Folk-lore of Shakespeare, Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer [e reader comics TXT] 📗
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Hay. Douce[828] says this dance was borrowed by us from the French, and is classed among the “brawls” in Thoinot Arbeau’s “Orchesographie” (1588). In “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 1), Dull says: “I will play on tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance their hay.”
Jig. Besides meaning a merry, sprightly dance, a jig also implied a coarse sort of comic entertainment, in which sense it is probably used by Hamlet (ii. 2): “He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry.” “It seems,” says Mr. Collier,[829] “to have been a ludicrous composition in rhyme, sung, or said, by the clown, and accompanied by dancing and playing upon the pipe and tabor.”[830] an instance of which perhaps occurs in the Clown’s song at the close of “Twelfth Night:”
Fletcher, in the Prologue to the “Fair Maid of the Inn,” says:
Praised and applauded by a clamorous chime.”
Among the allusions to this dance we may quote one in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 1), where Beatrice compares wooing to a Scotch jig; and another in “Twelfth Night” (i. 3), where Sir Toby Belch says, his “very walk should be a jig.”
Lavolta. According to Florio, the lavolta is a kind of turning French dance, in which the man turns the woman round several times, and then assists her in making a high spring or cabriole. It is thus described by Sir John Davies:
A loftie jumping, or a leaping round,
Where arme in arme two dauncers are entwined,
And whirle themselves, with strict embracements bound;
And still their feet an anapest do sound,
An anapest is all their musicks song,
Whose first two feet are short, and third is long.”
Douce,[831] however, considers it to be of Italian origin, and says, “It passed from Italy into Provence and the rest of France, and thence into England.” Scot, too, in his “Discovery of Witchcraft,” thus speaks of it: “He saith, that these night-walking, or rather night-dancing, witches, brought out of Italie into France that dance which is called la Volta.” Shakespeare, in his “Henry V.” (iii. 5), makes the Duke of Bourbon allude to it:
And teach lavoltas high, and swift corantos.”
Again, in “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 4), Troilus says:
Nor heel the high lavolt.”
Light o’ Love. This was an old dance tune, and was a proverbial expression for levity, especially in love matters.[832] In “Much Ado About Nothing” (iii. 4), Margaret says: “Clap’s into ‘Light o’ love;’ that goes without a burden; do you sing it, and I’ll dance it;” to which Beatrice answers: “Yea, light o’ love, with your heels.”
In “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (i. 2), it is alluded to:
In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (v. 2), we read:
And gallops to the tune of ‘Light o’ love.’”
And in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Chances” (i. 3), Frederic says: “Sure he has encounter’d some light-o’-love or other.”
Pavan. This was a grave and majestic dance, in which the gentlemen wore their caps, swords, and mantles, and the ladies their long robes and trains. The dancers stepped round the room and then crossed in the middle, trailing their garments on the ground, “the motion whereof,” says Sir J. Hawkins, “resembled that of a peacock’s tail.” It is alluded to in “Twelfth Night” (v. 1) by Sir Toby: “A passy-measures pavin,” although the reading of this passage is uncertain, the editors of the “Globe” edition substituting panyn.
It has been conjectured that the “passy-measure galliard,” and the “passy-measure pavan” were only two different measures of the same dance, from the Italian passamezzo.[833]
Roundel. This was also called the “round,” a dance of a circular kind, and is probably referred to by Titania in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 2), where she says to her train:[834]
Ben Jonson, in the “Tale of a Tub,”[835] seems to call the rings, which such fairy dances are supposed to make, roundels.
Satyrs’ Dance. A dance of satyrs was a not uncommon entertainment in Shakespeare’s day, or even at an earlier period.[836] It was not confined to England, and has been rendered memorable by the fearful accident with which it was accompanied at the Court of France in 1392, a graphic description of which has been recorded by Froissart. In the “Winter’s Tale” (iv. 4), the satyrs’ dance is alluded to by the Servant, who says: “Master, there is three carters, three shepherds, three neat-herds, three swine-herds, that have made themselves all men of hair; they call themselves Saltiers: and they have a dance which the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not in’t.” In a book of songs composed by Thomas Ravenscroft and others, in the time of Shakespeare, we find one[837] called the “Satyres’ daunce.” It is for four voices, and is as follows:
To the glorious sunne we sing.
Hoe, hoe!
And the imperiall crowne of bayes,
Him with shoutes and songs we praise.
Hoe, hoe!
The humble sylvanes and their shaggy race.”
Sword-dance. In olden times there were several kinds of sword-dances, most of which afforded opportunities for the display of skill. In “Antony and Cleopatra” (iii. 11), there seems to be an allusion to this custom, where Antony, speaking of Cæsar, says:[838]
His sword e’en like a dancer.”
And in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 1), where Bertram, lamenting that he is kept from the wars, adds:
Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,
Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn
But one to dance with.”
In “Titus Andronicus” (ii. 1), too, Demetrius says to Chiron:
Gave you a dancing-rapier by your side.”
Tread a Measure, to which the King refers in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (v. 2), when he tells Boyet to tell Rosaline
To tread a measure with her on this grass,”
was a grave solemn dance, with slow and measured steps, like the minuet. As it was of so solemn a nature, it was performed[839] at public entertainments in the Inns of Court, and it was “not unusual, nor thought inconsistent, for the first characters in the law to bear a part in treading a measure.”
Trip and Go was the name of a favorite morris-dance, and appears, says Mr. Chappell, in his “Popular Music of the Olden Times,” etc. (2d edition, vol. i. p. 131), to have become a proverbial expression. It is used in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (iv. 2).
Up-spring. From the following passage, in Chapman’s “Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany,” it would seem that this was a German dance:
An almain and an up-spring, that is all.”
Karl Elze,[840] who, a few years ago, reprinted Chapman’s “Alphonsus” at Leipsic, says that the word “up-spring” “is the ‘Hüpfauf,’ the last and wildest dance at the old German merry-makings. No epithet could there be more appropriate to this drunken dance than Shakespeare’s swaggering” in “Hamlet” (i. 4):
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels.”
[824] Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 134.
[825] See Chappell’s “Popular Music of the Olden Time,” 2d edition, vol. i. p. 368; Dyce’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 63.
[826] Quoted by Nares from Sir John Davies on “Dancing.” Mr. Dyce, “Glossary,” p. 81, says that Nares wrongly confounded this with the “gallard.”
[827] See Knight’s “Pictorial Shakespeare,” vol. ii. p. 375; Dyce’s “Glossary,” 1836, p. 152; “British Popular Customs,” 1876, pp. 276, 277. See also Chappell’s “Popular Music of the Olden Time,” 2d edition, vol. i. p. 235; Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 292.
[828] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 146.
[829] “History of English Dramatic Poetry,” vol. iii. p. 380; see Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 229; Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 450; Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. ix. pp. 198, 219.
[830] “Hamlet:” iii. 2: “your only jig-maker.”
[831] “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 301; see Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 498.
[832] Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. ii. p. 510.
[833] See Dyce, vol. iii. p. 412, note 121.
[834] Roundel also meant a song. Mr. Dyce considers the dance is here meant.
[835] See Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. ii. p. 333.
[836] See Knight’s “Pictorial Shakespeare,” vol. ii. p. 384; Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. iv. p. 85; Boswell’s “Shakespeare,” vol. xiv. p. 371.
[837] See Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 222.
[838] See Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” 1876, pp. 300, 301; Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” p. 193.
[839] Singer’s “Shakespeare,” vol. ii. p. 269; Sir Christopher Hatton was famous for it.
[840] Quoted in Dyce’s “Glossary,” p. 476.
CHAPTER XVIII. PUNISHMENTS.Shakespeare has not omitted to notice many of the punishments which were in use in years gone by; the scattered allusions to these being interesting in so far as they serve to illustrate the domestic manners and customs of our forefathers. Happily, however, these cruel tortures, which darken the pages of history, have long ago passed into oblivion; and at the present day it is difficult to believe that such barbarous practices could ever have been tolerated in any civilized country. The horrible punishment of “boiling to death,” is mentioned in “Twelfth Night” (ii. 5), where Fabian says: “If I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy.” In “Winter’s Tale” (iii. 2), Paulina inquires:
What wheels? racks? fires? What flaying? boiling
In leads or oils? What old or newer torture
Must I receive?”
There seems to be an indirect allusion to this punishment in “The Two Noble Kinsmen” (iv. 3), where the Gaoler’s Daughter in her madness speaks of those who “are mad, or hang, or drown themselves, being put into a caldron of lead and usurer’s grease, and there boiling like a gammon of bacon that will never be enough.”
The practice of holding burning basins before the eyes of captives, to destroy their eyesight, is probably alluded to by Macbeth (iv. 1), in the passage where the apparitions are presented
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