while crowds of “society hostesses” of the period endeavoured to emulate the ingenuity of its originators, and the vogue of the dinner-ballet “arrived.”

One effect of its fame was that for a century it set the fashion for the Royal and Ducal Courts throughout Europe. Every Court had its “ballets,” in which lords and ladies of highest degree took part; and the movement was greatly fostered by Catherine de Medici, who sought to divert the attention of her son, Henry III, from political affairs towards the more congenial ways of social amusement, of which Court-ballets formed considerable part.

The culmination of these sumptuous entertainments came, however, in 1581, when in celebration of the betrothal of the Duc de Joyeuse and Marguerite of Lorraine, sister of the Queen of France, a spectacle was arranged, the splendour of which had never been seen in the world before. This was Beaujoyeux’s famous “Ballet Comique de la Royne”—or de la Reine in modern spelling—which set all cultured Europe aglow with praise of its designer. A special account of it, with many charming engravings, was printed by order of the King to send to foreign Courts. So much did it set a fashion that the elaborate masked balls and the numerous Court-masques and entertainments which followed in the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth and James were directly inspired by the success of Beaujoyeux’s ballet, even as they in turn influenced the subsequent productions of Louis XIV in France.

The author and designer was an Italian, by name Baltasarini, famous as a violinist. He was introduced by the Duc de Brissac to the notice of Catherine de Medici, who appointed him a valet de chambre, and subsequently he became official organiser of the Court fêtes, ballets and concerts, assuming the name of Baltasar de Beaujoyeux.

Stage Effect in the 16th Century
(A Scene from the “Ballet Comique de la Royne,” by Baltasar de Beaujoyeux, 1581).

The account of the ballet was sumptuously published. The title-page read as follows:

BALET COMIQUE

De la Royne, faict

aux nopces de mon

sieur le Duc de Ioyeuse &

madamoyselle de Vau

demont sa sœur.

par

Baltasar de Beavioyevlx

valet de chambre du

Roy et de la Royne sa mère.

à Paris

par

Adrian le Roy, Robert Ballard, et Mamert Patisson

Imprimeurs du Roy.

MDLXXXII

Avec Privilege.

After a courtly dedication “Au Roy de France, et de Pologne,” full of praise for his prowess in arms and his taste in art, full of graceful compliment by classic implications, he follows with an address:

AU LECTEUR.

Povravtant, amy Lecteur, que le tiltre et inscription de ce livre est sans example, et que lon n’a point veu par cy deuant aucun Balet auoir esté imprimé, ny ce mot de Comique y estre adapté: ie vous prieray ne trouver ny l’un ny l’autre estrange. Car quant au Balet, encores que ci soit vne inuention moderne, ou pour le moins, repétée si long de l’antiquité, que l’on la puisse nommer telle: n’estant à la verité que des meslanges geometriques de plusieurs personnes dansans ensemble sous vne diuerse harmonie de plusieurs instruments: ie vous confesse que simplement representé par l’impression, cela eust eu beaucoup de nouveauté, et peu de beauté, de reciter vne simple Comedie: aussi cela n’eust pas esté ny bien excellent, ny digne d’vne si grande Royne, qui vouloit faire quelque chose de bien magnifique et triomphant. Sur ce ie me suis advisé qu’il ne seroit point indecent de mesler l’un et l’autre ensemblement, et diversifier la musique de poesie, et entrelacer la poesie de musique et le plus souvent les côfrondre toutes deux ensemble: ansi que l’antiquité ne recitoit point ses vers sans musique, et Orphée ne sonnoit jamais sans vers, i’ay toutes fois donné le premier tiltre et honneur à la danse, et le second à la substâce, que i’ay inscrite Comique, plus pour la belle, tranquille et heureuse conclusion, ou elle se termine, que pour la qualité des personnages, qui sont presque tous dieux et déesses, ou autres personnes heroiques. Ainsi i’ay animé et fait parler le Balet, et chanter et resonner la Comedie: et y adjoustant plusieurs rares et riches représentations et ornements, ie puis dise avoir contenté en un corps bien proportionné, l’œil, l’oreille, et l’entendement. Vous priant que la nouveauté, ou intitulation ne vous en face mal juger; car estant l’invention principalement. Composée de ces deux parties, ie ne pouvois tout attribuer au Balet, sans faite tout à la Comedie, distinctement representée par ses scènes et actes: ny à la Comedie sans prejudicier au Balet, qui honore, esgaye et rempli d’harmonieux recits le beau sens de la Comedie. Ce que m’estant bien advis vous avoir deu abondamment instruire de mon intention, ie vous prie aussi ne vous effaroucher de ce nom et prendre le tout en aussi bonne par, comme i’ay desire vous satisfaire pour mon regard.

Although the quaint spelling of the old French may offer a passing difficulty to some readers, I have felt it advisable to give the address as it stands, for it presents several points of extraordinary interest.

First and foremost is the fact that it claims Beaujoyeux’s ballet to be the first ever printed!

His description of a ballet as “meslanges geometriques de plusieurs personnes dansans ensemble” is extremely interesting. Pylades the Latin dancer-mime declared that no man could become a perfect mime who did not understand music, painting, sculpture and geometry! And in recent years a well-known Italian maître with whom I was discussing Ballet remarked, as he held up a case of drawing instruments, “Here is the whole art of choreography,” or ballet-composition. This may seem a somewhat exaggerated assertion, but it is a fact that without some knowledge of geometry it would be difficult for a composer of Ballet to tell the effect that would be produced by lines and groups of dancers in the sight of a huge audience all looking at the stage from different angles.

Beaujoyeux’s claim to appeal to and satisfy “l’œil, l’oreille, et l’entendement” is also interesting, and quite in accord with modern ideas of the Ballet.

The entertainment itself must have been a remarkable affair. It began with a fine water display by a fountain with twelve sides, on each of which were two naiads, with musical instruments, for the “concert,” which accompanied the singers. Above the fountain-basin, which was full of fish, rose another on pillars, where twelve niches made seats for so many nymphs. In the middle, dolphins carried a crown and formed a throne for the Queen. Two other basins rose again above, formed of other dolphins grouped, which spouted great jets of water, and the whole was topped by a golden ball five feet in diameter.

It was from this “machine,” drawn by sea-horses and accompanied by twelve tritons and as many sirens with their instruments, that there descended the Queen, the Princesse de Lorraine, the Duchesses de Mercueil, de Guise, de Nevers, d’Aumale and de Joyeuse, Marechal de Raiz, and de l’Archant and the Demoiselles de Pons, de Bourdeille and de Cypierre—who had all been seated in golden cars, and who were dressed in silver cloth and crêpe encrusted with gold bullion and precious stones. Thus they made the first entrance, arranging themselves in twelve different figures. At the first entrance they were six abreast and three in front in a triangle, of which the Queen formed the first point.

After this impressive opening the ballet meandered through the story of Circe, with musical interludes, songs and dances, and elaborate allegory. But as the first act began at ten in the evening and the last did not finish till after five in the morning, it will be seen that the production was as lengthy as it was magnificent. Some idea of the splendour of the fête, indeed, may be gathered from the fact that it cost something over three and a half million francs. The conclusion was graceful. The Queen and the Princesses, who had represented naiads and nereids, presented gold medals to the princes and seigneurs who, in the guise of tritons, had danced with them—presumably as a reward for their patience! This presentation of gifts became quite a custom at these courtly ballets, and doubtless the modern cotillon is a survival.

The “Ballet Comique” set a fashion throughout Europe, and various Courts vied with each other in similar entertainments. The English Court had, of course, already had its ceremonial balls, masked balls and “masques,” but their splendour had been nothing to this, and the subsequent fêtes at the Courts of Elizabeth and James were directly influenced by the example of the French in this direction, as we shall see when we come to deal with the English masque as a form of Ballet.

Let us first, however, consider the dances of the period, for which we have an excellent authority in the work of Thoinot Arbeau.

CHAPTER VII
THOINOT ARBEAU’S “ORCHÉSOGRAPHIE,” 1588

“In Spring,” we know, “the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” In the winter of life it would seem that an old man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of the dances that his time-stiffened limbs can no more achieve with their earlier agility and grace, and he takes to—writing about them. For it is strange but true that some of the most entertaining volumes on the subject are those written on the history of the dance by “grave and reverend seigneurs”; who, one would imagine, had long foregone all thought of youthful pastimes and turned their minds to solemner affairs. Three such, at least, I can recall—Thoinot Arbeau, Bonnet, and Baron.

Over three centuries ago—nay, nearly four, we come upon a somewhat sage and elderly gentleman, Thoinot Arbeau, whose book with its strange title, Orchésographie, was published in 1588.

Was it shyness, or sheer fraud that made him write it under a false name, a nom de théâtre it would almost seem. For Thoinot Arbeau was not his name, but a sort of anagram on his real one, which was Jehan Tabourot. Moreover, he was sixty-seven when he wrote it, and was a Canon of the Church! He was born at Dijon in 1519, and was the son of one Estienne Tabourot, a King’s Counsellor! Think of it—born four hundred years ago, yet he speaks to our time, telling us, albeit in somewhat stiff and difficult French, of the dances that were in vogue in his dancing days.

As to the strange title of his work, its meaning will of course be apparent to all who know anything of the history of the subject, for they will remember that the Greek word for the dance was Orcheisthai (the Orchestra being the floor-space where the dancers performed); and so Orchésographie is merely a treatise on the writing of dances; that is, the setting of them down in such form that subsequent readers could study the dances therefrom.

The recording of the actual steps of dances has always been a problem, and other leading masters in France (such as Beauchamps, Pécourt, Feuillet) and in England (such as Weaver) had several more or less successful shots during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at inventing a sort of dance-shorthand.

The very first author to attempt such a thing with any real success was apparently our friend Arbeau; for earlier works, such as that of Caroso, are very poor. Into the full details of his system, however, I do not propose to enter now, for the matter is somewhat technical. The interest of Arbeau’s work, however, is by no means mainly technical.

The book, which was published at Lengres in 1588, is written in the form of a dialogue “by which everyone can easily learn and practise the honest exercise of the dances,” to give the quaint phraseology of the original, the two speakers being Arbeau the author, and Capriol, a youth who some few years earlier had left Lengres to go to Paris and Orleans and now, on his return, has sought out Arbeau to learn from him all that he can of dancing. Thoinot at first does not recognise him because, as he says, “You have grown so, and I believe that you have also enlarged your spirit by virtue and knowledge.” He asks the young man’s opinion of the study of Law, remarking that he was also once a law-student.

Capriol expresses his admiration for the law as a necessary institution, but complains that his neglect of the polite arts, while in the company of the Orleans law-students, has made him dull and wooden. He says that his knowledge of fencing and tennis makes him an acceptable companion with other youths, but he fails as a dancer to please the demoiselles, a point on which, it seems to him, depends the whole reputation of a young man who contemplates marriage. Then follows some sound advice, with curious details, from Arbeau, on the advantages of dancing as a matrimonial agent, and he acclaims the art as one necessary to social welfare.

Capriol agrees and expresses his disgust that the dance should have been so subject to bitter attacks, of which he quotes historic instances. Arbeau neatly responds that, “For one who has blamed, an infinity have esteemed and praised the art,” also following with quoted examples, saying, indeed, that “Le S. prophete royal dauid dāça au deuāt de l’arche de Dieu,” or, in other words, that “the holy prophet, King David, danced before the Ark of God.”

In the course of their conversation, Arbeau makes learned references to the derivation of the word “Dance,” mentioning others then in use that were allied to it, such as saulter (from the Latin saltare), caroler (hence our “carols,” or songs which, originally, accompanied certain religious dances), baler, and trepiner, Capriol remembers that the ancients had three kinds of dances: the sedate Emmeleia, the gay Kordax, and the mixed Sikinnis, the first of which Arbeau likens (quite unhistorically) to the pavanes and basse-dance of his own period; the second, to the gaillardes, voltas, corantos, gavottes (note that—a reference to the gavotte in 1588!) and branles (or, as Elizabethan Englishmen called them, “brawls”); while the third, he declares, must have been similar to the branles doubles and to “the dance which we call bouffons or matachins.”

Then, very wisely, he points out that most objections to dancing have been provoked not by decent but by—objectionable dancing! And as Capriol hastily assures his austere but kindly teacher that he wants none of that sort, but that he is anxious to teach his twelve-year-old sister what Arbeau is good enough to teach him, the old man proceeds on most polite and methodical lines.

Arbeau, truly remarking that rhythm is the basis of the dance, as it was always of all military marching and evolutions, then goes on to give a wonderful disquisition on that glorious instrument, the drum, and a masterly analysis of its rhythmic possibilities, both as an inspirer of soldiers on the march and as a stimulus to the dance.

The old man’s enthusiasm for an instrument that has never really received its due homage is truly fine, and he gives no less than seventy-six examples of drum-beat on a common-time basis. He follows this with an exposition of fife-playing (with musical examples); his earnest plea for this study of drum (tambour) and fife being only preparatory to a study of the basse-dances, which were properly accompanied by both instruments.

As several of these dances of three centuries agone have been revived in our time, it is of interest to consider them in some detail, more especially as they formed the choregraphic basis of all the ballets subsequently for some two centuries. Arbeau informs us that most of what he calls the “recreative” dances (or as we might say “social,” as opposed to the more ceremonial affairs necessitating an orchestra) were performed in his forebears’ time to the music of the flute and little drum.

Capriol asks: “Tell me, what are these dances and how are they done?”

To which Arbeau replies that they danced, in his father’s days, “pavanes, basse-dances, branles and courantes, which have been in use some forty or fifty years.”

Capriol asks: “How did our fathers dance the basse-dance?”

Arbeau replied that they had two sorts, the one common and regular, the other irregular, the former being danced to “chansons régulieres,” and the latter to “chansons irrégulieres,” and proceeds to explain that, for the former songs, there were sixteen bars which were repeated, making thirty-two to commence with; then a middle part of sixteen bars; and a close of sixteen, repeated; making eighty bars in all. If the air of the song was longer than this, the basse-dance played on it was termed “irregular.” He then explains that the basse-dance proper was in three parts, the term being really only applied to the first; the second being called “retour de la basse-dance,” and the third and last being termed “tordion.”

Then comes the following:

“Memoire des mouvements pour la basse-dance.

R b ss d r d r b ss ddd r d
r b ss d r b c.”

Not unnaturally Capriol, who is for ever asking quite intelligent questions, wants a translation of this cryptic-looking array of letters. It is better understood when one hears that “R” stands for reverence, “b” for a branle, “ss” for deux simples, “d” for a double (or three “ddd” for three “doubles”); the small “r” stands for a réprise, and “c” for congé; all of which are terms understood by dancers of to-day.

He gives very careful directions not only for performing the “reverence,” the “simple,” the “double,” the “réprise,” and the “congé,” but for performing the various movements of the basse-dance, the retour, and the tordion; as, for instance, when he remarks that “You begin the dance of the tordion, which is in triple time, just like the basse-dance: but it is (to give his own words) plus legiere and concitée.”

He describes the Pavane as “easy” to dance, and gives details of its performance, together with the music of that famous and lovely example, “Belle qui tiens ma vie captive,” the words being given in full, for four voices and tambour accompaniment.

The Gaillarde, he says, is so-called “parce qu’il fault estre gaillard and dispos pour la dancer,” and with much detail as to its performance explains that while danced somewhat like the tordion the latter is done “plus doulcement and avec actions and gestes moings violents.”

He gives nearly a dozen musical examples for the gaillarde, one called “La traditors my fa morire”; another “Anthoinette”; another, with the charming title “Baisons nous belle”; another, “Si j’ayme ou non.”

Capriol, by the way, remarks apropos after the second-named, that “At Orleans when we give Aubades we always play on our lutes and guiternes a gaillarde called ‘La Romanesque,’” but that it seemed so hackneyed and trivial that he and his companions took to “Anthoinette” as being livelier and having a better rhythm.

The Gaillarde was in triple time, and was made up of five steps (or four steps and a leap) and one “position”; the term cinq pas also being alternatively applied to it, hence the Shakespearean “cinque-pace” and “sink-a-pace.”

The Volte, from which is derived the modern valse, was described by Arbeau as “a species of gaillarde familiar to the Provençals,” danced, like the tordion, in triple time, and consisting of two steps and a leap. The Volte, or Volta, as it was as often called, was popular in England, as was the Gaillarde, and references to it are found in Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida) and in the one really great work on the Dance in English literature, namely, Sir John Davies’ richly imaginative and finely musical poem, Orchestra, or a Poeme on Daunciny, which was published in 1596, only eight years after Arbeau’s Orchésographie.

The Courante, Arbeau describes as very different from the Volte. It is also (in contrast to the Pavanes and Basse-dances) a danse sautée, but in twelve time, with running steps, requiring from time to time not the quick, light leaping of a volte, but the sort of slow soaring for which Vestris was famous in the eighteenth century and Volinin and Bohn can perform so superbly to-day.

Arbeau says that in his youth the dance was given as a kind of “ballet,” by three young men and three girls, with grace and dignity and he bewails its subsequent decadence. The old English term was “current traverse.” In Sir John Davies’ Orchestra one finds the following reference:

“What shall I name those currant travases

That on a triple dactyl foot do run

Close by the ground in sliding passages?”

In Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, too, is the following:

“Bourbon: They bid us to the English dancing-schools

And teach lavoltas high and swift corantos;”

and Sir Toby Belch, it will be recalled, asks: “Why dost thou go to church in a galliard and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig ... sink-a-pace.”

There seems, however, considerable ground for question as to what the courante, or coranto, really was, whether a slow or quick dance. Arbeau’s directions are, for once, not quite clear. He speaks of it being a more graceful affair in his younger days; and he was an old man at the time his Orchésographie was published. In England it certainly seems to have become a fairly lively dance, of which the main feature was its “running” steps.

In France that characteristic seems to have been the same though the tempo may have been slower. Certainly it became slower there, for the courante under Louis Quatorze was considered a dull dance, disappearing in favour of newer types requiring a more developed and quicker technique.

However, dances alter in character, like everything else, in the course of time. The waltz or valse has considerably altered since it was first introduced into London drawing-rooms—and considered shocking!—in the first decade of the nineteenth century; and even to-day there is considerable difference between the valse as danced by Swiss or German peasants, and as seen in the London ball-room. It is probable that the courante of Arbeau’s day was as varied in performance as the tango of our later time.

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.

CHAPTER VIII
SCENIC EFFECT: THE ENGLISH MASQUE AS BALLET

In considering di Botta’s elaborate feast, and Beaujoyeux’s “ballet,” one is struck by their similarity to the English “disguisings” and masques, which, first introduced to the Court of Henry the Eighth in 1512 as a novelty from Italy, only began to assume definite literary form about a century later. That century contributed towards the development of scenic effect.

In studying Arbeau’s manual of contemporary dance and music, one is struck by another thing: he is dealing with a social amusement of the upper classes. The dances he describes were mainly the proper accomplishment of the well born, or were such of lower origin as might with adaptation become worthy of performance by more courtly dancers. It is certain he does not describe all the types of dance known to his period. The old Provençal “Rigaudon” which was later to come into such favour owing to Camargo, is not referred to by Arbeau; nor the languorous “Sarabande,” which was probably of Moorish origin derived through Spain—or possibly earlier through Augustan Rome; the lively “Chaconne” is another omission; the “Tresca” yet another. These, and perhaps others, must have existed in Arbeau’s time and long before; but would be among the traditional amusements of the people, and were not yet elected to the company of courtly dances.

It is needful to linger over these points here, for they account for much that we find in the subsequent development of theatrical ballets in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Speaking of Beaujoyeux’s “Ballet Comique,” Castil Blaze, the scholarly historian of the Paris opera, remarks that it “became the model on which were composed a number of ballets, sung and danced, a kind of piece which held the place of Opera among the French and English for about a century.” That century was, roughly, from about 1500 to 1600. And he adds: “The English gave them the name of masque.”

In the few years after Henry VIII came to be crowned the young monarch spent considerable time and spared no expense in entertaining himself and his Queen with “disguisings,” “revels” and masqued balls.

On Twelfth Night, 1511, before the banquet in the Hall at Richmond, so records the contemporary chronicler, Edward Hall, there “was a pageant devised like a mountain, glistering by night as though it had been all of gold and set with stones; on the top of which mountain was a tree of gold, the branches and boughs frysed with gold, spreading on every side over the mountain with roses and pomegranates; the which mountain was with (de) vices brought up towards the King, and out of the same came a lady apparelled in cloth of gold, and the children of honour, called the henchmen, which were freshly disguised and danced a Morris before the King, and that done re-entered the mountain: and then was the wassail brought in and so brake up Christmas.”

The next year the King himself took part in a similar pageant; and in the next, i.e. in 1513, so Hall tells us, “the King with eleven others were disguised after the manner of Italy, called a Mask, a thing not seen before in England. They were apparelled in garments long and broad, wrought with gold, with visors and caps of gold; and after the banquet these masquers came in with six gentlemen disguised in silk, bearing staff-torches, and desired the ladies to dance.”

A little later came the introduction of singing, and dialogue as well as dancing, some allegorical story forming the basis of the masque. In Beaujoyeux’s “ballet” of 1582, we have all this. Up to then in England the masque made no great advance beyond those of Henry VIII’s early years. In Beaujoyeux’s “ballet,” however, we have all that had been, and more. We have dancing, singing, dialogue, elaborate scenic effect, all in illustration of a mythic and allegorical story; and achieving a definiteness and grandeur of form hitherto unequalled, as well as publicity which made it famous throughout Europe. In some ways it was as much masque as “ballet,” and as much opera as masque. Actually it did stimulate the development of the Masque in England; and Opera in France.

At the English Courts of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, the masque developed in the direction of scenic elaboration and splendour (with music) that made up for its literary shortcomings, at least in its earlier period.

At the French Courts of Henry IV and Louis XIII, what were known as Opera-ballets (later to be separated as opera and ballet) developed a musical richness (with scenic effect) that made up for similar literary shortcomings. Yet again came another form in the Comedie Ballet of Molière.

With the accession of James I of England came the real efflorescence of the English masque, which under the hands of Ben Jonson was to become a fairly balanced harmony of the three arts—the poet’s, the musician’s, and the painter-designer’s.

It must of course be understood that in both the masque and ballet there was dancing; but at the period with which we are now dealing, namely the last decade of the sixteenth and first few decades of the seventeenth centuries, the technique of that art was—for stage purposes—comparatively so primitive as to make it almost a negligible quantity. There was dancing of course—that of “henchmen” and men and boys who performed a Morris, or bouffon-dances; and that of courtier, Court-lady, or even, it might be, a Royal personage, who would take part in the stately Pavane or Almain, now and then unbending sufficiently to dance a Trenchmore (once Queen Elizabeth’s favourite) or Canary.

But it was all either an intrusion, alien to the general purport of the production, or else vastly overshadowed by the chief design, which was to present, with the aid of “disguisings” and elaborate “machines,” a sort of living picture or series of living pictures, expressing some mythological, allegorical episodes or complimentary idea.

The chief aim was splendid pageantry; something mainly to please the eye; and secondarily to charm the ear; without making too great claims upon the intellect.

Among the leading English masque writers during the period we are considering were George Gascoigne, Campion, Samuel Daniel, Dekker, Chapman, William Browne, Beaumont and Fletcher and Jonson.

In France, at the Court of Henri Quatre, and under the direction of his famous minister, the great and grave Sully—who himself took part in them—some eighty ballets were given between 1589 and 1610, apart from state balls and bals masqués.

In England among the more notable masques produced during about the same period were the following:—

1585. The Masque of “Lovely London,” performed before the Lord Mayor.

1589. A Masque planned by order of Queen Elizabeth in honour of the wedding of King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark.

1594. A Masque before Queen Elizabeth at Whitehall.

1604. A Masque by Samuel Daniel, “The Twelve Goddesses,” arranged by Queen Anne, Consort of James I, in honour of the Spanish Ambassador, at Hampton Court.

1605. “The Masque of Blackness,” by Ben Jonson (his first real masque) given on Twelfth Night at Whitehall.

1606. Ben Jonson’s “Masque of Hymen,” for the marriage of Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, with the Earl of Suffolk’s younger daughter, Frances Howard.

1608. Ben Jonson’s “Masque of Beauty”—a sequel to the “Masque of Blackness” at the request of the Queen Consort, who, with the Ladies of the Court, took part in the performance. This was followed in the same year by his “Hue and Cry after Cupid,” given at Court on Shrove Tuesday, in celebration of Lord Viscount Haddington’s marriage.

1609. Ben Jonson’s “Masque of Queens” at Whitehall on Twelfth Night.

All these were elaborate productions; those of Jonson being indeed beautiful. Their literary value has long been realised, and one sees in them some of his finest work. The introductory descriptions and the stage-directions are singularly minute and careful, and, in their way, are quite as well worth study as the beauties of his strong and noble verse.

He writes of scenes and costumes as if he loved them: as when, in “The Masque of Blackness,” he describes the Moon, “triumphant in a silver throne.... Her garments white and silver, the dressing of her head antique, and crowned with a luminary or sphere of light; which, striking on the clouds, and brightened with silver, reflected, as natural clouds do, the splendour of the moon. The heaven about her was vaulted with blue silk, and set with stars of silver, which had in them their several lights burning.”

And again: “The attire of the masquers was alike in all, without difference: the colours azure and silver; but returned on the top with a scroll and antique dressings of feathers, and jewels interlaced with ropes of pearl. And for the front, ear, neck, and wrists the ornament was of the most choice and Orient pearl: best setting off from the Black.”

For the scenery and mechanical effects or “machines” as they were called—there was Inigo Jones, the travelled artist-architect who had seen many a masking in Italy; for the music there was Alfonso Ferrabosco, son of the Italian composer, appointed music-master at the Court of James I; and for Maître de danse, there were Thomas Giles and Hieronimus Herne.

It was a noble company who took part in the performances. In “The Masque of Blackness,” though there were only three speaking parts, Oceanus, Niger and Æthiopia—the impersonators of which are not recorded—there was no less a personage than Queen Anne herself, Consort of King James, who appeared as Euphoris, supported by the Countess of Bedford (Aglaia), Lady Herbert (Diaphane), the Countess of Derby (Eucampse), Lady Rich (Ocyte), Countess of Suffolk (Kathare) and other fair ladies of title.

The “Masque of Beauty,” a superb spectacle given at the Court some three years later by express command of Her Majesty, had for speaking parts only three, namely those of Boreas—“in a robe of russet and white mixed, full and bagged; his hair and beard rough and horrid; his wings grey, and full of snow and icicles; his mantle borne from him with wires and in several puffs”; Januarius—“in a throne of silver; his robe of ash colour, long, fringed with silver; a white mantle; his wings white and his buskins”; and Vulturnus—“in a blue coloured robe and mantle, puft as the former, but somewhat sweeter; his face black, and on his head a red sun, showing he came from the East.”

Following the entrance of Vulturnus, bringing—in reference to the former “Masque of Blackness”—the good news of his discovery of a lost isle whereon the black but lovely daughters of Niger had been languishing in obscurity, there came a fine pageant.

“Here,” as Jonson’s stage directions describe it, “a curtain was drawn in which the night was painted, and the scene was discovered which (because the former was marine, and these, yet of necessity, to come from the sea) I devised should be an island floating on a calm water. In the midst thereof was a Seat of State, called the Throne of Beauty, erected; divided into eight squares, and distinguished by so many Ionic pilasters. In these squares, the sixteen masquers were placed by couples; behind them in the centre of the throne was a tralucent pillar, shining with several coloured lights, that reflected on their backs. From the top of which pillar went several arches to the pilasters, in front, little Cupids in flying posture, waving of wreaths and lights, bore up the cornice; over which were eight figures, representing the elements of Beauty, which advanced upon the Ionic, and, being females, had the Corinthian order.”

They were: Splendour, Serenitas, Germinatio, Lætitia, Temperies, Venustas, Dignitas, and Perfectio. Minute description is given of their garments, but is too lengthy for inclusion here. The stage directions then proceed:

“On the top of all the throne (as being made out of all these) stood Harmonia, a personage whose dressing had something of all the others, and had her robe painted full of figures. Her head was compassed with a crown of gold, having in it seven jewels equally set. In her hand a lyra, whereon she rested.

“This was the ornament of the throne. The ascent to which, consisting of six steps, was covered with a multitude of Cupids (chosen out of the best and most ingenious youth in the kingdom, noble and others) that were torch-bearers; and all armed with bows, quivers, wings, and other ensigns of love. On the sides of the throne were curious and elegant arbours appointed; and behind, in the back part of the isle, a grove of grown trees laden with golden fruit, which other little Cupids plucked, and threw at each other, whilst on the ground, leverets picked up the bruised apples and left them half eaten. The ground-plat of the whole was a subtle indented maze; and in the two foremost angles were two fountains that ran continually, the one Hebe’s and the other Hedone’s; in the arbours 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 colours of the masques were varied; the one half in orange tawny and silver; the other in sea-green and silver. The bodies of short skirts on white and gold to both.

“The habit and dressing for the fashion was most curious, and so exceeding in riches, as the throne whereon they lay seemed to be a mine of light, struck from their jewels and their garments.

“This throne, as the whole island moved forward on the water, had a circular motion of its own, imitating that which we call motum mundi, from the east to the west, or the right to the left side.... The steps whereon the Cupids sat had a motion contrary, with analogy ad motum planetarum, from the west to the east; both which turned with their several lights. And with these three varied motions, at once, the whole scene shot itself to the land.”

After a chorus with echoing refrain, “Vulturnus the wind spake to the river Thamesis, that lay along between the shores, leaning upon his urn, that flowed with water, and crowned with flowers; with a blue cloth of silver robe about him; and was personated by Master Thomas Giles, who made the dances.

“Vul. Rise, Aged Thames, and by the hand

Receive the nymphs, within the land,

And in those curious squares and rounds

Wherewith thou flow’st betwixt the grounds

Of fruitful Kent and Essex fair

That lends the garlands for thy hair;

Instruct their silver feet to tread,

Whilst we, again, to sea are fled.

“With which the Winds departed; and the river received them into the land, by couples and fours, their Cupids coming before them.

“These dancing forth a most curious dance, full of excellent device and change, ended it in the figure of a diamond, and so, standing still, were by the musicians with a second Song, sung by a loud tenor, celebrated.

“So Beauty on the waters stood,

When Love had severed earth from flood!

So when he parted air from fire,

He did with concord all inspire!

And then a motion he them taught,

The elder than himself was thought.

Which thought was, yet, the child of earth,

For Love is elder than his birth.

“The song ended; they danced forth their second dance, more subtle and full of change than the former; and so exquisitely performed, as the king’s majesty (incited first by his own liking to that which all others there present wished) required them both again after some time of dancing with the lords. Which time, to give them respite, was intermitted with a song.

“This song was followed by others.

“After which songs they danced galliards and corantos; and with those excellent graces, that the music appointed to celebrate them, showed it could be silent no longer; but, by the first tenor, admired them thus:

“SONG.

“Had those that dwelt in error foul,

And held that women have no soul,

But seen these move; they would have then

Said, women were the souls of men;

So they do move each heart and eye

With the world’s soul, true harmony.

“Here they danced a third most elegant and curious dance, and not to be described again by any art but that of their own footing, which ending in the figure that was to produce the fourth, January from his state saluted them thus:

“Janu. Your Grace is great, as is your Beauty, dames;

Enough my feasts have proved your thankful flames

Now use your seat; that seat which was, before,

Though straying, uncertain, floating to each shore,

And to whose having every clime laid claim,

Each land and nation urgéd as the aim

Of their ambition, Beauty’s perfect throne,

Now made peculiar to this place alone;

And that by impulsion of your destinies,

And his attractive beams that lights these skies;

Who, though with ocean compassed, never wets

His hair therein, nor wears a beam that sets.

Long may his light adorn these happy rites,

As I renew them; and your gracious sights

Enjoy that happiness, even to envy, as when

Beauty, at large, brake forth and conquered men!

“At which they danced their last dance into their throne again.”

These quotations, though necessarily brief, illustrate the characteristic elements in the construction of the masque—dancing, music, song, spoken verse and elaborate scenic effect.

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!”

One might be puzzled to know how the author of such a drama would introduce Saint Ignatius Loyola on the scene. The maker of the “book,” however, had no qualms, and, leaving the Greeks and Trojans buried beneath the ruins of Ilium, on the following day, he led the spectators to the seashore. “Four brigantines,” the chronicler proceeds, “richly decorated and fenced, painted and gilded, covered with dancers and ‘choirs of music,’ present themselves at the Port. They bring four ambassadors, who, in the name of the four quarters of the globe, come to swear homage and fidelity, to offer presents to the newly beatified, to thank him for his benefits and to beg his protection for the future. All the artillery of the Forts and of the vessels salute the brigantines on their entrance. The ambassadors then mount the cars in waiting and advance towards the College of the reverend fathers, with an escort of three hundred Jesuits on horseback, dressed as Greeks! Four troops of inhabitants of the four quarters of the world, dressed in national costumes, dance round the cars. The realms, the provinces, represented by their genii loci, march before their ambassador. The troop from America is the first, and among the dancers are many children disguised as monkeys and parrots, and twelve dwarfs, mounted on little nags. The car of Asia is drawn by two elephants. Six superb horses form the team of the others.” The diversity, the richness of the costumes was not the least ornament of this singular ballet, for it is said that several of the actors had on their garments precious stones of great value.

It is the Portuguese who claim to have invented the true ambulatory ballets, which—designed in imitation of the Thyrennian “pomp” described by Appius Alexander—were danced in the streets of a town proceeding from place to place, with movable stages and properties. The performances were given on saints’ days and with the greatest solemnity.

In the year 1610 Pope Paul V. canonised Cardinal St. Charles Borromée, who, under the pontificate of Pius IV., his uncle, was patron of the kingdom of Portugal, and that grateful nation wished to honour him publicly.

In order that it should be done with the greater solemnity, they put his image on board a ship, as if he were coming back once more to assume the protection of the kingdom of Portugal.

“A richly decorated vessel with flying sails of divers colours and silk cordage of magnificent hues, carried the image of the saint under a canopy of gold brocade. On its appearance in the roads all the vessels in port, superbly arrayed, advanced to meet it, and rendering military honours, brought it back with great pomp, and a salute from the guns of Lisbon and all the vessels in Port. The reliquaries of the patron Saints of Portugal, carried by the nobles of state and followed by the religious, civil and military bodies, received the new Saint on disembarcation.”

As soon as the image was landed, it was received by all the monks and the whole of the ecclesiastical body, who went to meet it in procession with four large chariots containing different tableaux. The first car represented Fame, the second the town of Milan, the third Portugal, and the fourth the Church. Besides the chariots, each company of monks and each Brotherhood carried its own particular Saint on rich litters, called by the Portuguese “andarillas.” The image of St. Charles was ornamented with precious stones to the value of twenty-six to twenty-seven thousand crowns; several others to the value of sixty, seventy and eighty thousand crowns, and the jewels that were displayed at this fête were estimated at more than four millions.

Between each chariot were troops of dancers, who represented, in dancing, the more notable of the acts of the Saints. Octavio Accoromboni, Bishop of Fossombrone, who obtained these honours for St. Charles, was at this time in the town of Lisbon, where he had gone to collect certain monies that Portugal was giving to the Pope. He has left us a description of this fête, in which he remarks that “the Italians and more especially the Romans, should not be surprised to read that dances and ballets formed a part of so sacred a ceremony, because in Portugal processions and fêtes would not seem elevated nor serious enough unless accompanied by these manifestations of joy.”

In order to prepare for these fêtes, dances, ballets and processions, the Lisbon folk had decorated, several days beforehand, big masts erected at the doors of the churches where the service was to be held, and at different places on the roads where the processions and performances would pass. “These masts were of pine, gilded and decked with crowns, streamers and banners of different colours, similar to the masts put up in France at the doors of the magistrates’ houses on the first of May in several towns of the kingdom, a custom which has given to these masts the name of ‘Maypole.’ The Spaniards call them ‘Mayos,’ or ‘Arboles de Enamorados’ (Lovers’ trees) because young men plant them on the first of May at the door of their mistresses’ houses.” The procession passed through triumphant arches, and the streets were hung with tapestries and strewn with flowers.

Three masts were planted at the places of the actual performance, one at the spot at the port where the procession was to start after the landing of the image of St. Charles, another in the middle of the route, and the third at the door of the church where the procession was to end, and where the image of the saint was to be placed. These masts marked the places for the performances, for it was there the procession stopped, and the dancers made their chief entrances in the “ballet.” Needless to say immense sums were spent on the fête.

These are but two instances of the ballet-ambulatoire. More might be given, but these will suffice to afford some idea of a type of spectacle which the older historians speak of as a “ballet,” but which is of special interest to us by reason of the contrast it forms to the masque, which was the reverse of “ambulatory,” and from the fact that though in direct contrast on another score, namely, that it was not a private but a public spectacle, it was under the “immediate patronage” of the Church!

Neither the masque nor the ballet-ambulatoire, was yet a theatrical entertainment; but it is curious, is it not, to note that they had a certain kinship with theatrical tradition, for these magnificent peripatetic “ballets” of the ecclesiastics had had a primitive forerunner in the performance of Thespis with his travelling car in Grecian towns and villages some six centuries before the Christian era! Even as, later, we in fourteenth-century England had our Mystery and Miracle plays travelling from “station” to “station” in similar fashion, and our “mummers” or mimers; while, on the other hand, the masque itself, as a private entertainment of the English Court, with its stage, and “machines,” scenery, dancing, music and song, not to mention its Royal and Courtly audience, was forerunner of similar entertainments which a century later were to become the features of the Courts of Louis XIV and XV, and from that to develop under Royal Patronage into the Ballet of the Theatre.

CHAPTER X
COURT BALLETS ABROAD: 1609-1650

While the English Court was enjoying its masques, during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth and James, and the French were labouring forth their heroic ballets under Henri Quatre—more than eighty having been given from 1589 to 1610, without counting insignificant balls and masquerades—Italy was similarly keeping up in the movement which her example had originally inspired.

It was the custom there to celebrate the birthday of the Princess by an annual public fête. As one old historian records, the more usual spectacles of these celebrations were in the form of “Carrousels, Tournois, des Comedies, des Actions en Musique, des Festins, des Feux d’Artifice, des Mascarades quand ces Fêtes se trouvent au temps du Carnaval, des Presens, des Illuminations, des Chasses, des Courses sur la Neige et sur la Glace suivant la saison, des Promenades et des Jeux sur les Eaux.”

The Court of Savoy was particularly devoted to such entertainments.

In 1609 there was a ballet d’armes, entitled, “Il Sol nascente nell’ oscurità dell Tile,” danced by the “Serene” Princes of Savoy, the occasion being the anniversary of the birth of their Royal father, the Duke Charles Emannuel.

Again, in 1611, the Prince of Piedmont gave a fête in honour to his father’s birthday, representing “The Taking of the Isle of Cyprus.”

Stage Effect in the 17th Century
(From a coloured engraving of a scene from “Circe,” 1694).

In the year 1615 was produced a mounted ballet at this same Court (Savoy) for the arrival of the Prince d’Urbin. This was an attack and a combat to music against three hundred men on foot, who formed different companies of various shapes, lunated, oval, square and triangular. They had drilled their horses so well that they were never out of step with the rhythm of the music. There were numerous cars drawn by lions, stags, elephants, rhinoceroses, etc., and as they represented the triumph of Love over War, the Four Quarters of the World followed the cars of the victors mounted in as many chariots. The Car of Europe was drawn by horses, that of Africa by elephants, that of Asia by camels, that of America by “unicorns”! The cars of this festival had engraved work on them by Callot.

In 1618, “The Elements,” a grand ballet and tourney was represented by the Duke of Savoy and his son, the Prince of Piedmont, on the former’s birthday.

“The Temples of Peace and War on Mount Parnassus,” a ballet and tourney “avec un Festin à la Chinoise,” formed the entertainment of the following year.

“The Judgment of Flora on the Dispute of the Nymphs over the Crown of Flowers presented to Mme. Royale on her Birthday,” is the long and stately title of a fête given at Turin in 1620.

“The Tribute of the Divinities of the Sky, Air, Sea and Infernal regions,” was a grand ballet and tourney of 1621. “The Ballet of the Seven Kings of China” was another.

“The Joy of Heaven and Earth,” a fête in honour of the Duke’s birthday in 1624, was followed by “Bacchus triomphant des Indes, avec une Action en Musique et une Chasse Pastorale,” in the same year. This was a fête in honour of the Duke Charles Emmanuel’s birthday, and was performed by the pages of the Prince Cardinal Maurice of Savoy, at Rome on January 22nd, 1624.

“Mount Parnassus and the Muses,” “The Quarrel of the Defenders and the Enemies of the Muses,” took place in February, 1624. “Cadmus, victorieux du Serpent,” and “Prometheus” were notable ballets in 1627.

One of the most remarkable, and, according to contemporaries, beautiful mounted ballets ever composed was that of “Æolus, King of the Winds,” which Alfonso Ruggieri Sansoverino presented at the wedding of the Prince of Tuscany in the year 1628 in the St. Croix Square, in Florence. On one of the sides of this square was a large reef with a cave hollowed out of its rock and closed by a great door secured with padlocks.

Don Anthony de Medici, who took the part of master of the combat, having reconnoitred the course, Æolus, King of the Winds, entered, accompanied by twelve watermen to whom he “had taught the use of sails and the nature of the winds.” Twelve Tritons walked before him blowing their trumpets. Eight Sirens replied on other instruments, accompanied by Hoar-frost. Eight pages represented the many effects of the Winds, causing cold, hot, damp, dry, clear, dull, serene or cloudy weather.

The two sponsors walked behind their pages. The chariot of the Ocean followed, drawn by two big whales. It represented a rock covered with seaweed, coral and different kinds of shells. Nymphs of the sea, rivers and springs were seated on this rock, and gave a musical concert with wind instruments presided over by Dolopea, wife of Æolus. Æolus, having passed in his chariot and arrived in front of the Prince’s box, saluted the bride, and after offering her his kingdom and all his troops, took a lance in his hand; then, suddenly departing, went and thrust against the door of the Cave of the Winds. The padlocks broke, and the door being opened, thirty-two mounted men and a hundred and twenty-eight on foot were set at liberty. The men, rushing like the winds they represented, ran to the other side of the square. Here Æolus stopped them and gave them orders to arrange themselves into a triangular figure. He led them in this order to salute the Princess for whom the fête was arranged. After having taken their places, they began to manœuvre their horses in a ring on the right; they went in single file to make a chain, and sixteen of them having broken it, they formed a smaller one, from which eight more detached themselves, making a still smaller one. The first horsemen, curveting, manœuvred their horses to perform voltes and half-voltes, joining again without a halt, and, forming twos, fours and eights, “they mingled capers at the galop, with caracolling in figures, performing a marvellous labyrinth with their intertwinings and evolutions.”

In the year 1628, the students of the College at Rheims danced a ballet in joyful commemoration of the taking of La Rochelle, the design of which, after ancient Roman models, was “The Conquest of the Car of Glory by the great Theander.”

Unlike modern musical comedy, or “revue,” there purported to be a plot. The Giants of the Black Tower, trusting in the might of their magic, published a challenge “full of empty pride,” by which they summoned all Knights-errant to the conquest of the Car of Glory.

Lindamor, wishing to chastise the insolence of these fiends, arranges with three of his friends to go and fight them. The Black Tower is full of sorceries, and there was no means of opening it, except by the sounding of an enchanted horn which the Giants had fastened to the Gate. Lindamor sounds it; the Giants issue forth upon him and his comrades, and the contest being unequal, Lindamor is compelled to withdraw and to leave his comrades in the hands of the Giants, who load them with chains, and fasten them to the Castle Gate to serve as a trophy to their vanity.

Some country shepherds who had seen the adventure of Lindamor and the Giants, persuade Caspis to take a part in favour of these unhappy knights. This shepherd, who was above the power of all magic, presents himself before the captives, and first of all breaks their chains and sets them at liberty. Lindamor, well pleased at the courtesy of Caspis, discusses with him the means of avenging himself on the Giants of the Black Tower. He learns from this shepherd that the sword of Cloridan is necessary for this enterprise, and that, in order to get it, it is necessary to put to sleep the Dragon to whom the Giants have given the charge of it. The shepherd offers, himself, to do this and succeeds. But to get the sword of Cloridan something more was wanted than to put the Dragon to sleep. The shepherd evokes the shade of Cloridan to find out from him what must be done to make use of this sword successfully.

The shade when called forth, informs him that Theander alone is capable of using it. The rumour of this oracular response having got abroad, Vulcan with his Cyclops prepares arms for Theander, who being preceded by Renown and followed by Lindamor, reaches the place where the sword of Cloridan is guarded, seizes the sword, after having chained the Dragon, presents himself with it at the gate of the Black Tower, causes the gate to open at the sound of the horn, defeats the Giants, draws from the Tower the Car of Glory, harnesses the Giants to it and triumphs finally over the arms and the enchantments of his enemies.

The story, which smacks of some mediæval romance of Chivalry, was really allegorical of the capture of La Rochelle. The late king was Theander; the shepherd Caspis was the Cardinal Richelieu, his prime minister; Lindamor, the King, Henry III, who, being as yet only Duc d’Anjou, had attempted this siege in vain. The sword of Cloridan was that of Clovis; the Black Tower was La Rochelle; and the magic charms were Heresy and Rebellion.

Again, in the year 1628, a ballet of “The Court of the Sun,” by an Abbé Scotto, was danced at the Court of Savoy. Night played the overture, and at her command spirits and goblins made a “pleasing” entrance, coming on from different directions. Night, however, warning them to be careful that Day did not surprise them, they retired into their caves, when the Morning Star introduced visions of the Morning, bright Dreams issuing from the ivory gate. The Star of Venus rose from the sea to announce the arrival of the loveliest Aurora ever seen, and ordered the Zephyrs to rise and to strew flowers, the Dew to sprinkle perfumed water and the sweetest and most healthful influences.

Aurora followed them, and having descended from Heaven, suddenly caused the Palace of the Sun (in Ionic architecture) to appear; the seven Planets and the twelve Hours were seen in niches, from which they emerged to dance; the Muses in other niches performed concerted movements, Time, the Year, the Seasons, the Months and the Weeks providing the music in the boxes of this palace.

From the last examples, it is seen that philosophic, poetical and classic allegories were often used as the basis of ballets. The philosophic were “those in which causes and effects, peculiar qualities and the origin of things, were expressed in a suitable story by the devices of the ballet.” Several ballets of this kind were seen at the theatre of the College of Clermont, principally, those of “Curiosity,” “Dreams,” “Comets,” “Illusion,” “The Empire of the Sun,” “Fashion.” In that of “Curiosity” it was desired to show that the good or bad use made of it contributes to the perfecting or spoiling of the mind. Curiosity was represented by four characters, each forming a part of the ballet. The first of these was Useless Curiosity, which occupies itself only with trifles; the second, Dangerous Curiosity, which seeks forbidden and harmful things, and it was shown that these are the two kinds of curiosity to be avoided!

Among Useless Curiosities, was seen Idleness, with a troop of loiterers who ran about hunting for gossip and false rumours, merely to pass the time and “to find out what was going on in the world”; others who consulted almanacks to discover what the weather would be; and also sleepers, who, awakening, entertained each other with their dreams, from which they foretold what was about to happen! Mistakes, New Opinions, Alchemy, Sorcery, Magic and Superstition were some of the “characters” in the scene showing Dangerous Curiosity.

The third and fourth parts showed Useful and Necessary Curiosity, respectively. Useful Curiosity was represented by travellers whose desire to learn all about the manners and customs of different nations drove them into foreign countries; also “by physicians who work to gain experience.” In Necessary Curiosity was introduced the art of navigation, instanced by sailors, who, under the guidance of Tiphys, helmsman of the Argo, set out “to discover new worlds”; another example of “necessary curiosity” being the fire brought from Heaven by Prometheus for people eager to discover its use. The poetical allegories were not less ingenious than the philosophic, although “they did not pretend,” as one old chronicler informs us, “to so much precision.”

In the same year at the Savoy Court, “Alcée,” a ballet of fishermen, with intermezzi and some superb presents brought to Mme. Royale for her birthday by the Prince of Piedmont and his Cavaliers, was a grand water entertainment in which appeared, to quote an old historian, “Le Vaisseau de la Felicité accompagné de toutes les Deitez (sic) avec les Concerts de Musique, des quatres Elemens avec leur machines; de la Representation en Music (sic), d’Arion, du Temps avec les années heureuses, des quatres parties du monde avec des Entrées de Ballets, des quatres Saisons avec le tribut de toutes leurs douceurs pour le Festin.” This was given by the Duke in honour of Mme. Royale on her birthday, and it was declared that a fête “plus complette, plus magnifique et plus agréable” had never been seen.

“Eternity” was the title of a ballet given in 1629; “Le Temps Eternel” following next year; “La Felicité Publique” the next; and in 1632, “La Chasse Theatrale, representée en Ballet,” by the Cardinal of Savoy at his country mansion was given in honour of his brother, the Duke’s birthday.

Among the “moral” ballets, there is hardly one more pleasing than that composed to commemorate the birthday of the Cardinal of Savoy in 1634. The subject of this ballet was “Truth, the Enemy of Appearance, as proved by Time”—La Verita Nemica della Apparenza sollevata dal Tempo.

This ballet opened with a chorus of False Rumours and Suspicions, followed by Appearance and Lies! They were curiously represented by characters dressed as cocks and hens, who sang a dialogue half in Italian and half in French, mingled with the cluckings of cocks and hens. The chorus by the latter ran as follows:

“Su gli albori matutini

Cot, cot, cot, cot, cot cantando

Col cucurrii s’inchini

E bisbigli mormorando

Fra i sospetti, e fra i Rumori

Cu, cu, cu, cu, cu, cu, cu,

Salutiam del novo sol gli almi splendori.”

The cocks replied:

“Faisant la guerre au silence

Cot, cot, cot, avec nos chants,

Cette douce violence

Ravit les Cieux et les Champs.

Et notre inconstant hospice

Cot, cot, cot, cot, cot, coné

Couvre d’apparence un subtil artifice.”

After this quaint song, the scene opened, and a large Cloud was seen, accompanied by the Winds. “Appearance” also made her entrance at this moment. She had wings and a long peacock’s tail and her dress was hung with a number of mirrors. She was brooding over some eggs, from which hatched out—Pernicious Lies, Deceits and Frauds, White-Lies, Flatteries, Intrigues, Mockeries, Ridiculous Lies and Idle Tales! An eternal crew!

The Deceits were dressed in dark colours with serpents concealed among flowers; the Frauds, clothed in hunters’ nets, struck bladders as they danced; the Flatteries were dressed as monkeys, Intrigues as lobster-catchers with lanterns in their hands and on their heads; Ridiculous Lies were represented by beggars who pretended to be cripples with wooden legs.

Time, having driven away Appearance with all her Lies, opened the nest on which she had been sitting and there appeared a great hour-glass from which Time ordered Truth to come forth; the latter then calling back all the Hours, danced with them the finale of the “grand ballet.”

Surely, the time is ripe for a revival of such a production!

“Pâris” (1635), “Le Théâtre de la Gloire” (1637) and “La Bataille des Vents” (1640) were notable productions at the Court of Savoy; but one of the most interesting of these seventeenth-century entertainments was that on February 19th, 1640, when at the same Court was given a “Ballet of Alchemists” in which, under a charming allegory, they made fun of those seekers of the philosopher’s stone who pretend to make gold.

Hermes Trismegistus, dressed as a philosopher, with the master’s ring, introduces some of the most celebrated chemists of different nations: Morieno, an Italian; Bauzan, a Greek; Körner, a German; Untser, a Swede; Calid, a Turk; Sandivoge, a Pole; Raymond Lulli and Hortulaus, Spaniards; Dolcon and Beguin, Frenchmen; Pierre, a Lorrainer; Rasis, a Jew; and Geber, an Arab.

The Italian and the Greek brought in a furnace of five storeys and octagonal in shape. The German and the Swede brought in the alembics; the Turk and the Pole came with flowers for distilling, which they carried in baskets; the two Spaniards brought charcoal; the French came with bellows to blow up the fire; the Lorrainer carried sieves for sifting; the Jew and the Arab had in front of them leathern aprons with various pockets, where they carried alum, vitriol, sulphur and ingots of metal.

For the grand ballet they all worked together around the furnace, whence they drew a thousand pretty novelties to give to the ladies in the audience—essences, liqueurs, glass jewellery, mirrors, bracelets, Cyprus powder, paint and other treasures, very much as presents are given at Cotillons and big fancy dress balls to-day.

Yet another delightful production of this period must be chronicled, namely, the “Ballet of Tobacco,” danced at Turin, the last day of Carnival, 1650. The scene represented the Isle of Tobago, “from which tobacco took its name, and gave happiness to the nations to whom the gods had given this plant. First entered four High Priests of that country, who drew forth snuff from certain golden boxes which they carried, and threw this powder in the air to appease the Winds and Tempests. Then with long pipes they smoked around an altar, making of their smoking tobacco a sort of sacrifice to their favourite Deities. For the second entry two Indians were twisting into a rope tobacco leaves. Two others were pounding it in mortars to reduce it to powder, and made the third entrance scene. The fourth was of snuff-takers, who sneezed and presented the snuff to each other, taking it in pinches with amusing ceremony; while the fifth was a band of smokers gathered together in an Academy or place set apart for smoking, wherein Turks, Spaniards, Poles and other nationalities received the tobacco from the Indians and proceeded to take it in their different ways.”

Such, in brief, were some of the continental ballets of the first half of the seventeenth century, a period, it must be admitted, not lacking in ingenuity, or resource in means of entertainment.

CHAPTER XI
THE TURNING POINT: LE ROI SOLEIL AND HIS ACADEMY OF DANCING, 1651-1675

For some two centuries Italy had amused herself with Ballet as a courtly entertainment; and so, during one, had England and France.

Now, in 1651, it was France who was to give the lead to Europe, for in February of that year Louis-Quatorze, then a lad of thirteen, appeared in a ballet by Benserade, entitled “Cassandra,” and this was the first of many in which he took part until, at the age of thirty, he withdrew from the stage and gave his farewell performance in the ballet of “Flora” in 1669. Strange, is it not, to think of a king as a ballet-dancer? Yet, had not our own King Henry VIII been among the joyous masquers?

But Louis XIV was to become more than a mere participant in Ballet—he was to become the virtual founder of modern Ballet as seen on the stage; for it was he—universal patron of the arts—who was to found a Royal Academy of Dance and Music, to the existence and encouragement of which the modern development of both arts is largely due.

All these ballets had been either the principal object or the supplement of superb fêtes given at Versailles or in the other royal palaces. Historians have described the fêtes which Fouquet, the Comptroller of Finances, offered to Louis XIV. As a sidelight on the Comptroller’s magnificence and extravagance, the following is of interest.

The king left Fontainebleau one evening in September, 1660, with his entire Court, in order to have supper at the castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte. The route, five leagues long, was illuminated with waxen torches; and booths, put up at intervals, were laden with all kinds of refreshment for the travellers. The castle, blazing with light, seemed to Louis like some palace of faerie. A magnificently furnished suite was set apart for His Majesty, and the Court was put up in the minister’s house. An immense sideboard, laden with gold and silver plate, was a feature of the room in which the king was to have supper, with a fountain playing in the middle. A splendid banquet was served, and a band placed in a gallery discoursed sweet music. Numerous other tables were set out for the Court; and the whole of the king’s guard, even to the famous livery servants, were entertained most sumptuously during the two days that the fête lasted.

After supper the king took a walk by a lake the shores of which were decorated with orange trees, lemon trees, and pomegranates, planted in gilded tubs, the fruit being available to all who wanted any. Thousands of torches diffused a brilliant light. A theatre, built in the middle of the lake, offered yet further entertainment with a representation of “The Triumph of Venus,” a ballet of a new kind, in which Tritons and Nereids, having swum about in the waves, afterwards proceeded to sing eulogies of King Louis. All the best musicians of Paris had been added to the king’s orchestra, and they were hidden behind the scenery of the theatre, and in the neighbouring thickets. On the following day there was a royal hunt, with tables served at all the meeting-places. There was fishing in the lake, from which the net brought in enormous fish; there was a play, then a ball, and finally fireworks; not to mention the sumptuous and delicate fare; the exquisite wines and delicious liqueurs which were provided on the same scale of unlimited extravagance.

On the first day Louis, whilst admiring the gardens and park from his window, had remarked on its beauty, but said that the view would be still more lovely if it were not shut in by a wood of tall trees that he pointed out. Next morning Fouquet drew the king to the same window and led the conversation in such a way that Louis might repeat the remark he had made the evening before.

“Sire, since that wood has the misfortune to displease you, it shall fall immediately.”

Then at a given signal the forest disappeared with a crash as if by magic, and the royal eye could see to the horizon. Sawn through during the night and attached to ropes that a hidden army of peasants pulled all at the same time, the trees fell at the voice of command.

All this magnificence and extravagance astonished the courtiers, but served also to arouse considerable suspicion. The king’s brother remarked that the name of the castle should rather be Vol-le-Roi than Vaux-le-Vicomte. This fête, an act of homage, as imprudent as it was ambitious, hastened the downfall of its author, and from that very day his doom was assured.

Among the many ballets in which Louis XIV himself took part, the more notable were “Le Triomphe de Bacchus,” “Le Temps,” “Les Plaisirs,” “L’Amour Malade,” “Alcibiade,” “La Raillerie,” “L’Impatience,” “Vincennes,” and “Les Amours Déguisés,” as well as some of the comédie-ballets of Molière.

Louis represented only the more exalted characters, such as Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo; though on occasion, to display the variety of his talent, he essayed an experiment in genre bouffonesque. Among the entrées in the “Triomphe de Bacchus,” for instance, there was one for some filous, traîneurs d’épée, sortant du palais de Silène, échauffés par le vin, and the King playing the rôle of one of the “filous,” sang the following stanza:

“Dans le metier qui nous occupe

Nos sentiments sont assez beaux,

Car nous prisons plus une jupe

Que nous ne ferions vingt manteaux.”

The Duc Mercour, the Marquis de Montglas, the Messieurs Sanguin and Lachesnaye, garbed as attendants on Bacchus, addressed the following verses to the ladies of the Court, and the author had carefully indicated that they were to be spoken to the “demoiselles”:

“Il n’est pas mal aisé d’acquérir nos offices,

Et pour y parvenir le chemin en est doux;

Mais vous ne sauriez mieux vous adresser qu’à nous,

Si vous voulez apprendre à devenir nourrices.”

Copies of the “book” of the ballet are, I believe, extant; and the designs for the costumes of the actors are still more curious.

The members of His Majesty’s ballet, if they were not expert ballet dancers, could at least give ample proof of their nobility. Louis XIV counted marquises and marchionesses, dukes and duchesses, even princes and princesses and queens among his subjects, that is, his dancing subjects.

It was in 1661 that the king founded the Dancing Academy. A room in the Louvre was assigned to this learned society, which, however, preferred to gilded ceilings the smoky walls of an inn having for its sign “L’Epée de Bois.” It was in this favourite retreat that the members of the new Academy met together. It was here that the interests of the kingdom of the rigaudon and the minuet were regulated, where elections were held, and, without breaking up the session, without even leaving their academic chairs, dinner was served to the members on the table where each had just cast his vote. A tablecloth covered the green cloth; the bottle followed the inkhorn; supper replaced the ballot-box; and the assembly drank long draughts to the health of the new member.

The letters patent for the foundation of the Dancing Academy read curiously. In the preamble, for instance, the king thus expressed himself:

“Although the art of dancing has always been recognised as one of the most honourable, and the most necessary for the training of the body, to give it the first and most natural foundations for all kinds of exercises and amongst others to those of arms; and as it is, consequently, one of the most useful to our nobility and others who have the honour of approaching us, not only in times of war in our armies, but also in times of peace, in the performance of our ballets, nevertheless, during the disorder of the last wars, there have been introduced into the said art, as in all others, a great number of abuses likely to bring them to irretrievable ruin.

“Many ignorant people have tried to disfigure the dance and to spoil it, as exhibited in the personal appearance of the majority of people of quality: so that we see few among those of our Court and suite who would be able to take part in our ballets, whatever scheme we drew up to attract them thereto. It being necessary, therefore, to provide for this, and wishing to re-establish the said art in its perfection, and to increase it as much as possible, we deemed it opportune to establish in our good town of Paris a Royal Academy of Dancing, comprising thirteen of the most experienced men in the said art, to wit:

MM. Galant du Désert, dancing-master to the Queen;
Prévôt, dancing-master to the King;
Jean Renaud, dancing-master to His Majesty’s brother;
Guillaume Raynal, dancing-master to the Dauphin;
Nicolas de Lorges;
Guillaume Renaud;
Jean Picquet;
Florent Galant du Désert;
Jean de Grigny.”

These, let us note, are the names of the patriarchs of the French dance.

In 1669 the Abbé Perrin, who was official introducer of Ambassadors to Gaston, Duc d’Orléans?, having obtained exclusive rights from the king, went into theatrical management, taking as his colleagues the Marquis de Sourdeac to direct the scenic and mechanical effects, and Cambert to supply the music. A certain Champeron advanced the money, and on March 28th, 1671, “Pomone,” a pastoral in five acts, words by Perrin, music by Cambert, dances by Beauchamps, was produced at the theatre of the Rue Mazarine.

The whole thing was poor, but this did not prevent the house being crowded for eight months, so that at the end of this time Perrin drew out thirty thousand francs as his share: but the various members of the little syndicate disagreed when it came to sharing out. Lulli profited by their disputes, cleared out Perrin and his partners, and started again in a disused tennis-court known as the Bel Air, situated in the Rue de Vaugirard, near the Luxembourg. He had as colleagues Quinault for the poetic libretti, and an Italian named Vigarani for the mechanical effects, one of the cleverest stage managers in Europe at the time. They produced there in 1672 the “Fêtes de Bacchus et de l’Amour.” When Molière died in the following year, the hall of the Palais-Royal, which he had occupied, was given to Lulli.

Louis XIV, by letters patent, dated 1672, concerning the non-forfeiture of nobility of ladies and nobles who were prepared to figure in the scene at the opera, authorises his “faithful and well-beloved Jean-Baptiste Lulli to add to the Royal Academy of Music and Dancing, instituted by these presents, a school suitable to educate pupils as much for dancing as for singing and also to train bands of violins and other instruments.”

The Sun-King, in fact, exerted his care to such a point that he himself superintended and wrote with his own hand the budget of the corps de ballet at the Opera.

The order is dated January 11th, 1713.
The male dancers were twelve in number.
Their united salaries amounted to 8400 francs.
Two of them had 1000 francs.
Four, 800 francs.
Four, 600 francs.
Two others, 400 francs.
The ten female dancers earned together 5400 francs.
The two principals had 900 francs.
The four seconds had 500 francs.
The four last 400 francs.

There were besides:

A master of the dancing-room, at 500 francs.
A composer of ballets, at 1500 francs.
A designer, at 1200 francs.
And a master-tailor, at 800 francs.

The king busied himself even with the author’s royalties, and it must be confessed that he showed himself more generous proportionately towards the authors than towards the artists. According to a rate fixed by him, a hundred and twenty francs were paid for a ballet for each of the first ten performances and sixty francs for each following.

La Bruyère, author of “Les Caractères,” has spoken of the virtuosi of the dance who shone in his time, and in criticising their methods, he sheds light on the difficulties which had already been surmounted in 1675. “Would the dancer Cobus please you, who, throwing up his feet in front, turns once in the air, before regaining the floor?” Again, “Do you ignore the fact that he is no longer young?” says La Bruyère, when speaking to the susceptible ladies of the Court. It was Beauchamps or Le Basque, dancers at the Opera, that he meant. The famous Pécourt is also described under the name of Bathyle. “Where will you find, I do not say in the order of knights which you look down upon, but among the players in a farce, a young man, who leaps higher into the air whilst dancing, or who cuts better capers? As for him, the crowd is too great, he refuses more women than he accepts.”

Pécourt, the adored of the beauties of the time, was the favoured lover of Ninon de l’Enclos. One day, the Maréchal de Choiseul, his rival, met, at the house of their common mistress, the popular dancer, who was dressed in what was apparently a uniform.

“Ah,” said he ironically, “since when have you turned soldier, M. Pécourt? And in what corps are you serving?”

“Marshal,” was the reply, “I command a corps in which you have long served.”

Blondi, Beauchamps’ nephew; Feuillet, Desaix, Ballon, Baudiery-Laval, and his son Michel-Jean, a good dancer and an excellent mechanical contriver; Mesdemoiselles Subligny, Prévôt, Carville, and Le Breton, were also stars of the period, of some of whom there will be more to say presently.

BOOK II: THE SECOND ERA

CHAPTER XII
SOME EARLY STARS AND BALLETS

For some time after the founding of the King’s Dancing Academy the French Opera stage was ungraced by the feminine form, though women took part in the performance at some of the minor theatres, such as the famous Theatres of the Fair in Paris.

For the entertainment of the more exalted sections of Society the more exalted ladies themselves performed; at Court, however, not on the public stage, where, as in our own theatre in Elizabethan times, youths played the women’s rôles.

Such was the case in the production of a ballet by Lulli and Desbrosses in 1672, “Les Fêtes de l’amour et de Bacchus,” in which M. le Duc de Monmouth, M. le Duc de Villeroy, M. le Marquis de Rassen, and M. Legrand, executed various dances “supported” by Beauchamps, M. André, Favier and Lapierre, professional male dancers at the Opera.

Of these the leader was Beauchamps, director of the Royal Academy of Dancing, composer of, and superintendent of, the Court Ballets of Louis XIV in 1661, and made maître des ballets to the Academy in 1671. He danced with the king in the entertainment at Court, and though La Bruyère says of him, “qu’il jetait les jambes en avant, et faisait un tour en l’air avant que de retomber à terre,” showing that even in those days the public loved “sensation,” he was ordinarily a grave and dignified executant. He was one of the first experimentalists in the direction of inventing a system of Choreography, or the writing down of dances in a kind of shorthand, so that a dance once designed should never be lost, but could be read and repeated as easily as a piece of music. In this he was only following on the track of old Arbeau, but his system was different, and, if not ideal, at least it paved the way to a better. Beauchamps died in 1705.

Pécourt, who was “premier danseur et maître des ballets de l’Opéra,” made his début only in 1672. His style was what is known as “demi-caractère,” and he is said to have had notable effect on the ladies of his day, his amazing lightness fairly turning their heads.

Blondi, a nephew of Beauchamps; Ballon, who became maître à danser to Louis XV; Baudiery-Laval, a nephew of Ballon, who succeeded his uncle as dancing-master to the Royal Family and maître des ballets at Court; Michel-Jean Baudiery-Laval, son of the last-named, who was not only a maître à danser, but is said to have been the first stage manager to have used lycopodium powder, which used to be the chief means of producing stage lightning; these were some of the lesser stars of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries in France, and they were to be followed by Louis-Pierre Dupré, who came to be known as Le Grand Dupré, and who surpassed all his forerunners by the grace and the dignity of his dancing, and the noblesse of his poses. He made his début in 1720, was long the premier danseur at the Opera, and did not retire till 1754.

To hark back, however, to 1672, when there were only men to play the women’s parts. The reason for the dearth of feminine stars was quite simple. The Academy was in its infancy. There were no properly qualified professional danseuses, and the courtly amateurs were too courtly—and too much amateurs—to appear to advantage on the stage. The Academy came to alter all that.

It revived a genuine interest in dancing as an art worthy of serious consideration; and Lulli, that inspired monkey of a dancing-musician, did the rest; for it was his opera-ballet, “Le Triomphe de L’Amour,” produced on May 16th, 1681, which brought the presence of women dancers to the boards.

Various high ladies of the Court, the Dauphine, la Princesse de Conti, Mlle. de Nantes, and others, formed a useful background, but the entire feminine personnel of the dancing school numbered only four—Mlle. Lafontaine, Mlle. Le Peintre, Mlle. Fernon, and Mlle. Roland, the first-named being the leader, the première des premières danseuses, and accorded the title so often granted to successive premières since then, of Reine de la Danse.

That admirable historian of French opera, Castil-Blaze, has given excellent account of the state of affairs towards the end of the seventeenth century.

“The lack of good dancers,” he says, “was doubtless an obstacle in the way of the introduction of grand ballet at the Royal Academy. ‘Les Fêtes de L’Amour et de Bacchus,’ ‘Le Triomphe de L’Amour,’ and all productions of the same kind commonly called at that time Ballets, were really nothing less than Operas treated in such a way as to give a little more freedom for the introduction of dances, the singing being nevertheless still the main object. Pécourt, who made his début in ‘Cadmus,’ shared the honours of the dance with Beauchamps, with Dolivet, a capital mime, and another good dancer named L’Etang. The company of singers also included some notable personalities, and though the functions of singer and dancer were usually kept pretty well apart, one actress, Mlle. Desmatins, managed, in the opera of ‘Perseus,’ to score a double success as singer and dancer, a very unusual combination, as it is seldom indeed that a dancer is good for much as a vocalist. Vigarani, an Italian theatrical machiniste, of great talent, had charge of the theatres of the Court; and another Italian, Rivani, and Francis Berein, fulfilled a similar function with regard to the Opera.”

Italian ballets, executed by Italian dancers, were among the favourite diversions of the French Court towards the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, which accounts for the frequency with which they appear in the paintings of Watteau, Lancret, and other artists of the period. That of “L’Impatience” had been partly translated into the French in order that Louis XIV might take part in it, and was, like all the comedy-ballets of the time, a series of detached scenes quite independent of each other, merely depicting the various amusing examples of impatience which one usually finds—in other people!

The taste, however, for the Italian ballet, by no means interfered with the development of the native type, which received not only the support of the nobility, but increasing support on the professional and technical side, for authors, musicians, and dancers were beginning to realise that ballet was a form of art which had long been too neglected, and that it was worthy of attention.

“Le Temps de la Paix,” represented at Fontainebleau, was given by the corps de ballet of the newly founded Académie Royale, illustrious dancers and scions of the nobility all taking their share in the production. The women dancers from the theatre, who mingled with the princesses and ladies of the Court, were termed femmes pantomimes, in order to distinguish them from the titled dilettanti. Among the amateurs one finds the name of the Princesse de Conti; Duchesse de Bourbon; such good old names as Mlle. de Blois, D’Armagnac, de Brienne, D’Uzès, D’Estrées; on the theatrical side such artists as Hardouin, Thévenard, and the amazing Mlle. de Maupin—heroine of a hundred wild and questionable adventures—were among the more illustrious of the singers; while Ballon, whom we have already named, won applause for the energy and vivacity of his dance, and Mlle. Subligny was equally admired for the grace and dignity of hers.

CHAPTER XIII
PANTOMIME AT SCEAUX: AND MLLE. PRÉVÔT

The mention of Subligny recalls the interesting fact that during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV of France there was a considerable importation of French and Italian actors, singers, dancers, and musicians into England.

We all know the complaints in The Spectator and other journals of the period against the craze for Italian opera.

A little earlier than that Cambert, who had been Director of the King’s Music to the Court of Louis-Quatorze and organist at the Church of St. Honoré in Paris, and who, after breaking fresh ground in French opera, was also one of the first to experiment with Ballet, became attached to the Court of our own Charles II in 1677. He died in London, whence he had withdrawn out of jealousy towards his pushing young rival Lulli.

Desmarets, Campra, Destouches, Rebel, Bourgeois, Mouret and Monteclair are also names of French composers of opera and ballet, from about 1693 to 1716, well known to students of musical history, perhaps their only successor worthy of mention being Quinault, until all, from Lulli onwards, were to be eclipsed by the greater Rameau, who was composer of nearly a score of notable ballets, and who made his appearance on the musical horizon in the ’thirties of the eighteenth century.

To return, however, to the dancers. Nivelon was one of the more famous French dancers who visited London towards the end of the seventeenth century, and had considerable success; as did another of the early danseuses, Mlle. Subligny, who came to London with influential introductions to John Locke, of all people in the world, author of the famous but soporific Essay on the Human Understanding, which, however, omits any reference to that of the charming dancer.

It can readily be imagined that the introduction of women to the French stage made for improvement in many directions besides access of grace. The little rivalries and successes of women dancers induced a general spirit of emulation that had its effect on technique.

Now, following on the introduction of women dancers to the stage, we come to another interesting point in the history of the dance and ballet; for, once again, it was due to a woman that we had the invention—or rather the revival—for it had not been seen since the days of Bathyllus and Pylades in Augustan Rome—of ballet-pantomime, a ballet acted entirely pantomimically, or in dumb-show.

It was the happy idea of the learned and extravagant Duchesse du Maine, whose Nuits de Sceaux have been chronicled by that fascinating bluestocking, Mlle. Delaunay, who was later to become famous as Madame de Staël.

Among the endless round of fêtes and entertainments at Sceaux, at the little theatre in which she took such prominent part, the ever-restless Duchess never presented her guests with a greater novelty. Day and night—and especially night—they had all been requisitioned to invent ingenious amusements. Sleep had been banished from the exigent little Court. Dialogues, “proverbs,” “literary lotteries,” songs and comedies had been turned out without cessation as from a literary factory. Always it had been “words, words, words,” and play on words. Now, for the first time for centuries—as it was, in fact, and must certainly have seemed to the Duchess’s house-parties!—there was to be silence on the stage at Sceaux.

The Duchesse du Maine

Having chosen the last scene of the fourth act of Corneille’s “Horace,” the Duchess commanded the composer Mouret to set it to music as if it were to be sung. The words were then ignored, the music was played by an orchestra, and the two well-known dancers, M. Ballon and Mlle. Prévôt, of the Royal Academy, mutely mimed the actions and emotions of the leading characters, so dramatically and with such intensity of feeling that, it is said, both they and their audience were moved at times to tears!

Françoise Prévôt, or Prévost, was born about 1680, made her début at the age of eighteen, and when Subligny retired in 1705, took her place as première danseuse. For some twenty odd years she was the joy of all frequenters of the Opera, for her grace and lightness of style. She retired in 1730, and died eleven years after. Among the more famous of her pupils were Marie Sallé and Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo, of both of whom there will be more to say in due course. Meanwhile, among the dances mainly in vogue during Prévôt’s earlier period were the Courantes, Allemandes, Gigues, Contredanses; and in her later years, Chaconnes, Passacailles, and Passepieds. For the dancing of the last Prévôt was especially famed.

In the preface to his “Maître à Danser,” published four years after the dancer’s retirement, Rameau describes her in the following terms: “Dans une seule de ses danses sont renfermées toutes les règles qu’après de longues méditations nous pouvons donner sur notre art, et elle les met en pratique, avec tant de grâce, tant de justesse, tant de légèreté, tant de précision qu’elle peut être regardée comme un prodige dans ce genre.”

Again, Noverre, in his Lettres sur la Danse, published later, makes graceful reference to Prévôt in recalling his impressions of famous dancers whom he had seen in earlier years, and gives us, too, an interesting criticism of the methods of the composers of ballet in the mid-eighteenth century. “La plupart des compositeurs,” he says, “suivent les vieilles rubriques de l’opéra. Ils font des passe-pieds parceque Mdlle. Prévôt les courait avec elegance; des musettes parceque Mdlle. Sallé et M. Dumoulin les dansaient avec autant de grace que de volupté; des tambourins parceque c’était le genre où Mdlle. de Camargo excellait; des chaconnes et des passacailles parceque le célèbre Dupré s’était comme fixé à ces mouvements; qu’ils s’ajoustaient à son goût, à son genre et à la noblesse de sa taille. Mais tous ces excellents Sujets n’y sont plus; ils ont été remplacés et au-delà, dans des parties et ne le seront peut être jamais dans les autres....”

Though Noverre was writing this about 1760, we have to remember that he cannot actually have seen Prévôt, since he was only born 1727, and she retired in 1730. But he records an interesting tradition in complaining that the greater number of the composers of his time still followed the older canon of the opera, and composed passepieds because “Mdlle. Prévôt les courait”; for it shows that the technique of the dance had already begun to outgrow that of the composer. Musicians were following in their forerunner’s tracks; dancers were advancing on the road of invention. Indeed, we shall see that this was so when we come to consider the differences between the styles of Prévôt and her later successors. For the moment it suffices to record that Prévôt, star of the French opera from about 1700 to 1730, was famous for her elegance, for her “grace,” “lightness,” “precision,” as revealed in the comparatively slow dances of her period, when the technique was obviously not immature (or Rameau could not have noted such qualities in her dancing), but evidently had not yet developed in the direction of speed, or of tours de force such as some of the later dancers were to exhibit. The passepied, of which an old French dancer-poet wrote:

“Le léger passe-pied doit voler terre à terre,”

was a dance in three-four time, a species of minuet, performed, as the poet records, “terre à terre,” hence Noverre’s description:

“Mdlle. Prévôt les courait avec elegance.”

A modern versifier has—perhaps presumptuously—put the following lines into the dancer’s mouth:

PRÉVÔT SPEAKS

“Though others by Courante may swear

Or some the grave Allemande prefer,

Or vow for Gigues alone they care,

Or Contredanse’s vulgar stir:

For me—who am no villager!—

I love not dances rough and free,

Nor yet too slow! Without demur

The Passepied’s the dance for me.

“Hark to its gentle, plaintive air!

Was music ever mellower,

More full of grace, more sweetly fair?

No dancer, sure, could wish to err

From the staid rhythms that recur—

As softly as a breath may be—

With base like a pleased kitten’s purr:

The Passepied’s the dance for me!

“No other music now may share,

With this my favour, or could spur

My feet new measures now to dare.

What of Camargo? As for her—

(Of passing fancies harbinger!)

Quickness, but naught of grace has she.

She dance? That plain, fast foreigner?

The Passepied’s the dance for me!”

ENVOI

“Lovers of dance, let naught deter

Your love from graces all can see

In Passepied! And all aver

The Passepied’s the dance for me!”

Of the jealousy which might have impelled Mlle. Prévôt to speak thus of her young rival Camargo and her quicker style there will be more to say presently. It is necessary for a while to turn aside (even to hark back a little, perhaps, since in dealing with a period of transition there must be several threads to trace back and gather up), and to glance at another phase of theatrical history than that of the première danseuse and the august Royal Opera, namely, the less exalted—and more popular—theatre; one which proved often the antechamber to the greater stage and Royal favour, to wit—the Italian Comedy and the Theatres of the Fair.

CHAPTER XIV
ITALIAN COMEDY AND THE THEATRES OF THE FAIR

Humanity, like history, repeats itself in its recurring moods. Some years ago London playgoers went rather mad over what was a comparatively new thing to that period, the production of a delightful play without words, namely, MM. Carré and Wormser’s “L’Enfant Prodigue,” acted to perfection by a cast headed by Mlle. Jane May, as Pierrot, with Mlle. Zanfretta as Pierrette.

About two thousand years ago the playgoers of ancient Rome began to go mad about what was then thought to be a really new thing—pantomime acting without words.

The two pantomimists, Bathyllus and Pylades, then set a standard in mimetic representation never achieved before. The two Roman actors were “dancers,” but it was because they were panto-mimes of such brilliant quality that they became famous. Had they been merely dancers they would hardly have made the impression they did.

The modern ballet-dancer—as we understand the word—knows, or should know, that dancing without the ability to mime is not enough to win the fame of a Taglioni, a Grisi, Génée or Karsavina, in ballet.

In opera a voice of the loveliest tone, together with an acquired technical excellence in the use of it, has not the power to move the hearers if expression is lacking. It is the art of the mime which gives expression and significance to the art of the dancer; and it was as dancer-mimes that Pylades and Bathyllus moved their audience to something like worship.

It is, of course, a pretence, this doing without words. I say “pretence” because you cannot do away with words. You may have a “wordless” play, but behind the dumb-show there are still the words. It is so in life. Behind all things is—the Word. Things are only representative of thoughts; and thoughts are inconceivable without words. We may not always speak with tongue and voice; but, if we have the impulse to speak, the instrument matters not, and we may “speak” with our hands. So doing, a look or gesture becomes a word, a series of gestures a sentence.

Now, in ancient Roman days when the ordinary spoken comedy merged first into a sort of musical comedy, and then, at the dawn of the Christian era, into unspoken comedy or pantomime; and when, in addition, all the Greek plays and stories of the Greek and Latin myths were drawn upon for pantomime, some of the original characters stayed and others were incorporated in the general make-up of the purely wordless play as this form of entertainment grew increasingly popular; and among the new-comers was probably Mercury, who became a sort of Harlequin, with gift of invisibility and magic wand.

The spoken comedy of ancient Rome becoming superseded, first by the pantomimes and secondly by the craze for the circus, finally died down with the fall of the Empire itself, and did not revive for some hundreds of years, until the world’s great reawakening, in the Middle Ages, to the wonders of the classic past. But it is more than probable that this dumb comedy, or panto-mime, any more than dancing, did not die.

In Sicily and Southern Italy more especially it would have survived; for expressive pantomime was always as much a means of speech among the Southern Latins as verbal language itself.

In the old Latin Comedy the same set of characters were often made to appear in other guises, and in different comic situations. Maccus, for instance, though still called so, would appear at one time as an old maid, at another as a raw soldier: Pappus would be a doting old husband, or father whose daughter was abducted: and he was usually outwitted whatever the situation he was in. These and various other types, and this custom of making them each a kind of “quick-change” artist, survived, or at least revived.

In Italy, as time went by, various local types were added to the original cast of the pantomime. The old man would be a Venetian; the Doctor, from Bologna, famous for its University and—poisons; the Clown would be a peasant-servant from Bergamo; the braggart soldier, a “Capitan,” would be from Spain; sometimes they would each speak in their own particular dialect, and fun would be made thereof. Throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries the fame of the Italian comedians spread throughout the world.

Troupes found their way to Paris and London, and no slight traces of their influence are to be found in Shakespeare and Molière. Pre-Shakespearean comedy in England was often impromptu and pantomimic; and the actors worked much as the Italian players had always done.

In 1611 a well-known Italian comedian, Flaminio Scala, printed a book of plays performed by his company. There was no dialogue! They were simply something like what we know as “plots,” though the French word “canevas” expresses it better. It was merely the outline of the play, entrances, exits, “business” written on canvas and hung up in the wings as a reminder to the actors, who “gagged” the play throughout, each usually introducing his own stock tricks or business (lazzi was the Italian word) as the play proceeded. In one of the Flaminio Scala’s plots we find a Pantalon, a Dottore or Doctor, a Captain (a braggart such as Pistol), a Pedrolino, later to become better known to us after various changes of spirit as Pierrot.

In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Paris the Italian players had a sensational success, being honoured by Louis XIV and his successor; and were regularly introduced into the lighter operas, were copied by the players in the Paris Fair Theatres, and were often the subject of the brush of Watteau and other artists.

In a little volume I have, Le Théâtre Italien (published 1695), by the famous actor, Evariste Gherardi, the author explains that “the reader must not expect to find in this book entire comedies, because the Italian plays could not be printed, for the simple reason that the players learn nothing by rote, and it suffices for them merely to have seen the subject of the comedy a moment before stepping on the stage.” He says that “the charm of the pieces is inseparable from the action, and their success depends wholly on the actors, who play from imagination rather than from memory, and compose their comedy while playing.”

Among the titles of the plays we find: “Arlequin, Emperor in the Moon”; “Colombine, Advocate”; “Arlequin Proteus”; “Arlequin Jason”; “The Cause of Woman”; “Divorce”; and “Arlequin, Man of Fortune.” In most we find Arlequin assuming various disguises—“Arlequin en More,” “Arlequin deguisé en Baron,” “Arlequin deguisé en Comtesse” being among stage directions, for instance, to “The Cause of Woman.”

By the early eighteenth century the leading characters had become Arlequin, Pantalon, Punchinello, the Doctor, the Captain, Scaramouche, Scapin, Leandre, and Mezzetin; and women had become incorporated in the generally enlarged cast, the chief being Isabelle, Octavie and Colombine.

Reference has already been made to the Duchesse du Maine, who in 1708 revived the art of pure pantomime by producing an act of Corneille’s “Horace,” which was performed entirely in dumb show by the dancer-mimes, Mdlle. Prévôt and Monsieur Ballon, to music by Mouret.

Soon after, Nivelon, and other dancers who were also mimes, such as Sallé, began to come to London; and in the early eighteenth century was seen the birth of the first real English pantomime, which bore some resemblance to that of ancient Rome, owed something to the Italian comedy and to the more recent French theatre, with certain new ideas of its own—especially in the way of costume and elaborate staging. This was due to the enterprise of John Rich.

By Rich’s time Arlequin had become the all-important character of the French comedy-stage, and he followed a then recent custom (also the ancient Latin custom) of placing one character in various sets of circumstances. His first production at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre in 1717 was “Harlequin Sorcerer,” which was followed by several others with Harlequin as the hero. Their form was always much the same. A serious, classic or fabulous story, such as one from Ovid, was the basis of the work; while between the serious scenes, and partly woven into them, ran a lighter story, consisting mainly of Harlequin’s courtship of Columbine, with interference from other characters, on whom in turn Harlequin played tricks with his magic wand. Rich played Harlequin, and made him dumb, for the simple reason that, though a clever actor, he could not speak well enough for the stage. Thus he gave us once again the ancient classic art of pantomime, which now became the true wordless English Harlequinade; and he taught his players of the other parts, Pantaloon, Pierrot, Clown, Columbine, an art of wordless acting equal to his own. He realised the value of fine mounting, and his productions were gorgeously staged and almost invariably successful.

It would be interesting, of course, to trace with some detail the history of Italian comedy and its influence on the French and English stage; indeed, to go fully into the vexed question of its origin. Certain modern scholars, such as Miss Winifred Smith in her extremely able and interesting volume on the Commedia dell’ Arte, issued by the Columbia University of America, holds the view that it was not derived from the classic stage at all, but was a spontaneous growth of fifteenth-century Italy.

Another view is that there was an unbroken thread of tradition from Greece, through Sicily and the Greek settlements in south-eastern Italy, and that when the Commedia attained its great vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, spreading through Italy and thence through western Europe, the charm and complexity of its texture was due to the numerous strands that had been gathered up from various localities in the progress of years.

Yet another possibility is, that this central idea of pantomime, or dumb acting, may merely have occurred again and again through the centuries, as a “new” idea, without direct impulse from tradition.

Personally I feel that acting without words implies a greater technical advance in the art of representation than acting with them, for it makes the actor more than merely repeater, or even interpreter, of an author; it makes him partly creator, or author. It is impossible, however, to go fully now into the question of the origin of the art of pantomime. Whatsoever diverse theories students may hold, the fact remains that it was known in classic days, and that the form of it which we know under the Italian title of the Commedia dell’ Arte flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and certainly had its influence on the French and English stage, literature and art, and also on Ballet.

The Duchesse du Maine in her pantomime production of Corneille’s “Horace” was deliberately harking back to a form of entertainment which she believed had held the classic stage; and the production was not without effect on the history of Ballet. The appearance of Italian pantomime actors in Paris had additional influence.

Look at some of the pictures of Watteau, Lancret and Fragonard. You will see there the types of the Italian Comedy; turn to the scores of the opera-ballets of the early eighteenth century and you will note that, more often than not, the Italian players were introduced; just as we to-day, in our revues, have introduced Russian dancers, or English players impersonating, or parodying, the Russians—simply because the Russians have in recent years attained a vogue similar to that attained by Italian singers in the ’forties of last century, and to that attained by the Italian comedy troupes of two centuries ago. These things are introduced into current dramatic productions just because they have their vogue, just because they are “topical.” Equally they influence art and literature.

Even the French critics seem hardly to have realised the extent to which French art of the early eighteenth century was influenced by the contemporary stage. All can see, of course, that it was influenced, to the extent of introducing the types of Italian comedy. One has only to glance at Watteau’s “L’Amour au Théâtre Italien” to see that patent fact. But the fact also that, except for his earlier landscapes and camp scenes, several of Watteau’s pictures were, in all probability, derived from ballets actually seen on the French stage seem to have been overlooked.

One of the earlier works attributed to Watteau is a picture representing the “Departure of the Italian Comedians.” The engraving of it by L. Jacob in the wonderful Jullienne collection of engravings from Watteau’s works plainly gives the date of the incident as 1697. Watteau, however, did not arrive from Valenciennes to take up his abode in Paris until after 1702, when he came to reside and work with Claude Gillot, the engraver.

So either this seems a mistake on Jullienne’s part, or the picture is not by Watteau, but is worked up from sketches and descriptions by Gillot or some other person who was an eyewitness of the incident; for it is quite obvious that Watteau cannot have seen what took place in Paris before he arrived there, and when he was only thirteen years old, as he would have been in 1697.

Let us turn aside for a while from this minor problem and consider who, exactly, were these Italian comedians. From the sixteenth century, in 1570 as a fact, when Catherine de Medici invited a company of Italian players to Paris, there had been several troupes arriving from time to time, under Court patronage. One of the earliest of importance came in 1576, and were known as Gli Gelosi, Les Jaloux, that is, according to one authority, folk jealous of pleasing; though they may also have been so called from the fact that they achieved their success first in a comedy of that name, Gli Gelosi, or Les Jaloux.

Nearer the dates which are our concern was Fiorelli’s troupe, which in 1660 was properly established at the Palais Royal, where they played alternately with Molière’s company, and received the title of “Comédiens du Roi de la troupe Italienne.”

In 1684 it was established by order of the Dauphin that the troupe should always be composed of twelve members, four women and eight men, made up as follows: two women for “serious rôles,” two for comic, two men for lovers, two for comic parts, two “pour conduire l’intrigue,” and two to play fathers and old men generally. These kept the traditional names respectively of: Isabelle, Eularia; Columbine, Marinette; Octave, Cinthio; Scaramouche, Arlequin; Mezzetin, Pascariel; Pantalon, and the Doctor.

In 1697, however, the Italian comedians, who by now had begun to develop, from the Commedia dell’ Arte, or purely improvised dumb show play of an earlier period into a more or less written “literary” comedy, had the audacity to produce under the title of “La Fausse Prude,” a play, the title of which seemed to suggest foundation on a novel (published in Holland) which had attacked the King’s mistress, Madame de Maintenon. For this they were banished, and were not recalled to Royal favour until 1716.

Hence the problem of deciding Watteau’s connection with the painting of an incident that occurred in 1697, five years before he can have reached Paris; and also of “placing” the rest of his avowedly theatrical pictures, when apparently the Italian comedians were not to be seen, or if seen, not until 1716; thus giving Watteau only five years before his death in 1721 to account for the fairly extensive collection of works dealing expressly with these stage types.

Speaking of the period shortly after Watteau arrived in Paris, one critic has declared (though it in no way lessens the value of his decisions concerning Watteau’s art): “Indeed, during these early years Watteau could have had no opportunity of studying the Italian comedy, otherwise than through the works of his new preceptor and friend”: this “preceptor and friend” being, of course, Gillot, by whose enthusiasm for the stage Antoine’s own was unquestionably awakened.

The same writer goes on to say: “It can hardly be doubted that from him—and not, as legend has it, from the stage itself—Watteau obtained his first peep into the strange realms of the Commedia dell’ Arte.”

But the plain fact is that there was every opportunity, despite this earlier banishment of the Royal troupe of Italian comedians, for Watteau to have obtained not only his first peep into the realms of the Commedia dell’ Arte and to have been influenced throughout his Paris life, especially by Ballet.

From the time Antoine reached the city in 1702 until his death in 1721 there were four marked opportunities for stage influence, namely, the legitimate and royally patronised French comedians; the Opera, still flushed with Lulli’s magic, and not despicably illumined by Campra; the Ballet, then finding wings to soar; and finally, the Theatres of the Fair, which, with their gay quarrel against authority, with their reckless parodies and splendid spectacles, have been strangely neglected by Watteau’s biographers as a contributory influence on his choice of subject.

Let us consider first the Theatres of the Fairs. The fairs themselves, of St. Germain and St. Laurent, were of ancient institution, and from early times they had their side-shows of tumblers, rope-dancers, trained animals, such as performing bears, monkeys, and white mice, as well as balladists and marionettes, which were the chief attraction by the middle of the seventeenth century.

Towards the end of the century each Fair had one or more troupes of actors, especially Italian, who played improvised pieces in dumb-show, as well as written farces, vaudevilles and parodies in Italian, French, and sometimes a mixture of both languages. These troupes were quite apart from those which from time to time had been brought from Italy by special invitation from the French Court.

It was the Royal Troupe only that was expelled in 1697, for its performance of “La Fausse Prude”; and it was really their expulsion which aroused the Theatres of the Fair to a new and more vigorous life.

The Departure of the Italian Comedians, 1697
(From an engraving by L. Jacob of Watteau’s picture).

Pierrot and Arlequin in the early 18th Century
(From Riccoboni’s “Histoire du Théâtre Italien”).

The Fair of St. Germain was open from February 3rd to Easter Sunday; the Fair of St. Laurent began at the end of June and closed in October, so that for the greater part of the year both offered opportunities for amusement of a less expensive and more popular sort than did the aristocratic Comédie Française and Comédie Italienne; in fact, so popular were they that, on suppression of the Comédie Italienne, the aristocracy themselves patronised the foreign troupes of the Theatres of the Fair.

From the dawn of the eighteenth century, however, this very popularity became a source of worry to the managers of the troupes at the Fairs, for it involved the jealousy of the Comédie Française and the still youthful Opera; and the attempts of grandiose Authority to smother these minor theatres (which had public sympathy wholly on their side) and the amazing resource shown by their managers in meeting each fresh legal thunderbolt by some new and more hilarious evasion, is a veritable comedy in itself, but must not detain us now. All we need to consider at the moment is that, despite attempts to suppress them there were these troupes, at the Theatres of the Fair, from before 1702, when Watteau came to Paris, until after 1721, the date of his death.

There was the troupe of Madame Jeanne Godefroy, widow of Maurice Von der Beck, from 1694 to 1709; that of Christopher Selles, from 1701 to 1709; that of Louis Nivelon (who, by the way, was a theatrical visitor to London), from 1707 to 1771; that of Saint-Edmé from 1711 to 1718; and, most important of all, that of Constantini, known as Octave, from 1712 to 1716.

Thus from the time he arrived in Paris Watteau could, for a few pence, have seen any of these companies, and in view of the fact that the first thing any young man up from the country usually does is to see the “sights” of the town, and more especially in view of the fact that soon after his arrival Watteau was in the studio of Gillot—popular engraver of such popular subjects, and himself a lover of the stage—what was more probable than that Antoine did include the Theatres of the Fair among the sights he saw, and so was influenced to choose, as some of the earlier subjects of his brush, the Italian players he could see there.

CHAPTER XV
WATTEAU’S DEBT TO THE STAGE

The stage has from time to time been indebted to Watteau for costume and décor. But Watteau’s debt to the stage of his period, to the Opera, to the Italian Comedy, and to the Theatres of the Fair, has hardly been considered sufficiently. Here is not the place to bring forward all the evidence that could be produced. Only an indication of some of the leading possibilities can be given. But while the subject has an interest of its own, on the purely critical side, it is also of interest to students of the ballet, for they may trace in some of the famous French pictures of the early eighteenth century the influence of ballet on contemporary art. Again, history “repeats itself” to-day, for have not many artists of our own time found inspiration in many of the productions of the Russian ballet?

It is interesting first to compare Watteau’s picture of “L’Amour au Théâtre Italien” with the reproductions given here from an old volume in my possession, Riccoboni’s Histoire du Théâtre Italien, which was not published until six years after Watteau’s death, but which may be regarded as a contemporary work since it describes the stage of his time.

These prints represent the various types of the Italian comedy as they were actually costumed, and comparing these with the figures in Watteau’s group, one sees in their close resemblance proof that the master was painting from things seen, from life itself (albeit stage life), not some graceful creations of his own imagination, as some of us to-day have been too apt to think.

In “L’Amour au Théâtre Italien” we have a faithful record of costumes actually worn; but the whole attitude of the group of figures suggests something vastly more than merely an artist’s study of costume. The figures are alert, the moment dramatic. Something is happening, or rather has happened, and there is a suggestion of culmination, as if the interruption of a song by the entry of a character had called forth, or was about to call forth, some whimsical comment from Pierrot, the singer. It seems a captured moment in a comedy.

Comparing it with the obviously companion picture, “L’Amour au Théâtre Français,” one might well be somewhat puzzled by the title, since in neither is there any apparent love-scene taking place. The one suggests an interruption in a comedy, the other—a dance in progress.

Beneath the engravings of these two by C. N. Cochin in the Jullienne collection, however, are inscribed a couple of six-line stanzas, one beneath each, in which the treatment of love themes in Italian and French comedies respectively is contrasted.

L’AMOUR AU THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS

“L’amour badine en France; il se montre un grand jour

Il ne prend point de masque, il se parle sans detour;

Il vit dans les festins, aux plaisir il s’allie,

C’est une liberté que le noeud qui nous lie

Nous servons sans constrainte e Bacchus e l’Amour.

Et nos tristes voisins nous taxent de folie.

M. Roy.”

L’AMOUR AU THÉÂTRE ITALIEN

“La jalouse Italie effrayante les amours,

Les fait marcher de nuit, les constraint au mistère

Mais une Serenade y supplie aux discours;

Un geste, un sel regard conclud on rompt d’Affaire,

L’impatient Francois en intrigue préfere,

Des chemins moins couverts, les croyée—vous plus courts?

M. Roy.”

These stanzas are by Roy, a contemporary poet who was a librettist for the Opera, two of whose operas were produced in 1712.

One thing is certain, that Watteau’s own eyes must have noted the contrast between the Italian and French comedy to have painted such pictures. He could not have painted them without being an observant theatre-goer. What, then, did he see, and when could he have seen such productions as might suggest such works? While acknowledging that positive evidence is still to be sought, I cannot help feeling that these two pictures, and one or two others, could fairly safely be placed as work done about 1711-1712.

In 1709 Antoine, still with Audran at the Luxembourg, competed for entry, and was admitted with four other students, for the Academy. Then he left Paris for Valenciennes, defraying expenses by selling a military picture, “Départ des Troupes,” to the dealer, Sirois, who urged him to paint a similar picture, which he did at Valenciennes.

L’Amour au Théâtre Italien

L’Amour au Théâtre Français
(From the Jullienne engravings from Watteau, British Museum).

There is no direct evidence that Watteau painted any stage-pictures before this period; and it would seem that his work in the country was mainly on military and naturalistic subjects. We do know that he was again in Paris at a date uncertain in 1712, and went to live with a Monsieur Crozat, by whom he was engaged to paint a series of panels of The Seasons. It is extremely likely that he would have returned to Paris refreshed by his country sojourn and with a new zest for work, and for theatre-going, which was then beginning to be particularly interesting, a crisis in the Fair Theatre troubles being over by 1710, and some new productions there as well as at the opera being well worth seeing.

As I would trace his movements, still admitting that positive evidence is required, Watteau returned to Paris early in 1711, took up his quarters for a time with Sirois the dealer, who would have the disposing of work done at Valenciennes. One of his first pictures of this period was probably “Gilles and his Family,” in the Wallace collection, which is supposed to be a portrait of Sirois dressed as a Pierrot or Gilles (the names being synonymous at the period) in a costume supplied by Watteau’s own wardrobe.

Then would come visits to the Fairs of St. Germain and St. Laurent, whence he would return reinspired with a love for the gay, reckless, satiric Italian comedy.

One has only to compare the Hertford House “Gilles” with the central figure of Pierrot in the “L’Amour au Théâtre Italien” to see that one is an earlier work and is the figure of a man somewhat self-conscious and not quite used to the clothes he is wearing; the other a maturer work, representing a vivid impression of a born comedian, momentarily master of the scene. Doubtless at this time, too, would be done some, but only some, of the remaining works dealing with the Italian stage types, such as “Les Jaloux,” “Arlequin Jaloux,” “Comédiens Italiens,” and “Pierrot Content.” A little after, I think, would come such works as “Arlequin et Colombine,” (in the Wallace collection), “Mezzetin,” and the maturer “Gilles,” in the Louvre.

In 1712 there were at the Theatres of the Fair in Paris two famous players of Gilles or Pierrot, namely, Hamoche, who made his début in that year with the St. Edmé troupe; and Belloni, who was also a lemonade-seller, quite a popular character, notable, as one chronicle tells us, “for the grand simplicity of his acting and for his naïve and truthful speech.”

The most famous of the players of Arlequin was Pierre-François (otherwise Domenique) Biancolelli, who was also of the St. Edmé troupe, somewhere between 1710-1712.

Thus it was not unlikely that Watteau saw these actors, as he may have seen another, Delaplace, as Scaramouche, and Desgranges, who came to Paris from Lyons, in 1712, as “the Doctor”; though the Mezzetin offers a minor problem in that Angelo Constantini, the most famous impersonator of the character, after suffering banishment with the Italian comedians in 1697, went to Poland, where an intrigue with the Queen resulted in his imprisonment for twenty years, by which time Watteau was no more. Him, therefore, Watteau cannot have seen. But the character was a familiar one on the stage at the time, 1710-1712, and must have been played by other popular actors, even if not of sufficient note to be chronicled.

To turn from the Italian actors to other theatrical characters which form the subjects of some of Watteau’s pictures, it is of interest to note that one of the engravings in the Jullienne collection represents “Poisson en habit de paysan.” Poisson was a familiar name in the annals of the French stage, for it was borne by three generations of Parisian actors, Raymond Poisson, who died in 1690, Paul, his son, and François, grandson. Watteau’s picture is presumably that of the second, Paul.

Another interesting point to note is that a portrait of Raymond Poisson, painted by Netscher, was engraved by Edelinck (who was employed by Watteau’s employer—Audran) and represents the actor in the character of Crispin, one of his most famous parts (that of a sort of black-dressed Pierrot, a messenger distinguished by his long boots, worn by Raymond Poisson to increase his stature), which was successively played by his son Paul, and grandson François, and became a traditional type.

Watteau cannot have seen Raymond, who died twelve years before the artist came to Paris, but he may well have seen Paul, and it is significant that he should have drawn a figure representing not “Poisson en habit de Crispin” (whose costume was now a tradition) but “en habit de Paysan” as if it was the very fact that the part was one different from that especially associated with the Poisson family which made it of interest to Watteau.

In connection with the same portrait there is one point that is particularly noteworthy, namely, that it is exactly like the central figure in “Le Concert,” or “Les Charmes de la Vie” in the Wallace collection; and close consideration of the latter inclines me to the belief that the picture represents—as certain others not unusually so considered may well do—a scene from an opera.

Another of the engravings in the Jullienne collection of “Mdlle. Desmares en habit de Pelerine.” Mlle. Desmares was a well-known Danish actress; and “pelerines” appear in Watteau’s “L’Embarquement pour l’Ile de Cythère.”

One has only to pass in review a succession of Watteau’s works, or reproductions thereof, to notice how very frequently he repeats himself in matters of detail. In a general way, for instance, it is curious to note how frequently dancing and music are repeated in the course of his life’s work. In “L’Amour au Théâtre Français” is a couple dancing; in the “Bal sous une Colonnade” another; in “Le Contrat de Mariage” and its variants—another, and very similar; in “Le Menuet” (at the Hermitage, Petrograd) another; in “Amusements Champêtres” (Chantilly), and in the “Fêtes Vénitiennes” (Edinburgh) are more such couples; while there is, of course, the dainty single figure of the child in “La Danse,” in the Royal Palace, Potsdam; and the famous “L’Indifférent,” in the Louvre, also represents a young man dancing. Dancers and musicians are thus a constant theme for Watteau’s brush.

There are, however, more distinctive and more curious repetitions to note than these obvious evidences of a general taste for music and the dance; the repetitions of figures or groups in particular positions, and of details in mise en scène.

The well-known “Joueur de Guitare,” in the Musée Condé, reappears in almost exact facsimile in “La Surprise” (in Buckingham Palace) and also in the “Fête Galante,” or “Fête Champêtre,” in the Royal Gallery, Dresden.

The couple in “La Gamme d’Amour” is simply a detail from the centre of the “Assemblée dans un Parc,” in the Royal Gallery at Berlin. The musician in “La Leçon de Musique” (Wallace collection) is repeated in “Le Concert,” also in the Wallace collection.

To turn now to details of mise en scène, it is curious to note that the pillars seen in the last-named picture also occur in the “Bal sous une Colonnade,” in the Dulwich Gallery.

The reclining statue to the right of the picture, known as “Les Champs Elysées,” in the Wallace collection, is another, presumably an earlier version of the “Jupiter and Antiope,” in the Louvre.

The statuette and amorini in the “Fête d’Amour” at the Dresden Royal Gallery are variants of those in the “Embarquement pour l’Ile de Cythère”; while the terminal statue of Pan seen in the “Arlequin et Colombine,” in the Wallace collection, reappears again and again in the Italian Comedy series.

Le Concert
(From the painting by Watteau, Wallace Collection).

La Leçon de Musique (From the painting by Watteau, Wallace Collection).

To some, unaware, perhaps, of the influence which the stage of Watteau’s time was exerting in other directions, these comparisons may possibly seem unnecessary. But in considering the extent to which that influence may have expressed itself in the painter’s work, it is just these details which, taken in conjunction with the trend of theatrical taste at that time, are likely to be of importance. There was never an artist yet—whether in colour, sound, or spoken or written word—who created a new world out of nothing. The spirit of art can only find its expression in the manipulation of existing material. Every work of art must surely be the culmination of a long series of impulses due to external stimuli the connection of which, perhaps over a lengthy period, consciousness has failed to analyse and memory to record.

Now Watteau’s work as a whole exhibits the frequent repetition of certain motifs, but they were never of something he can never have seen in reality. It was not automatic reiteration of some pictured or imagined type, group or material object. His earliest impressions of stage-life, it is true, may well have been those conveyed by the prints or paintings of his master Gillot. But there was no necessity for him to subsist for the rest of his life for inspiration on second-hand impressions.

When, therefore, we find in works other than those avowedly theatrical, a repetition of certain details which are found in those dealings obviously with the theatre, it may be conceded, perhaps, that the direct influence of stage scenes and stage effects upon his art was somewhat more extensive than might be thought merely from a study of those pictures which are ostensibly studies of dramatic types and subjects; and for an instance we may take the introduction of a group of Italian comedians among the bystanders in the “Bal sous une Colonnade,” already referred to. They need a little looking for amid so many figures, but when discovered one might question what Pierrot, Arlequin and their fellows are doing “dans cette galère.”

When we come, again, to consider the picture called “Le Concert” (in the Wallace Collection) and find, in the central figure, a striking likeness to another picture by Watteau of “Poisson” in the costume of a peasant: and observe also a repetition of a scenic detail such as the terrace-columns, which are similar to those of the Colonnade: further noting that the treatment of the distance between these same columns is strangely suggestive of the flatness of a stage “back-cloth,” it begins to seem not improbable that we have here a pretty faithful translation of actual stage scenes.

In one of these, the “Fêtes Champêtres,” also known as “Les Fêtes Vénitiennes” (in the National Gallery, Edinburgh), it is possible that we have a clue.

Can it be mere coincidence that from 1710—the year after Watteau had become a student at the Academy—one of the most popular and most frequently revived ballets at the Opera was Campra and Danchet’s “Les Fêtes Vénitiennes?”

True, Watteau must be presumed to have been at Valenciennes from about the end of 1709 until shortly before 1712, when he took up his abode with Crozat, but the ballet was revived again in 1712; not to mention a pastiche called “Fragments de Lulli,” which included an entrée entitled “La Vénitienne,” produced in January, 1711, which, as has already been suggested, was the more likely time than 1712 for Watteau’s return to town after his stay at Valenciennes.

At this time, in any case, there were several productions at the Opera which may have easily proved an influence in the thoughts of an impressionable young artist. It was in 1712 that two operas were produced, namely, “Créüse l’Athénienne” and “Callirhoé,” the libretti of which were by Roy, whose stanzas form the inscriptions already referred to as appearing under the engravings of “L’Amour au Théâtre Français” and “L’Amour au Théâtre Italien.”

In one of the few of Watteau’s letters quoted by the Goncourts is one to Gersaint in which Antoine accepts an invitation to go “avec Antoine de la Roque,” and dine next day. It is not insignificant that the first opera of which De la Roque was librettist was produced in April, 1713, and entitled “Médée et Jason.”

Les Plaisirs du Bal
(From the Jullienne engravings from Watteau, British Museum).

To return, however, to “Les Fêtes Vénitiennes.” The score of this ballet, or rather “opera-ballet,” was published by the great French printer Ballard in 1714, and an examination of it reveals further possibilities of its having influenced not only the picture of the same name, but the “Bal sous une Colonnade,” “Le Concert,” and possibly others of Watteau’s composition, just as yet others might have been partly inspired by Monteclair’s ballet “Les Fêtes de l’Eté,” published in 1716, and Bertin’s “Les Plaisirs de la Campagne,” published in 1719.

“Les Fêtes Vénitiennes” was in four acts or entrées, with a prologue. The third act was entitled “De l’Opéra,” and opens with a music-lesson, practically the rehearsal of a duet between Léontine, the prima-donna, and her music master, just before the production of a miniature opera; and the fourth is headed “Du Bal.” The stage directions for this are: “Le Théâtre représente un lieu préparé pour un Bal”; and in a bragging duel between the music-master and the dancing-master the latter boasts:

“Je scais l’art de tracer aux yeux

Les sons qui frappent les oreilles,”

which the other counters by saying that he can raise a storm musically, which he proceeds to do, giving a musical representation of the rising wind, of thunder, and so on. This, however, is by the way. The one thing important is that there are these two acts devoted to illustrating the charms of music and the dance, that the opera contains an “air pour les Arlequins,” an “air des Polichinelles,” an “air Champêtre,” and closes, as several other ballets of the period also did, with a sort of divertissement, introducing the Italian players, and a general gathering of all the dramatis personæ on the stage while the dances of this divertissement final are in progress; all of which suggests the “Bal sous une Colonnade” of Watteau.

Monteclair’s “Les Fêtes de l’Eté” is of special interest in that it was produced in 1716. In 1717 Watteau, after requests from the Academy authorities, painted his diploma picture, the immortal “Embarquement pour Cythère.” It would seem that Monteclair’s ballet contains the first suggestions which culminated in that picture.

It is in three acts, with a prologue, and the stage directions for this are: “Le Théâtre représente une Campagne dont les beautés commencent à fletrir: Le Printemps y paroit environné d’Amants et Amantes qui lui font la cour.” In the course of the act one of the lovers, expatiating on this charm of their surroundings, sings: “Et la mère du Dieu des Amants a quitté Cythère pour ces lieux charmés.”

The second act has the following stage directions at the start: “Le Théâtre représente un relais de chasse, on y voit un char doré, une Meute et une partie de l’equipage des Chasseurs.” One of the characters introduced is a young man, Lisidor, who is remarkable for his indifference to feminine charms, and might well be the origin of Watteau’s exquisite “L’Indifférent.” Another of the characters, Dorante, is counselled to imitate him; and in a discussion between Agatine and Cephise, the former is advised by the latter “pour s’assurer de ce qu’on aime, la feinte indifférence est d’un puissant secours.”

In 1730, by the way, a play was produced at the theatre of the St. Laurent Fair called “L’Indifférence,” in which the hero preaches the doctrine of indifference to love! Watteau, of course, cannot have seen this play, but it is significant that both in 1716 and 1730, the stage should be found dealing with what was evidently a current type of character.

Mlle. Desmares en habit de Pèlerine
(From the Jullienne engravings from Watteau, British Museum).

L’Embarquement pour l’Ile de Cythère
(From a photograph, by E. Alinari, of Watteau’s painting in the Louvre).

In the third act of Monteclair’s ballet, the opening directions are: “Le Théâtre représente les Rives de la Seine. On voit le soleil prêt à se coucher” (which might possibly account for the soft, warm tone of Watteau’s Embarquement) and one of the characters comes to warn some lovers with a song: “Tendres amants, la Barque est prête”; and the ballet concludes with a dance divertissement, as was usual at the period.

One cannot dogmatically assert that these operas did directly inspire the pictures named, but that Watteau caught his first suggestion of some from such performances as his own taste and his association with a theatrical and musical set would have led him to frequent, must seem, at the least, probable.

CHAPTER XVI
THE SPECTATOR AND MR. WEAVER

Queen Anne had long been dead, but she can never have been very lively when alive, for her period was one when political intrigue, theological controversy, and the War of Spanish Succession were the chief subjects that occupied everybody’s attention, especially her own, and—could anything be duller? Moreover, she was of somewhat portly proportions, had a solemn husband, and—unlike Queen Elizabeth—was really no dancer.

With such a queen on the throne, at such a time of stress, can it be wondered at that theatrical dancing was at a comparatively low ebb? Why, there were only two theatres, Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields! and they were striving hard to outdo each other—in dullness.

Indeed, it was not until practically the close of Queen Anne’s reign that stage-dancing began to come to its own; for though the craze for pantomimes (and his importation of French dancers) started by John Rich in Anne’s last year, were mainly responsible for this, I cannot help thinking that Steele and Addison’s ever lively Spectator, together with the works of Mr. John Weaver, had considerable effect in rousing the attention of playgoers as to the possibilities of dancing on the stage; for while there are four papers in The Spectator in which dancing as a social accomplishment is discussed, Steele, in one of them, makes the interesting suggestion that “It would be a great improvement, as well as embellishment to the theatre, if dancing were more regarded, and taught to all the actors”; and another calls special attention to An Essay towards an History of Dancing, by John Weaver (a 12mo. volume published in 1712), who was also author of a very interesting History of Pantomimes. These literary efforts cannot have been without their influence on current taste in things theatrical.

Before the appearance of The Spectator, however, Addison had made amusing reference to a dancing-master in one of his papers for The Tatler. The date is 1709. He heads it as written “From my own Apartment, October 31,” and goes on: “I was this morning awakened by a sudden shake of the house; and as soon as I had got a little out of my consternation, I felt another, which was followed by two or three repetitions of the same convulsion. I got up as fast as possible, girt on my rapier, and snatched up my hat, when my landlady came up to me and told me that the gentlewoman of the next house begged me to step thither, for that a lodger she had taken in was run mad; and she desired my advice; as indeed everybody in the whole lane does upon important occasions,” he slyly adds.

With much detail and delightful humour Addison goes on to describe his adventure, at greater length than can be given here. Suffice it to say that he went in next door and upstairs, “with my hand upon the hilt of my rapier and approached this new lodger’s door. I looked in at the keyhole and there I saw a well-made man look with great attention at a book and, on a sudden, jump into the air so high that his head almost touched the ceiling. He came down safe on his right foot, and again flew up, alighting on his left; then looked again at his book and, holding out his right leg, put it into such a quivering motion that I thought he would have shaken it off.”

Eventually, of course, he discovers the lodger is a dancing-master, and on asking to see the book he is studying Addison “could not make anything of it.” Whereupon the maître explains that he had been reading a dance or two ... “which had been written by one who taught at an academy in France,” adding the interesting comment “that now articulate motions, as well as sounds, were expressed by proper characters; and that there is nothing so common as to communicate a dance by a letter.” Ultimately Addison begs him to practise in a ground-room, and returns to his own residence “meditating on the various occupations of rational creatures.”

To return, however, to the later publication, The Spectator, in which Addison was also assisted by Steele and other writers of such varied character as Motteaux (debauchee, tea-merchant and translator of Don Quixote), Ambrose Philips (whom Swift nicknamed “Namby Pamby”), and Isaac Watts—the famous hymn-writer. In a comparatively early number a short note introduces in very learned fashion a quaint letter purporting to be from “some substantial tradesman about ‘Change,’” in which the writer grows querulous over the way in which his daughter (who “has for some time been under the tuition of Monsieur Rigadoon, a dancing-master in the city”), has been taught to behave at a ball he takes her to.

With some of the dancing the old man is delighted, as he is with the art generally, but presently he has to complain: “But as the best institutions are liable to corruptions, so, sir, I must acquaint you that very great abuses are crept into this entertainment. I was amazed to see my girl handed by and handing young fellows with so much familiarity,” and he finds that fault especially with “a most impudent step called ‘Setting.’”

There can be little doubt, however, that the good citizen was shocked by a dance that was probably quite innocuous, and only seemed to suggest a familiarity of behaviour unusual to his prim eyes, viewing a ball-room for the first time.

Almost the whole of one issue of The Spectator is taken up with a letter from John Weaver, to whom Steele gives a fine advertisement by not only printing the letter in extenso, but introducing it with sapient comments from himself. One point he makes somewhat recalls to mind the complaint of Arbeau’s young friend, the law-student Capriol, who had grown dusty over his studies.

Speaking of dancing, Steele says: “I know a gentleman of great abilities, who bewailed the want of this part of his education to the end of a very honourable life. He observed that there was not occasion for the common use of great talents; that they are but seldom in demand; and that these very great talents were often rendered useless to a man for want of small attainments.” One can hardly perhaps consider dancing to-day as a “small attainment,” however it may have been considered in the reign of Queen Anne.

Weaver’s own letter is too long to quote in its entirety, but I cannot refrain from giving at least the following, since, while speaking of his own work, he offers incidentally several peculiarly interesting glimpses as to the state of the art in 1712.

“Mr. Spectator,

“Since there are scarce any of the arts or sciences that have not been recommended to the world by the pens of some of the professors, masters, or lovers of them, whereby the usefulness, excellence, and benefit arising from them, both as to the speculative and practical part, have been made public, to the great advantage and improvement of such arts and sciences; why should dancing, an art celebrated by the ancients in so extraordinary a manner, be totally neglected by the moderns, and left destitute of any pen to recommend its various excellencies and substantial merit to mankind?

“The low ebb to which dancing is now fallen is altogether owing to this silence. The art is esteemed only as an amusing trifle; it lies altogether uncultivated, and is unhappily fallen under the imputation of being illiterate and ‘mechanic.’ And as Terence, in one of his prologues, complains of the rope-dancers drawing all the spectators from his play; so may we well say, that capering and tumbling is now preferred to, and supplies the place of, just and regular dancing in our theatres. It is, therefore, in my opinion, high time that someone should come to its assistance and relieve it from the many gross and growing errors that have crept into it, and overcast its real beauties; and to set dancing in its true light, would show the usefulness and elegance of it, with the pleasure and instruction produced from it; and also lay down some fundamental rules, that might so tend to the improvement of its professors, and information of the spectators, that the first might be the better enabled to perform, and the latter rendered more capable of judging what is (if there be anything) valuable in this art.

“To encourage, therefore, some ingenious pen capable of so generous an undertaking, and in some measure to relieve dancing from the disadvantages it at present lies under, I, who teach to dance, have attempted a small treatise as an Essay towards an History of Dancing; in which I have enquired into its antiquity, origin and use, and shown what esteem the ancients had for it. I have likewise considered the nature and perfection of all its several parts, and how beneficial and delightful it is, both as a qualification and an exercise; and endeavoured to answer all objections that have been maliciously raised against it. I have proceeded to give an account of the particular dances of the Greeks and Romans, whether religious, war-like or civil; and taken particular notice of that part of dancing relating to the ancient stage in which the pantomimes had so great a share. Nor have I been wanting in giving an historical account of some particular masters excellent in that surprising art; after which I have advanced some observations on the modern dancing, both as to the stage, and that part of it so absolutely necessary for the qualification of gentlemen and ladies; and have concluded with some short remarks on the origin and progress of the character by which dances are writ down, and communicated to one master from another. If some great genius after this would arise, and advance this art to that perfection it seems capable of receiving, what might not be expected from it.”

All modern students of dancing will be interested especially in the passages I have italicised in the foregoing excerpt, for one gets a significant glimpse as to the state of theatrical dancing (they had no native ballet) in London during the reign of Anne; such a contrast to Paris, where Louis XIV’s Académie Royale de la Danse was beginning to bring forth “rare and refreshing” fruit and the Ballet was beginning to be understood as a genuine work of art.

“The art is esteemed only as an amusing trifle!” In an earlier paper had not “Mr. Spectator” introduced the subject with a little apology for dealing at all with a reputedly trivial theme, and had he not backed himself up with scholarly reference to classic writers on the Dance, such as Lucian?

Oh! Anne! That the art should have been, in your reign, “esteemed only as an amusing trifle!” And when you might have followed a royal example and, emulating your contemporary Louis, ennobled the art by founding an English “Royal Academy of Dancing.”

Well, Weaver, at any rate, knew that the art was something more than an “amusing trifle” when he wrote almost prophetically: “If some great genius after this would arise and advance this art to that perfection it seems capable of receiving, what might not be expected from it.” What would he have said had he lived to see the triumphs of Noverre, of Blasis, and of the British, French or the Russian Ballet of modern times?

CHAPTER XVII
A FRENCH DANCER IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON

We have seen that the state of dancing in England was nothing to boast of in the early eighteenth century. We have seen that London had not yet what Paris had had some fifty years—State-aided Opera and Ballet.

But the public appreciation of art was there all the same, and an astute manager of that day was as capable of realising, quite as well as any modern, that where there was no home supply it might be profitable to import foreign talent.

Strange, is it not, that there was not then, any more than to-day, anyone clever enough, apparently, to realise that since foreign talent would prove attractive to a dance and spectacle-loving public (had not the English proved their innate love of spectacle in Elizabethan times?) it might be less expensive and still more profitable, to encourage native talent. Still that is our way. We let the foreign artist discover England, and then discover the foreign artist. We never seem to discover ourselves. We shirk the horrible revelation that the English really are an artistic, an art-loving nation. But whatsoever the foreigner may have or have had against us, he can never accuse us of lack of enthusiasm, of indifference to his efforts to please.

In the early eighteenth century—French actors, dancers, and acrobats; in the later eighteenth and mid-nineteenth—Italian opera singers and ballet; in the later nineteenth—light French Opera (at the Criterion, Gaiety and Opera Comique); and in the twentieth—Russian Opera and Ballet; these London has had, and more, and always greeted with generous praise and enthusiastic approval. Whatsoever may be said of the English as a nation of “shopkeepers” slow to adopt new ideas, there is nothing small or hesitating about their adoption and praise of foreign art and artists; and so it was that the delectable French dancer Mlle. Marie Sallé, one of the two chief pupils of the famous Prévôt, found a warm welcome when she visited London in the reign of George I.

Mlle. Sallé, born in 1707, was the daughter of one minor theatrical manager, niece of another, and made her first appearance at the age of eleven in an opera-comique by Le Sage—author of the lively “Gil Blas”—entitled “La Princesse de Carisme,” at the St. Laurent Fair, in Paris, in 1718. She spent the next few years in touring, or, when not on tour, in playing at the Fair theatres in Paris. It is just possible that Watteau may have seen her as a young girl at the Fair theatres before he died in 1721. That, however, though pleasant to contemplate as a possibility, is less our concern than the circumstances of her début, and her subsequent appearance in London.

“La Princesse de Carisme,” a romantic-satirical, three-act musical comedy, dealt with the love-affairs and adventures of a Persian Prince and his boon companion and “confident”—Arlequin. There was some charming music in it, and so great was its success at the theatre of the St. Laurent Fair that it was put on at the Opera in Paris by Royal command.

By the year 1718, it will be remembered, old Christopher Rich had died, leaving his theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London to his son John Rich, who made himself famous and increased his wealth by producing the first pantomimes ever seen in the great metropolis, which were mounted on the stage with all the attractions of gorgeous scenery and dresses, grand “mechanical effects,” appropriate music, and striking ballets; the various acts of the spectacle being interspersed with a comic or serio-comic element, supplied by the eternal love-affairs of Arlequin and Columbine.

Marie Sallé
(From an engraving by Petit after a picture by Fenouil).

This form of entertainment became so popular as to rival seriously the power of London’s two chief theatres, Drury Lane and Haymarket, mainly through Rich’s enterprise in securing all the best opera-singers, dancers, acrobats and other performers from the Continent. In fact, he may fairly be described as London’s earliest music-hall manager, for the entertainment provided at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre was much like that of a modern variety house. It was thus he came to engage Mlle. Sallé and her brother, who made their first appearance here as dancers in an English comedy, “Love’s Last Shift,” in October, 1725.

Next year also they appeared in London, and in April, 1727, Mlle. Sallé was given a complimentary benefit, in which she and her brother introduced some of their youthful pupils. In that same year she made her début at the Paris Opera, where she remained till, for some obscure reason, she broke therefrom, and in October returned to London, once more under John Rich’s management.

The reason for the break may have been that professional jealousy did not give her the place which her talents should have justified; or may have been over the question of costume-reform, which was a matter of burning interest to some of the younger spirits in those days. Or it may have been merely as the result of managerial changes at the Opera in 1728. But whatsoever the reason, what Paris lost London gained, and her greatest triumph here came at the end of 1733, when she made her first appearance at Covent Garden, following it up with still greater success in the spring of the following year, when she achieved a striking success in a classic ballet, “Pygmalion,” in more or less correct costume, instead of in the absurdly befrilled garb, with laced cuirasse, powdered hair and plumed helmets, which were considered de rigueur on the stage at that absurdly artificial period.

Marie Sallé was not only a dancer of exquisite lightness and grace, she was a woman of taste and sense, and, forestalling Noverre’s fight on the same ground, had tried to bring about costume-reform at the Académie Royale in Paris, only to find that those in authority were strong in—authority, and convention! She rejoiced, therefore, in a return to London, that gave her more scope for the expression of her artistic ideas, and two ballets of her own composition, “Pygmalion” (February, 1734) and “Bacchus et Ariane” (March, 1734), were mounted with more regard for classic feeling. Her appearance in both caused a furore. Royalty came to Covent Garden on the nights she danced. The whole town flocked to see her, and numerous duels were fought by ardent young gentlemen who trod on each other’s toes when jammed in the crowds that endeavoured to enter the theatre.

Mlle. Sallé must have been a woman of character. In a loose era she was cordially detested by her stage colleagues in Paris for her virtue! It was such a reflection on them that one should not be as they!

Another aspect of her is revealed in a significant little anecdote. The great Handel, having admired her in Paris, had offered her three thousand francs to appear at Covent Garden, and specially composed for her a ballet, “Terpsichore.” Hearing of this, Porpora, Handel’s great rival and manager of the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, promptly offered her three thousand guineas, and had the tact to suggest that she might accept it as she had not yet signed a contract with Handel. To which proposal Sallé replied with quiet scorn: “And does my word then count for nothing?”

London was delighted with the novelty of Mlle. Sallé’s ideas in the production of Ballet, and with the personal grace of the young dancer herself. One of the older historians of the dance has described her in the following glowing terms: “Une figure noble, une belle taille, une grâce parfaite, une danse expressive et voluptueuse, tels étaient les avantages de Mademoiselle Sallé, la Taglioni de 1730.”

As an influence in the revolution of the Dance and Ballet she might perhaps not incorrectly be described as the Isadora Duncan of her period. True, she did not dance barefoot, but she came to loosen the bonds of tradition, and to free the spirit of the Dance from the stiffening conventionalities which had grown up around Ballet as seen at the Paris Opera. In London she had greater freedom, and—greater success; indeed, so triumphant was her final season that when she did return to Paris she was welcomed by Voltaire with the following verses:

“Les Amours, pleurant votre absence,

Loin de vous s’étaient envolés;

Enfin les voilà rappelés

Dans le séjour de leur naissance.”

In yet another poem he pays tribute to her virtue in describing her thus:

“De tous les cœurs et du sien la maîtresse,

Elle alluma des feux qui lui sont inconnus.

De Diane c’est la prêtresse

Dansant sous les traits de Vénus.”

Later there was to come a change and the idealistic young dancer was to be attacked for the very virtues her adoring poets—for Voltaire was not the only one—had celebrated. Her austerity got on the Parisian nerves! A more modern scribe has pictured her thus:

SALLÉ

“The perfect dance needs music sweet

As dreams; seductive, so the feet

Are led to move as by some spell;

Or music as of murmuring shell.

True dance shows naught of haste or heat,

Nor trick, nor any kind of cheat.

Beauty and Joy, twin souls, should meet

To make that lovely miracle,

The perfect dance.

“A field of wind-kissed waving wheat;

A swaying sea, scarce waked to greet

The dawn; clouds drifting; these things tell

What dance may be—if it excel.

Men said they saw in hers complete,

The perfect dance!”

But if the Parisians did not quite appreciate her as they should have done at first, her return to Paris after her London successes was triumphant. Her portrait was painted by Lancret; her every appearance was greeted with enthusiasm.

She remained at the Opera for some years, retired therefrom in 1740, but made frequent appearances after, at Versailles and at Fontainebleau, until a few years before her death in 1756.

It is interesting to think that her personal dignity had won her the respect, and her beauteous art the homage of London before her qualities came to be recognised in Paris. It is possibly just the suggestion of austerity about her performance that appealed to the London audience. She had a poetic distinction above the average. She was an expressive mime, and her dancing was marked by supreme refinement, a magnetic reserve, a strange suggestion of pictured stillness, an exquisite simplicity and grace.

CHAPTER XVIII
LA BELLE CAMARGO

Some say that Camargo had no right to be described “La Belle.” Contemporary accounts of her appearance differ. It was a time when people took sides, and duelled for their opinions.

It is a curious fact that several famous dancers have been of questionable beauty—at least, as to face, and when in repose; for it is another curious thing that no dancer ever did or possibly ever could, look plain when dancing, that is, if dancing really well. The animation or gentle grace of the dance, whether quick or slow, seems inevitably to confer a beauty that otherwise might not be apparent. This fact in itself would appear to suggest that in dancing, as in other arts, and in life itself, it is the “spirit which quickeneth”; and, where that sufficiently illumines the body, what the body itself may otherwise be profits little.

But if some of her more jealous colleagues may have found Camargo too dark for their taste—“swarthy,” said some—you may in turn criticise her critics and see for yourself what she was like if you go to view her portrait by Lancret, in the Wallace collection in Hertford House.

Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo was born at Brussels early in April, and baptised in the parish of St. Nicholas—it is well to be exact in matters of such importance!—on the 15th of that month, in 1710.

She was the daughter, and first child, of a gentleman who had “seen better days”—and, through his daughter, was to see them again. At the time of her birth he was a teacher of music and dancing, and was employed by, or dependent on, the Prince de Ligne. Through her father the little dancer claimed descent from an exalted Roman family, which from time to time had given a bishop, an archbishop, and a cardinal to Holy Church; while on her mother’s side she was descended from a famous and ancient Spanish house.

Romance was ever ready to find in the earliest years of a popular star predictions of future fame, and it is probably only romance that tells how Camargo danced, on hearing a violin played, when she was but six months old!

It is rather more certain, though, that her first lessons were from her father, and that under his tuition she did well enough, by the time she was nearly ten, to deserve the patronage of the Princesse de Ligne, when that lady paid the expenses of some few months’ study under the then famous Mlle. Prévôt.

Even so she must have been remarkably precocious, for before she was eleven she had returned to Brussels finished enough to achieve a remarkable success on her first appearance. An auspicious début was followed by an engagement at Rouen, but, through no fault of Marie-Anne be it said, the manager failed.

As the Camargo luck would have it, however, there was a new director at the Académie Royale in Paris, by name Francine, and from him the little dancer received the welcome chance of appearing at the Opera, where she made her Paris début on May 5th, 1726, in “Les Caractères de la Danse,” and achieved an instant and emphatic success.

Over the new-comer the impressionable capital fairly lost its head, and soon every fashion—shoes, hats, fans, coiffures, everything—was “à la Camargo,” of which craze relics survive, for even to-day we have Camargo shoes. Such a threatened eclipse of her own popularity not unnaturally made poor Prévôt—now about forty-six, and having been before the public over twenty years—furiously jealous, and for the next year or so Marie-Anne’s progress was made difficult by intrigue, and ere Paris set its seal of favour on her art by imitating her fashions, the young dancer had to find herself more than once occupying the comparative obscurity of the “back row.”

Her chance came, though, when one of the famous male dancers, Dumoulin, for some reason failed to make his entry, and Camargo, in a sudden devil-may-care mood, taking up his cue, leapt forward and went through his dance with such dazzling brilliance and won such universal acclaim that henceforth any intrigue for the suppression of the youthful artist was impossible, and it was Prévôt, not Marie-Anne, who eventually had to go.

While Sallé—also a pupil of Prévôt—was making a bid for fame in London, Camargo was taking Paris by storm, and creating another of which she was temporarily the unhappy centre. Furious at this second obtrusion on the public notice Mlle. Prévôt bitterly upbraided her pushing young pupil, refused to give her any more lessons, and even to dance with her in an entrée in which the Duchesse de Berri had asked her to appear.

A well-known male dancer of the Opera, seeing Camargo in tears, said to her: “Leave this severe and jealous mistress, who seeks only to mortify you. I will give you lessons, and will compose the entrée which the Duchesse requires and you shall dance in it.” Under the careful direction of Blondi the young dancer—then only sixteen—made rapid progress. She combined noblesse and brilliance of execution, with grace, lightness, and a gaiety which was natural to her—on the stage. One who had seen her described her in the following terms: “C’était une femme d’esprit; fort gaie sur la scène et fort triste à la ville; qui n’était ni jolie ni bien faite, mais légère, et la légèreté était alors un mérite fort rare. Elle exécutait avec une extrême facilité la ‘royale’ et ‘l’entrechat’ coupé sans frottement....”

There was for a little time considerable rivalry between Sallé, Camargo and a third young dancer named Roland, of whose record history has been neglectful. But the rivalry was testified by an anonymous scribe whose verses may be translated as follow:

“Of Camargo, Roland, Sallé

The connoisseurs have much to say!

One holds ’tis Sallé’s grace that tells,

And one—Roland in joy excels.

But each is struck by the display

Of nimble steps and daring way

Of Camargo.

“Equal the balance ’twixt the three

But were I Paris, forced to choose,

Only I know I could not use

But crown the dance, sublime and free,

Of Camargo.”

There was of course the inevitable tribute from Voltaire, whose poem, apart from the ingenuity with which he divides his favours between the rival stars, is of unusual interest, since it gives a useful impression of their contrasted styles in apostrophising the dancers thus:

“Ah! Camargo, que vous êtes brillante!

Mais que Sallé, grand dieux! est ravissante!

Que vos pas sont légers, et que les siens sont doux!

Elle est inimitable, et vous êtes nouvelle;

Les nymphes sautent comme vous

Et les Grâces dansent comme elle.”

It is all safe praise of course, but when we separate the qualities one finds that he is only versifying the current opinion—Camargo is “brillante,” her steps are “légers,” and the “nouvelle” refers less to her than to the novelty of her steps, with the clever invention of which she delighted her audience; and the nymphs, you observe, “sautent comme vous,” an appropriate phrase for one whose entrechats amazed a generation to which such things were new. On the other hand, Sallé was “ravissante,” her steps were “doux”; she was “inimitable,” and “les Grâces dansent comme elle,” a point of special significance when we recall the historic distinction between the words sauter and danser.

Voltaire’s admiration was not exactly fevered—could the icy “intellectual” ever have been that? Not so the rest of Paris. Rumour soon gave her countless lovers—as it will a pretty actress to-day?—but history does not record that she succumbed to their protestations. Certainly duels were fought on her behalf; but probably she was unaware that she was the cause; and certainly she did not provoke them. Was she a pretty actress? Setting aside the opinion of her feminine contemporaries, unbiased colleagues thought not. Yet painters such as Lancret, Vanloo, and Pater sought for the honour of depicting her graceful figure and—was it her face? Well, as to actual features perhaps she was not faultlessly beautiful, but with that mingled Italian and Spanish blood, even if she were swarthy as some said, she must have been striking, temperamental, full of fire and “interesting” as we might say to-day. Much of her fascination must have been in expression, and one feels that she had that quality which often makes a dancer—sheer joy in dancing.

M. Ballon and Mlle. Prévôt
(After an engraving [reversed] in the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra).

Camargo
(From the painting by Lancret in the Wallace Collection).

Her style was noted by contemporaries as combining quickness with grace to a degree not previously achieved, and she won special credit for her invention of new steps. Her improvisation of new dances was remarkable, and it is important to note that she was the first to perform an entrechat, which, only for the benefit of non-dancing readers, may be described as the step in which a dancer actually crosses her feet rapidly while in mid-air. This historic innovation took place in 1730, and she could make four crossings; while eight are said to be as many as any dancer has since performed.

Another interesting point to note is that until the advent of Camargo the ballet skirts reached nearly, or quite, to the ankles. She was the first to shorten it, not, of course, to the brevity one can only regret has been too often seen since, but to such degree as to enable the steps to be better seen and the dancer to have greater freedom of movement. Her favourite dances were the Tambourin, Gavotte, and Rigaudon, or Rigadoon, as it is known in English. But for all the shortening of the skirt and the rapidity of her steps, Marie-Anne was never accused from departing from modesty, grace, and refinement of deportment.

A curious personal characteristic was, that while on the stage she was the incarnation of gaiety, yet in private life she was for the most part strangely grave, and even sad; though, with all the advantages of talent, position, and wealth of which she was possessed, it might have been expected she should be quite otherwise. No one ever discovered the reason. One imagines it to have been that modern disease, “the artistic temperament,” and a steady perception of the pitiful fact that all stage triumphs are but transient; and that, popular as she might be, and was, on her retirement in 1751, her fame would not long endure after her death, which actually occurred in 1770. Yet to-day she lives for us in Lancret’s exquisite picture, for all to see who visit Hertford House.

CAMARGO SPEAKS

“Talk to me not of poor Prévôt,

With all her peevish airs and graces;

Her day is past! ’Tis sad, I know,

But then—we cannot all be aces!

’Tis time she learned her proper place is

A little lower in the pack;

For all in favour now my pace is:

Of Rigaudons I have the knack.

“Though some still like a vogue that’s slow,

Formal, and stiff, the present craze is

All for the dance that has some ‘go;’

And Minuet enjoys all praises.

But yet my dance the more amazes,

And none can follow on my ‘track,’

As step with swift step interlaces.

Of Rigaudons I have the knack.

“When in my aerial flight I go,

High leaping, see the people’s faces!

How round their eyes begin to grow,

And what a shout each one upraises!

Perchance some jealous girl grimaces.

But what of that! when, smiling back,

I see the one thing she betrays is—

Of Rigaudons I have the knack!

ENVOI

“But oh! one fear my soul abases.

Time will some day my fair limbs rack!

Who then will reck that now the phrase is—

‘Of Rigaudons I have the knack’?”

CHAPTER XIX
THE HOUSE OF VESTRIS

It is recorded that during one of the many revolts indulged in by the dancers of the Paris Opera against managerial control, which incidentally meant, of course, State and Royal control, some of the leaders were sent to Fort l’Evêque—including Auguste Vestris.

So melodramatically pathetic was the farewell scene with his father, Gaetan, that even his colleagues laughed! “Go my son,” said le Diou de la Danse. “This is the most glorious moment of your career. Take my carriage, and ask for the cell which was occupied by my friend the King of Poland. I will meet every expense.”

And the great Gaetan is said to have added, with an air of injured dignity, that this was the first time in history that there had been “any difference of opinion between the House of Bourbon and the House of Vestris!”

What was the—“House of Vestris?” Well, it was a fairly numerous one, of which, so far as our interest is concerned, Gaetan was virtually the founder. He had a father it is true, who, being employed, it is believed, in a Florentine pawnbroker’s, got into some trouble and with his young family “cleared” to Naples. There being no trains, “wireless” or Scotland Yard in those days, they stayed there in safety for a while; the children, who had been taught music and dancing, being made to exercise their talents in that direction for their general support.

Palermo was the next move, where two of the girls, Marie-Therese and Violante, with one of the sons, Gaetan, entered the Opera. After that they seem to have scattered and travelled over most of cultured Europe, appearing now in one opera house, now in another, and always deeply engaged in love affairs. It is with their arrival in Paris, and with Gaetan more especially that we now have to do.

He was one of the eight children of Thomas Vestris and his wife, née Violante-Beatrix de Dominique Bruscagli, but only of three of the family have we much record, namely, Gaetan and the two sisters already mentioned.

Gaetan-Appolino Balthazar Vestris was born at Florence in April, 1729, and in importance—though far from it in physique—was the Mordkin of his era. There, however, the resemblance ceases.

He was a little man, with the biggest ideas of his own talents. But his size did not detract from his merits, his sheer style as a dancer; and from all accounts he is to be ranked as one of the finest male dancers the world has ever known. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he is one of the most important factors in the history of the modern dance and that his influence as a teacher is seen to-day in the real classic school, that is, the school which is based on ages of tradition. For Gaetan was in his time the supreme leader of the Dance, and undoubtedly gave a new standard and tradition to Paris, the influence of which spread to every Opera House on the Continent.

He is a link in a chain. One of the first dancing masters to assist Louis XIV in establishing his Royal Academy of Music and Dance—and modern theatrical dancing dates from that event—was Beauchamps, whose pupil was “the great” Dupré. He taught Gaetan Vestris. Gaetan in turn taught his son Auguste, of whom, in his later years, Carlotta Grisi was a pupil, and there may be some to-day who have studied under pupils of Carlotta Grisi, who herself died comparatively recently.

According to a contemporary biographer Gaetan made his début at the Royal Academy of Music and Dance “sans retribution,” in 1748; entered there for study in 1749, became a solo dancer in 1751, a Member of the Académie Royale de Danse in 1753; maître de ballet in 1761 until 1770, and composer and master of Ballet from that year until 1776.

From time to time he visited Stuttgart—as the Russian dancers to-day have visited London—in vacation, and in the theatre there under the direction of that master of ballet-composition and stage reformer, Jean Georges Noverre, found greater scope for his artistic abilities than in the more conventional work of the Paris Opera.

We have seen that by her invention of new and rapid steps, Camargo infused new life into the technique of theatrical dancing some years before the rise of Gaetan Vestris to supremacy. He, in turn, came to bring a new influence mainly in the direction of a certain largeur of movement and gesture, a certain grandiosity, as well as setting a new standard in perfection of execution.

A contemporary critic declared: “When Vestris appeared at the Opera one really believed it was Apollo who had come to earth to give lessons in grace. He perfected the art of the Dance, gave more freedom to the ‘positions’ already known, and created new ones.”

Undoubtedly he learnt much from Noverre, even as the latter had learnt much from David Garrick. Noverre conceived the idea of creating the dance with action, in short, the ballet-pantomime; at least its creation was claimed, and by some of his contemporaries, attributed to him; though we have seen that he had forerunners in the Duchesse du Maine, and, too, in Sallé, who was an ardent stage-reformer and seems to have influenced Noverre. But it was the latter who took practical steps towards instituting the real ballet in action, the true ballet-pantomime as we have seen it to-day.

Up to this time, opera-ballet had had a somewhat rigid form: there were music, singing and dancing; but the dances were detached items in the general effect. The regulation form was: passe-pieds in the prologue; musettes in the first act; tambourins in the second; chaconnes and passacailles in the third and fourth.

In all this it was not the plot of the opera which decided the introduction of the dances, but quite other considerations, such as the particular excellence of particular dancers in their special dances—the best performers usually appearing last. It was routine, not the action of the story by which these things were ordered; and the poet who had provided the plot, the musician who had composed the music, the costumier and scenic artist, and even the ballet master, each worked detachedly, without regard to consultation and cooperation towards an artistic unity of effect.

The lines had been set, the routine laid down for all time; any deviation therefrom seemed impossible, a thing vainly imagined only by a heretic, who could not hope to win in a fight against the established form and authority of the Opera. Yet the reformation came. Noverre, the reformer, found in Gaetan Vestris a technical exponent who responded to his influence; and in Dauberval, another; and at Stuttgart the time and place for artistic experiment. It is to this triumvirate that credit was given in their own time for the reform of the scène chorégraphique, a reform which had to struggle against and overcome tradition, prejudice, ignorance and the obstinacy of authority. Slow progress was made at first. Stuttgart had its effect, but the Paris Opera still clung to the bizarre accessories which were then regarded as inherent to the dignity of the theatre—the masks, under which the faces were hidden, the towering wigs by which the heads were bowed; the absurd panniers; the puffed skirts; the great breastplates, all forming the heroic panoply by which the leading histrions were known for hero and heroine, and traces of which may be found in those spangled figures beloved of our grandfathers and grandmothers in their childhood, during the first half of last century.

Gaetan Vestris
(From an old print).

Gaetan Vestris was the first dancer who dared to discard that absurd convention—the mask, and so reveal that expressive play of feature which made acted ballet possible. This was in 1770, when he appeared in a ballet-pantomime on the story of Medea and Jason. He astonished the audience by the dramatic force of his miming and by the nobility of his physiognomical expression. One critic wrote: “Le mérite particulier de Vestris, c’était la grâce, l’élégance et la délicatesse. Tous ses pas avaient une pureté, un fini dont on ne peut se faire une idée aujourd’hui et ce n’est pas sans quelque raison qu’on compare son talent à celui de Racine.”

For all his artistic talent as dancer and mime, however, Gaetan was practically illiterate; ignorant of all save the art in which he excelled; and his conceit was colossal.

One day, when he was coming from a rehearsal at the Opera, a somewhat ample lady happened, in passing, to tread rather heavily on one of his feet. In deep concern she apologised profusely, and expressed an earnest hope that she had not seriously hurt him.

“Hurt me, Madam!” he answered. “Me? You have merely put all Paris into mourning for a fortnight!”

His pride in his son was stupendous, and he once declared that, “If Auguste occasionally descends to touch the earth it is merely out of consideration for the feelings of less talented colleagues.” As to himself, on one occasion he volunteered the assertion that his century had produced but three really great men—Frederick the Great, Voltaire and himself!

Of the many susceptible ladies who succumbed to the questionable fascination of this “Diou de la Danse”—as in his Italianate-French he called himself—the most notable—apart from his legitimate wife, the beautiful danseuse Heinel, whom he married in 1752—was Mlle. Allard.

Born of poor and none too honest parents, Marie Allard first drew breath on August 14th, 1742, at Marseilles, where at an early age she entered the local theatre. On the death of her mother, she decided to leave a disreputable father and made her way to Lyons, where she found another not very brilliant theatrical engagement. At the age of fourteen, tiring of Lyons, she set out to win fame in Paris, where she entered the Comédie Française. In the course of time, she came to know Gaetan Vestris, and with him she studied dancing.

She made her début at the Opera in June, 1761, and delighted the audience with the verve, grace and gaiety of her dancing. Though she shone especially in comedy, she was noted as a clever actress in tragedy; and while “Sylvie,” in the comedy-ballet of that name, was one of her most successful parts, she is said to have moved beholders to tears by her performance in Noverre’s “Medea.”

In the lighter rôles, however, she was especially popular, and from the moment of her entrée (she was the only dancer at the Opera who was allowed to compose her own entrées, not edible!) her gaiety of manner was such as almost to eclipse the real talent displayed in her dancing.

Unfortunately, her public career came to a close all too soon for her admirers, from a cause which even she with all her agility and incessant exercise, was unable to control—a tendency to embonpoint! She retired in 1781, and died in 1802; not before she had seen the success of her and Gaetan Vestris’ son, Auguste, who, known as Vestr’-Allard, seemed to combine within him the respective choreographic perfections of mother and father.

Gaetan Vestris, having retired in 1782, lived until 1808, and rejoiced to see his son acknowledged as supreme. On him he graciously conferred the title of Le Diou de la Danse; and he declared that it was, after all, only natural that Auguste should excel, since the young man possessed one advantage over himself—he “had Gaetan for his father!”

Auguste, or Marie-Auguste, to give his full name, was born at Paris in 1760. He made his début at the age of twelve in a divertissement entitled “Cinquantaine” with a chaconne, which he danced in a manner such as had never been seen. In 1773 he made a strikingly successful appearance as Eros in the ballet of “Endymion;” and though already recognised as a master he entered the Academy school in 1775 and the Opera in the following year. For some time he accepted subordinate rôles, but gradually his consummate ability in all he undertook brought him forward, and as he became more and more the pet of the ladies of the Opera and the admiration of its patrons he began to develop his father’s traits, especially conceit.

On one occasion the Director, de Vismes, annoyed at some impertinence of the young man, said, “Monsieur Vestris, do you know to whom you speak?”

“Yes,” Auguste replied, “to the farmer of my talent.”

It says much for that talent that his appearance at the Opera during some thirty-five years, under Louis-Seize, the Republic and the Empire, largely accounted for its prosperity in those amazing times.

He had his father’s grace, precision, suppleness, and style, but more spirit and vivacity; a greater gift of mime; and was as good in genre as in the nobler rôles. He paid several visits to London, always with success.

He married in 1795, a young dancer, Anne-Catherine Augier, who had made her début at the Opera two years before under the nom de théâtre of Aimée, but his infatuation for her modesty and charm and many good qualities did not last any longer than had his other infatuations for worse qualities in less desirable ladies, and his infidelities led her to attempt suicide, with results that left her more or less an invalid until death put an end to her unhappy existence in 1809. Auguste Vestris himself died in 1842, and left one son Auguste-Armand. He made his début at the Opera, as did a cousin, Charles Vestris, both being pupils of Auguste; and both went abroad; but neither added greater brilliance to the family name than had been achieved for it by first Gaetan, and then Auguste, the first and most distinguished upholders of the House of Vestris.

CHAPTER XX
JEAN GEORGES NOVERRE

Supreme above all other writers on the dance and ballet is Jean Georges Noverre, whose genius has been praised by Diderot, Voltaire, by D’Alembert, Dorat, and by David Garrick, the last of whom described him as “the Shakespeare” of the dance.

Born at Paris in April, 1727, he was the son of a distinguished Swiss soldier, who had served as an adjutant in the army of Charles XII, and intended his son for a military career.

Jean, however, early developed a passion for the stage, and especially for dancing, so was apprenticed by his father to the famous Parisian dancer and maître de ballet, Dupré.

In August, 1743, young Noverre made his début at the Court of Louis-Quinze in a fête at Fontainebleau, but with only moderate success. Not discouraged, however, he went a little later to the Court of Berlin, where he became a favourite with Frederick the Great and his brother, Prince Henry of Prussia.

He returned to France in 1747, and two years later obtained the post of maître de ballet at the Opéra Comique, where the success of his “Ballet Chinois” aroused considerable jealousy among his colleagues and brought him some distinction in the art world. But the success was not great enough for his ambitious spirit, and he again travelled, and did not return to Paris for nearly twenty years. Noverre and such are seldom recognised as prophets in their own country, until their genius has received recognition abroad. As Castil-Blaze, the historian of opera in France, has neatly expressed it: “Noverre and the two Gardels effected in the dance the same revolution that Gluck and Sacchini achieved some years later in French music.” But Noverre was unable to do this as a young man in Paris fighting against the sheer dead weight of convention and hide-bound authority. He was unable to do it until he had won his laurels abroad.

Sallé, one of the most exquisite and “intellectual” of danseuses, had left Paris for a more appreciative audience in London because the Paris Opera disliked her attempts to discard the ridiculous conventions of stage costumes then ruling and to “reform it altogether” in favour of something more congruous.

Noverre visioned to himself a theatre devoted to a kind of ballet as different from that he saw in Paris, as the Russian ballet we have seen to-day differs from that which London had seen in the ’thirties of last century; a ballet that should be informed by a technique so perfect as to be unobtrusive, and combining the arts of dance, pantomime, music and poesy into a new, subtle, resourceful and comprehensive means of artistic expression.

He wanted to see swept away all the mechanical rules of ballet composition, the stereotyped and unimaginative story, the conventional arrangement of stage groups, the stilted “heroic” style of the dancers, the formal sequence of their entrées, and above all, the bizarrerie of their masks, their panniers and helmets with waving, funereal plumes. He wanted to infuse a new spirit of art and efficiency into what he found about him and—he had to go elsewhere! An invitation from the Duke of Würtemberg to become maître de ballet at the luxurious Court of Stuttgart gave him his chance, and he founded here the school which was to influence European Ballet in that and the successive generation, as the school of Petrograd seemed like to do to-day.

The publication of his Lettres sur la Danse et sur les Ballets, in 1760, dedicated by permission to this same Duke of Würtemberg and Teck, caused a sensation among dancers in Paris and other capitals, and having produced ballets in Berlin, London (1755), Lyons (1758), and Stuttgart, he was reintroduced to Paris by Vestris (who had been in the habit of visiting Stuttgart every year to dance during his vacations) in 1765, when he achieved a success with his tragic ballet of “Medea.”

Later he was to visit Vienna, to superintend the fêtes on the occasion of the marriage of the Archduchess Caroline (Queen of Naples), produce there a dozen ballets, and become appointed Director of Court fêtes and Maître de Danse to the Empress Maria Theresa and Imperial Family, the Empress heaping favours upon him and granting a lieutenancy to his son.

From Vienna he went to the Court of Milan, where he was created Chevalier of the Order of the Cross; then to the Courts of Naples and Lisbon; then to London, and finally again to Paris, in 1775, on the invitation of his old pupil, Marie Antoinette, who made him Maître des Ballets en Chef at the Imperial Academy of Music, and Director of the fêtes at the Petit Trianon; finally retiring at the outbreak of the French Revolution, to London, where it is possible—or, at any rate, in England—some of his descendants may yet be living.

A translation of these wonderful Lettres sur la Danse et sur les Ballets was published in London in 1780, and was dedicated to the then Prince of Wales, later George IV. In the preface the anonymous translator says: “The works of Monsieur Noverre, especially the following letters, have been translated into most of the European languages and thought worthy of a distinguished place in the libraries of the literati.” To which, let me add, they should be so thought to-day, at least in their original French form, for they are of uncommon interest and literary charm.

In the somewhat stiff manner of the English of the late Georgian period, his translator remarks of Noverre’s work in the original: “His manner of writing is chaste, correct and elegant; perfectly master of his subjects, he treats of them with the utmost perspicuity; and by the connection which he proves to exist between the other arts, and that of dancing, the author lays down rules and precepts for them all; so that the poet, the painter and the musician may be greatly benefited by the perusal of his works.”

The translator follows with a short history of dancing, and three extremely interesting epistles to Noverre from the great Voltaire, in the first of which, apropos the publication of Noverre’s Lettres, he says: “I have read, sir, your work of genius: my gratitude equals my esteem. You promise only to treat of dancing, and you shed a light on all the arts. Your style is as eloquent as your ballet is imaginative.” In another he remarks: “I have for admiring you, a reason personal to myself; it is that your works abound with poetical images. Poets and painters shall vie with each other to have you ranked with them.” Again he says: “I am surprised that you have not been offered such advantages as might have kept you in France; but that time is no more when France sets the example to all Europe”; but elsewhere remarks, curiously enough: “I believe that your merit will be fully recognised in England, for there they love Nature.”

Jean Georges Noverre

It was just this love of Nature and “natural” acting which brought Noverre and Garrick together in mutual admiration and friendship, to the latter of whom, by the way, the French maître pays the highest tribute in his tenth letter. To turn, however, to the first: “Poetry, painting and dancing are, or ought to be, the faithful copy of Nature ... a ballet is a piece of painting, the scene is the canvas; in the mechanical motions of the figures we find the colours ... the composer himself is the painter.

“Ballets have hitherto been the faint sketch only of what they might one day be. An art entirely subservient, as this is, to taste and genius, may receive daily variations and improvements. History, painting, mythology, poetry, all join to raise it from that obscurity in which it lies buried; and it is truly surprising that composers have hitherto disdained so many valuable resources.... If ballets are for the most part uninteresting and uniformly dull, if they fail in their characteristic expression which constitutes their very essence, the defect does not originate from the art itself, but should be ascribed to the artists. Are then the latter to be told that dancing is an imitative art? I am indeed inclined to think that they know it not, since we daily see the generality of composers sacrifice the beauties of the dance and forego the graceful naïveté of sentiment, to become servile copyists of a certain number of figures known and hackneyed for a century or more.... It is uncommon and next to impossible now to find invention in ballets, elegance in the forms, neatness in the groups, or the requisite precision in the means of introducing the various figures.”

“Ballet masters should consult the productions of the most eminent painters. This would bring them nearer to Nature and induce them to avoid as often as possible that symmetry of figures which, by repeating the object, presents two separate pictures on one and the same canvas. A ballet, perfect in all its parts, is a picture drawn from life, of the manners, dresses, ceremonies and customs of the various nations. It must be a complete panto-mime and through the eyes speak, as it were, to the very soul of the spectator. If it wants expression, if it be deficient in point of situation and scenery, it degenerates into a mere spectacle, flat and monotonous.

“This kind of composition will not admit of mediocrity; like the art of painting it requires a degree of perfection the more difficult to attain in that it is subordinate to a true imitation of Nature, and that it is next to an impossibility to achieve that all-subduing truth which conceals the illusion from the spectator, carries him, as it were, to the very spot where the scene lies; and inspires him with the same sentiments as he must experience, were he present at the events which the artist only represents.

“Ballets, being regular representations, ought to unite the various parts of the drama. Most of the subjects, adapted to the dancer, are devoid of sense, and exhibit only a confused jumble of scenes, equally unmeaning and unconnected; yet it is in general absolutely necessary to confine oneself within certain rules. The historical part of a ballet must have its exposition, its incidents, its dénouement. The success of this kind of entertainment chiefly depends on choosing good subjects, and dealing with them in a proper manner.”

The above brief quotations are all of interest as bearing on particular points in dancing and ballet-composition, but I cannot refrain from giving one more and a lengthier excerpt, the sound common sense of which applies to-day and will appeal to all modern dancers who realise that the finest opportunities of displaying their skill are, and can only be, found in ballets worthy of their art.

“Every ballet,” he says, “complicated and extensive in its subject, which does not point out, with clearness and perspicuity, the action it is intended to represent, the intrigue of which is unintelligible, without a program or printed explanation: a ballet, in fine, whose plan is not felt, and appears deficient in point of exposition, incident and dénouement; such a ballet, I say, will never rise, in my opinion, above a mere divertissement of dancing, more or less commendable from the manner in which it is performed. But it cannot affect me much, since it bears no particular character, and is devoid of expression.

“It may be objected that dancing is now in so improved a state that it may please, nay, enchant without the accessory ornaments of expression and sentiment.... I readily acknowledge that, as to mechanical execution, the art has attained the highest degree of perfection: I shall even confess that it sometimes is graceful: but gracefulness is but a small portion of the qualities it requires.

“What I call the mechanical parts of dancing are the steps linked to each other with ease and brilliancy, the aplomb, steadiness, activity, liveliness, and a well-directed opposition between the arms and legs. When all these parts are managed without genius, when the latter does not direct these different motions, and animate them by the fire of sentiment and expression; I feel neither emotion nor concern. The dexterity of the dancer obtains my applause; I admire the automaton, but I experience no further sensation. It has upon me the same effect as the most beautiful line, whose words are uncouthly set asunder, producing sound, not sense. As for instance, what would a reader feel at hearing the following detached words: Fame-lives-in-dies-he-cause-who-in-virtue’s? Yet these very words aptly joined by the man of genius, by Shakespeare, express the noblest sentiment:

‘He lives in Fame who dies in Virtue’s cause.’

“From the above comparison we may fairly conclude that the art of Dancing has in itself all that is necessary to speak the best language, but that it is not enough to be acquainted only with its alphabet. Let the man of genius put the letters together, form the words, and from these produce regular sentences; the art shall no longer be mute, but speak with true energy, and the ballets will share with the best dramatic pieces the peculiar advantage of exciting the tenderest feelings; nay, of receiving the tribute of a tear; while, in a less serious style, this art will please, entertain and charm the spectators. Dancing thus ennobled by the expression of sentiment, and under the direction of a man of true genius, will, in time, obtain the praises which the enlightened world bestows on poetry and painting, and become entitled to the rewards with which the latter are daily honoured.”

The closing lines of the above are so curiously prophetic one questions whether we have not already reached the period when an “enlightened world” bestows on dancing—at any rate on dancers—the “rewards” with which poetry and painting have been (or ought to have been) hitherto honoured.