The maner of dauncying

Abstract

In the great two-volume survey of Shakespeare's England, published in 1916, the discussion of' dancing appears in the section on 'Sports and Pastimes'; the fine arts proper are taken up in another part of the work. Clearly the editors considered dancing an activity, like swimming, not a fine art, like music.2 In the following pages, I wish to consider, not whether the editors were right in so categorizing dance, for that is a metaphysical question, but how the history of dance in 16th-century England may have prompted them to separate the art of movement from other forms of' artistic expression. In examining this question, I shall, for a reason which will become immediately apparent, restrict myself to the period of Henry VIII's reign. The only 16th-century source in the English language that gives an account of' the individual steps in a dance is Robert Coplande's translation of' a lost French treatise on 'the maner of dauncynge of bace daunces after the use of fraunce 8c other places', printed in London in 1521.3 As the reader quickly discovers, the information provided by the unknown author and his translator is minimal. The treatise begins with about 600 words on the individual steps and the ways in which they can be combined, and ends with seven choreographies written in French letternotation of'which the following is a characteristic example. Filles a marier / with .iiii. measures. R. b. ss. ddd. 333. b. i ss. d. 333. b. i Unparfyte.