Ballets for the Bourgeois

Abstract

The ballet de cour, as its name implies, was essentially an aristocratic genre danced by kings, queens and courtiers for their own entertainment. It flourished as long as princes continued to rank dancing as the highest accomplishment, then it was transformed.1 Such a view, though generally accurate, does not give a complete account. Danced entertainments in early modern Europe extended beyond the confines of courts; they invaded the public theatres, and they involved interchange between city councils and the king (or his representative). There were frequent performances in private town and country houses, not all of them belonging to noblemen.2 Attempts to give a fuller picture have been frustrated by lack of evidence, contemporary sources offering only tantalising glimpses and brief insights; there is, however, a resource which has not been fully exploited the Registres et diliberations de la ville de Paris where one finds accounts of royal performances for the burghers of Paris and their wives. These reports amplify the evidence found in writers of memoirs who conscientiously noted their own participation in ballets de cour, but rarely gave precise indications of performances other than at court. Thus the marechal de Bassompierre, in his Journal de ma vie, included many references to ballets danced before Henri IV and Louis XIII, boasting his dancing skills (which were considerable), only occasionally naming other noble dancers and perhaps suggesting the overall subject of the work or the part he danced himself. He noted, for example, 'ballet danse a la ville' for 1608 and 1612, but offers no further enlightenment.3 Mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter of Louis XIII's brother, the duc d'Orleans, loved dancing and her father indulged her taste to the full. She refers to ballets and mascarades frequently in her writings, showing how she especially relished those times when she could go out masked, thus avoiding rules of precedence and due ceremony, and she was never more delighted than when Monsieur Marchand, her treasurer, greeted her homecoming after a long journey with impromptu ballets.4 In their