Footprints of The Dance: An Early Seventeenth-Century Dance Master's Notebook

Footprints of the Dance: An Early Seventeenth-Century
Dance Master’s Notebook
Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

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Drama and Theatre
in Early Modern Europe
Editor-in-Chief
Jan Bloemendal (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and

Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Editorial Board
Peter G. F. Eversmann (University of Amsterdam)

Jelle Koopmans (University of Amsterdam)
Joachim Küpper (Freie Universität Berlin)
Russell J. Leo (Princeton University)
volume 8
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/dtem

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Footprints of the Dance:
An Early Seventeenth-
Century Dance Master’s
Notebook
By
Jennifer Nevile
LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Cover illustration: Map of Brussels and its environs from Le theatre du monde, ou novvel atlas by Willem
Janszoon Blaeu and Joan Blaeu (Amsterdam: Jean Blaeu, 1647). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Digital ID number: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3200m.gct00035. Details from the manuscript Cod.
Holm S 253 held in the Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2018030410
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 2211-341x
isbn 978-90-04-36179-9 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-37773-8 (e-book)
Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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To Margaret and Sydney –
for all their encouragement, support and friendship

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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of Tables, Illustrations and Musical Examples xi
A Note on Transcriptions and Translations xiii
Introduction 1
1 A Dance Master’s Notebook 7
2 Dance in Early Modern Europe 30
3 Ballet Plots, Dance Figures and Fireworks 65
4 Dance Teaching, Schools and Pupils 102
5 Danced Combat and the Pike Exhibition 118
6 Dance Music, Dance Songs and Airs de Cour 140
Conclusion 162
Facsimile of Dance-Related Material from S 253 165

Appendix 1: Transcription and Translation of the Six Ballet Plots 244
Appendix 2: The Pike Exhibition (ff. 94r–99v) 252
Bibliography 263
Index 279

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Acknowledgements
It was almost twenty years ago when my interest was first drawn to the large
collection of geometric shapes and figures recorded in a manuscript held in
the Kungliga Biblioteket in Stockholm. At that time I did not realize what
other unique features lay hidden in the manuscript. Even ten years later when
Margaret McGowan and Sydney Anglo first suggested I should examine the
dance master’s notebook in its entirety, I certainly did not foresee what a chal-
lenge the manuscript would present, but neither did I realize what a fascinat-
ing journey the research would become. If it were not for all the support and
help I have received from friends and colleagues along the way then the project
would have undoubtedly taken longer than it did, and the final result would
have been poorer. My heartfelt thanks to you all.
I am particularly grateful for the expertise of Marie-Claude Canova-Green,
John Golder, Melinda Gough, Rebecca Harris-Warrick and John D. Lyons who
provided advice on questions I had concerning the French text, and my trans-
lation of the ballet plots. Tommie Andersson was particularly helpful in re-
sponding to my questions concerning some of the dance music recorded in
the notebook. Sydney Anglo, Mary Chan, Fiona Garlick, Margaret McGowan,
Jennifer Thorp and Tim Wooller were always happy to discuss the questions
and speculative ideas I had about the contents of the manuscript, and their
critical thinking and wise counsel added immeasurably to the book, as did the
comments of Graham Pont, Sydney Anglo, Mary Chan and Margaret McGowan
who all read separate chapters at various stages of their evolution, or the com-
plete manuscript. Any errors that remain are solely the responsibility of the
author.
I also wish to thank the staff at the Kungliga Biblioteket, and in particu-
lar Jonas Nordin, who has been extremely helpful and welcoming in my visits
to the library. His assistance made working in the library a pleasure. He also
kindly translated the catalogue information on the manuscript into English for
me. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank John Powell, who drew
my attention to MS Add. A. 33 with its dance figures more years ago than I care
to remember. I am glad that the material has now received the attention it de-
serves. Jan Bloemendal, the head of the editorial board of the DTEM series at
Brill, has been enthusiastic about the project from the beginning, when all that
existed was a two page outline. His comments and those of the other members
of the editorial board on an earlier version of the manuscript greatly assisted in
tightening and focusing the final text. The comments and suggestions from the
three anonymous reviewers were also very helpful, and I am grateful for them.

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x Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the support, encourage-
ment and expertise of Margaret McGowan and Sydney Anglo. They have con-
tributed to the book in so many ways. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to them
both. In addition to his unfailing love and support, my husband, Tim Wooller,
also provided much needed technical expertise, especially with the issues re-
lating to the illustrations and tables.

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Tables, Illustrations and Musical Examples
All images from Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, Cod. Holm S 253 are reproduced
courtesy of the National Library of Sweden. (Reproduction: Andrea Davis Kronlund,
National Library of Sweden).
Tables
1 Contents of S 253 17
2 Identification of hands in S 253 26
3 Named figures that represent a physical object 89
4 Named geometric figures 89
5 Miscellaneous named figures 90
6 The alchemical meanings of the named figures 97
7 Identified airs from S 253 and their printed concordances 143
8 Ballet entrées with a title in S 253 158
Illustrations
1 Decorative motif by H7 to end the text of the airs on ff. 56v, 60v, 61v and 64r in
S 253 13
2 Example of a squared circle – the eleventh figure on f. 12v in S 253 91
3 A heart on top of a triangle – the fifth figure on f. 16v in S 253 91
4 An upside-down heart on top of a downwards pointing triangle – the first figure
on f. 17r in S 253 91
5 The 5th, 7th and 9th figures from a 1616 balletto showing the dancers facing in
various directions 93
6 Drawing of a rocket on f. 36r (detail) in S 253 97
7 Engravings 7–10 showing how to move the pike from the ‘advance’ position to
‘pike on the shoulder’. In Jacob de Gheyn, Maniement d’armes (1608). Courtesy
of the Getty Research Institute 123
8 Engravings 11–14 showing how to ‘charge’ the pike ready for a forwards thrust.
In Jacob de Gheyn, Maniement d’armes (1608). Courtesy of the Getty Research
Institute 124
9 Engravings 26–29 showing how to turn 180 degrees when holding a pike.
In Jacob de Gheyn, Maniement d’armes (1608). Courtesy of the Getty Research
Institute 125

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xii Tables, Illustrations and Musical Examples
Musical Examples
1a Melody of Je voudrois bien by Antoine de Boësset from Gabriel Bataille, Airs de

différents autheurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre (Paris: P. Ballard, 1615),
pp. 12v–13r 150
1b Je voudrois bien from S 253 f. 64v 150

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A Note on Transcriptions and Translations
The following principles were observed in the transcriptions of material from

the notebook and in the quotations from printed primary sources. Original or-
thographies are retained, as are original punctuation, capitalization and dia-
critical marks. Interline insertions are placed between ⌈ ⌉; editorial additions
appear between square brackets, and deletions in the text appear between
< >. Places in the dance master’s notebook where individual letters or words
are obscured to the extent that one cannot determine what was originally
written there are indicated by […]. Only when reference is made to material
from the dance master’s notebook are the relevant folio numbers given in the
body of the text. References to all other manuscripts are given in the footnotes.
Translations are by the author unless otherwise noted.

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Introduction
The handwritten notebook held in the Kungliga Biblioteket in Stockholm Cod.

Holm S 253 (hereafter cited as S 253) is a unique document in the corpus of
surviving sources for early modern European dance. Dance treatises have sur
vived from the early modern period, which, to varying degrees, record choreo
graphies, step descriptions and the intellectual foundation of the art of dance,
but there is no other source that records such a mixture of material relevant
to the daily activities of a dance master and teacher. As will become clear, this
manuscript is not a dance treatise in the traditional sense. Rather it is a docu
ment with subject matter drawn from a range of different areas. This study will
examine the manuscript in the context of dance during the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries: dance performance, choreographic activity and dance
teaching. The dance treatises that have survived from the fifteenth, sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries were written with various goals. Sometimes
this goal was self-promotion and self-marketing, as was the case for Cesare
Negri when, in 1602, he published his treatise Le gratie d’amore.1 Other trea
tises were written as a gift to a noble pupil of the dance master, as was the case
for the first version of Antonio Cornazano’s treatise, which he dedicated to
his pupil Ippolita Sforza in 1455, in order to accompany his practical tuition.2
Other works on dance were written for the edification of the author’s peers, as
was the case for Antonius Arena, who in 1528 published a dance treatise that
was part of a collection of essays addressed to his fellow law students at the
University of Avignon.3 The handwritten notebook differs from these treatises
in that the material is not carefully prepared and organized for publication or
as a presentation manuscript to a noble patron. The collection of material is
essentially personal, so much so that the name of the dance master who re
corded much of the material is never mentioned. The manuscript of over one
hundred folios, which exhibits a number of different hands both musical and
1 For a detailed discussion of Negri’s career and the reasons behind the writing and publica
tion of Le gratie d’amore, see Katherine Tucker McGinnis, ‘Your Most Humble Servant, Cesare
Negri Milanese’, in Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politick, 1250–1750, ed. Jennifer Nevile
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), pp. 211–28.
2 Diego Zancani, ‘Writing for Women Rulers in Quattrocento Italy: Antonio Cornazano’, in
Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. L. Panizza (Oxford: Legenda – European
Humanities Research Centre, 2000), p. 58.
3 Arena was not a dance master who earnt his living by teaching, choreographing and per
forming. Rather he was a ‘poet, soldier, bon vivant and a judge’. W. Thomas Marrocco and
Marie-Laure Merveille, ‘Anthonius Arena: Master of Law and Dance of the Renaissance’,
Studi musicali 18, no. 1 (1989): 19.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004377738_002 Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

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2 Introduction
textual, is a mixture of dance-related material and resets, the latter being reci
pes and remedies that would have been useful in daily life, such as remedies for
toothache (f. 45v), and for epilepsy (f. 46r), and instructions on how to fumigate
one’s house to ward off the plague (f. 38v). The folios in the manuscript related
to dance and the production of theatrical spectacles include ballet plots, a list
of ballet titles, a canon of geometric figures for five to sixteen dancers, music
for ballet entrées, instructions for an exhibition of manoeuvres with a pike,
and also a series of instructions for making various types of fireworks. There
are also folios related to the teaching of dance and music: the signatures and
general descriptions of dance pupils and when they began their lessons, the
music of fashionable dances such as the courante in mensural notation, lute
tablature and violin tablature, and the notation of words and music of popular
airs de cour. There are also two short pieces in mandore tablature.4
It is perhaps surprising that given the widespread nature of dancing in
Renaissance Europe across all levels of society, primary sources that document
the activities of dance masters are not common, and evidence of their teaching
activities is even more scarce. For this reason alone the handwritten notebook
held in the Kungliga Biblioteket in Stockholm is a valuable addition to the ex
isting sources. The manuscript has several sections that contain material which
is unique, such as the canon of dance figures and the sequence of instructions
for an exhibition with a pike. Ballets in which the dancers formed geometric
shapes and letters were performed throughout Europe in the later sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries. Sometimes a published description of such a
performance would include diagrams of the figures formed by the dancers, as
in the festa a ballo performed in Naples during the 1620 carnival season.5 The
published account of this danced spectacle includes twenty-four figures for
the final dance performed by twenty-four cavalieri. In this case, and in other
descriptions of danced spectacles, figures are provided for only one particular
dance from the entire event.6 There is also no indication in the 1620 festa a
ballo description or in accounts of other danced spectacles of a vocabulary of
4 I am indebted to Tommie Andersson for pointing out that the two pieces on ff. 100v–101r,
Robinette and Vive louis are in mandore tablature, for a mandore tuned A-D-A-D-A.
5 Breve racconto della festa a ballo (Naples: Costantino Vitale, 1620). For a modern edition of
the music for this spectacle, and the figures for the final dance, see Roland Jackson, ed., A
Neapolitan Festa a Ballo ‘Delizie di Posilipo Boscarecce, e Maritime’ and Selected Instrumental
Ensemble Pieces from Naples Conservatory MS 4.6.3. (Madison: A-R Editions, 1978).
6 See, for example, the figures for the Grand Ballet from the Ballet de Monsieur de Vendosme
(Paris: Jean de Heuqueville, 1610), and the dances from the Jesuit college production
Comoedia D. Guilielmus Dux Aquitaniae that was performed in Brussels in 1614 (Oxford:
Bodleian Library, MS Add. A. 33). These two examples are discussed in detail in chapters 2
and 3.

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Introduction 3
dance figures similar to that with which the dance master was working, as this
was not the purpose of such publications. The handwritten notebook, there
fore, is the only known source that provides a canon of possible figures for
differing numbers of dancers, which a dance master could consult when cho
reographing a figured dance. The instructions for the pike exhibition is also
unique. Nothing like this material has ever been found in either choreographic
sources or in sources for the martial arts. The dance master’s notebook does
raise a number of questions as regards authorship, geography, provenance and
dating: not all of these questions can be answered with certainty and verifiable
proofs, but when all the material in the notebook is considered together, new
insights emerge and additional information can be teased out, all of which
significantly adds to the small quantity of existing knowledge of the life of an
early seventeenth-century dance master and teacher.
The manuscript itself has not received much attention from music and
dance historians, and that is one reason for publishing in facsimile the dance-
related material from the notebook as part of this study: this will be the first
time the material has been published and thus made available to the wider
scholarly community. The dance-related material published here in facsimile
comprises the list of ballet titles, the six ballet plots, the canon of dance figures,
the instructions for the pike exhibition, and the folios with the signatures and
general descriptions of the dance pupils. In 1966 Peter Brinson mentioned the
notebook in his survey of European archival materials relevant to early dance.7
In the one and a half pages devoted to this manuscript, Brinson describes it
as a ‘handwritten daily notebook of an anonymous French dancing master in
Brussels for the years 1614–1619’.8 In 1988 musicologist John M. Ward briefly
discussed the manuscript as part of his essay on music for the Stuart masques.9
Ward describes the manuscript as a ‘combination work-and commonplace –
book’ of a ‘French dancing master active in Brussels during the second decade
of the 17th century’.10 While David J. Buch in his study of the dance music from
the ballets de cour has recognized the importance and value of this source,11 he
7 Peter Brinson, Background to European Ballet: A Notebook from its Archives (Leiden: A. W.
Sijthoff, 1966), pp. 117–8.
8 Brinson, Background to European Ballet, p. 117. The reasons for the dating and nationality
of the owner of the manuscript will be discussed in chapter 1.
9 John M. Ward, ‘Newly Devis’d Measures for Jacobean Masques’, Acta Musicologica 60, no.
2 (1988): 111–42.
10 Ward, ‘Newly Devis’d Measures’, p. 115.
11 David J. Buch, Dance Music from the Ballets de Cour 1575–1651: Historical Commentary,
Source Study, and Transcriptions from the Philidor Manuscripts (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon
Press, 1993), p. xiii.

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4 Introduction
did not present any new information on the provenance, dating or possible
ownership of the notebook. In 2000 I published a study of the canon of dance
figures only, without examining the rest of the manuscript in any great detail.12
The notebook was originally a bound book of blank folios, as opposed to a
collection of individual folios that were collected together and bound at a later
date. This is clear from the fact that on several occasions the writer arrived at
the end of the last stave on a verso folio before the piece of music was finished:
the remainder of the piece is continued on the bottom of the facing recto
folio. The notebook is not a daily record of the activities of the dance master
who owned it. Certainly it contains material that he could, and most probably
did, use for teaching, but the contents are arranged in a more systematic man
ner than would be the case if that material had been added on a day-to-day
basis. In my opinion, the notebook had several functions. It served as a reposi
tory of music that was useful for teaching. It also served as a record of the dance
pupils taught at the school, though not as an account book that recorded pay
ments for the lessons. It also functioned as a reference work, an aide-memoire
for the many possible figures which could be used during the composition of
entrées and the closing Grand Ballet of a ballet de cour, an indispensible tool
for a professional dance master involved with theatrical dance performances.
In part, the notebook also served as a curriculum vitae for its owner, as a writ
ten document that held examples of what he could teach and whom he had
taught, and what he could choreograph and organize for a theatrical specta
cle, ballet or masquerade. Today one might even describe such a document as
an ‘event manager’s handbook’. The notebook also had a domestic purpose;
that is, the recording of useful remedies for everyday (and occasional) ills that
could beset a person at that time.
While the notebook remains at the centre of this study, the monograph is
not an edition of the entire manuscript in facsimile or transcription. The con
tents of each folio have been examined and categorized, but the non-dance-
related material, such as the resets, have not been studied any further as this
material lies outside the scope of the present study. The aim of this monograph
is to place the dance-related material found in the notebook in the context of
court and civic festivity, and in contemporary theatrical genres across Europe
more generally, with an emphasis on the situation in Brussels. Throughout this
12 Jennifer Nevile, ‘Dance Patterns of the Early Seventeenth Century: The Stockholm
Manuscript and Le Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme’, Dance Research 18, no. 2 (2000):
186–203. Sections of this article appear in chapter 3 as part of the extended discussion of
the dance figures, their meanings and significance.

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Introduction 5
study I have sought to provide an explanation of why the dance-related mate

rial would have been recorded in the personal notebook of this dance master
and teacher. But even after such a detailed examination of the manuscript, an
swers cannot be found for all the questions posed by the notebook. The manu
script presents opportunities for further research by scholars with expertise
in areas other than dance and music, by investigating its contents from other
disciplinary viewpoints. For example, a linguistic analysis of the seven major
textual hands found in the notebook is beyond the scope of the present study,
as is any investigation into the names of the individual pupils and the families
to which they might have belonged. There is yet more to be discovered in this
rare notebook.
Chapter 1 establishes a framework for the study with a discussion of the
physical details of the manuscript and what is known about its provenance, be
fore moving onto an examination of the various hands found in the notebook,
and what answers can be given to questions of dating and geographic loca
tion of the notebook. Chapter 2 provides a context for the following chapters
through a discussion of the wider practice of dance and the roles it had both in
society and in drama of sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Europe. The
discussion of dance and drama in early modern Europe is not a comprehensive
survey, as that would entail a multi-volume work. Rather the section ‘Dance in
drama’ focuses on the parallels between the different functions of dance in the
wider society and the roles it played in contemporary dramatic productions.
The second half of chapter 2 focuses on Brussels, and presents the current state
of knowledge about dance activity in that city during the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries.
Chapter 3 discusses the dance-related material in the manuscript: the six
ballet plots, the canon of dance figures and the instructions for making fire
works. The analysis of the ballet plots focuses on their structure and impor
tant characteristics, such as the manner in which torches are used and the
way emotions are portrayed. It also considers what specific choreographic
information was included in the ballet plots, as well as discussing what was
left out of these plots compared to what was normally found in the published
livrets of the ballet de cour. A transcription of the six ballet plots, along with
an English translation, is found in Appendix 1. The second half of chapter 3
focuses on the canon of dance figures found in the notebook, which is one of
the unique features of this manuscript. While many danced spectacles at this
time used geometric figures, and some sources also recorded the figures that
were used in parts of the spectacle, no other document records a systematic list
ing of possible figures as is found in the dance master’s notebook. Furthermore,

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6 Introduction
the dance master has appended names to some of these figures, which reveal a
range of meanings, including alchemical associations. The chapter concludes
with a discussion of the relationship of fireworks to the art of dance.
Dance pupils themselves make an appearance in the notebook: the specifics
of dance teaching in Renaissance Europe, and the details that the notebook
reveals about the teaching activities and the pupils of the dance master, form
the basis of chapter 4. As is discussed in chapter 2, dance teachers were living
and working in Brussels from at least the beginning of the sixteenth century,
and most likely in the previous century as well. Therefore, in order to provide
a wider context for what was happening in Brussels as regards dance teach
ing, the discussion of dance teaching in chapter 4 begins in fifteenth-century
Europe, as it is there that the first records of dance teachers and dance schools
appear. In addition, many of the characteristics of dance teaching in the fif
teenth century persisted into the sixteenth century; so in order to obtain a
comprehensive understanding of the later practices it is necessary to be aware
of what preceded them. Chapter 5 examines another unique feature of this
manuscript: the sequence of instructions for the pike exhibition. A transcrip
tion of these instructions and an English translation is given in Appendix 2. In
chapter 5 the pike exhibition is considered in the context of danced combats
and the military training manuals of the time, as well as the similarities with
non-combative choreographies.
The music recorded in the notebook covers a number of different genres,
but the majority of this music is associated in some way with dancing; that
is, music for specific dances such as courantes, and music for ballet entrées
and fashionable airs de cour, some of which originated in the ballets de cour
performed at the French court. An examination of this music forms the cen
trepiece of chapter 6 and includes identifying the musical material where
possible and the publications from which they came, as well as discussing the
changes made to these pieces by the dance master when he recorded them in
his notebook, and the significance of such differences. The book concludes by
drawing together all the various details of the material recorded in the note
book to present a synopsis of the teaching and choreographic activities of the
anonymous dance master.

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chapter 1
A Dance Master’s Notebook
1 Contents of the Notebook
On reading through the dance master’s notebook for the first time it is easy to
be slightly overwhelmed by the amount of material recorded in it, the hetero-
geneous nature of its contents, and the multiplicity of textual hands. When
the contents are tabulated, however, coherent patterns begin to emerge. Table
1 lists the contents of each folio, as well as indicating which musical or textual
hand was responsible for recording the material on each folio.1 As can be seen
from Table 1, the contents of the manuscript are grouped into fairly regular
sections, which do not appear to have been added in an ad-hoc or haphazard
fashion. The notebook begins with a list of ballet titles, the last three of which
on f. 1v refer to three of the ballet plots recorded in the notebook. The first bal-
let plot follows, interspersed with thirteen geometric figures for ten dancers on
the top of f. 2v and the whole of f. 3r. Then comes the second ballet plot, before
the canon proper of geometric figures starts on f. 5r. This time the recording
of geometric figures is done in a very systematic manner, starting with figures
for five dancers and progressing in order until the figures for sixteen dancers
are recorded. Furthermore, as the number of dancers required increases, the
figures for the new number of dancers always begin on a new recto folio, even
if there is space on the previous verso folio. The ‘choreographic’ section of the
notebook finishes with three pages of letters (ff. 26r–27r) made up of different
numbers of dancers.2
Music for ballet entrées forms the next section of the manuscript, followed
by several folios that contain instructions for making fireworks. Then there is
a large section that records the music and verses for airs de cour. After the airs
de cour there are the folios associated with dance teaching that record general
1 The fifteen different textual hands are identified by the letter ‘H’ followed by a number from
1 to 15, and the six different musical hands by the letter ‘M’ followed by a number from 1 to 6.
The squiggles that outline the geometric figures are classified as belonging to ‘F1’, while ‘T1’
refers to the music written out in tablature.
2 The letters also start on a recto folio, leaving the previous verso folio to be filled with instruc-
tions for making an alcoholic cordial. One cannot say for certain if this text was added onto
the blank f. 25v sometime after the figures and letters were recorded, or if the owner of the
notebook wrote out the figures, then the instructions for a cordial, then the letters in a se-
quential fashion.

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8 chapter 1
descriptions and the signatures of the dance pupils. More dance music and
music for entrées follows, interspersed with resets. Then there is the section on
the pike exhibition, followed by music in lute tablature, interrupted with more
ballet plots, with the final folios of the notebook recording more dance music.
The sections of the manuscript are further differentiated by the hands in
which they are written: these are discussed below in the final section of this
chapter. Even though there is a discernible order in the notebook, it is not a
manuscript that was ever destined for publication. Some of the hands are clear
and legible, others look rushed and messy. There are folios with lines crossed
out, and instances of text being roughly squeezed into the available space,
whether this space was in line with the majority of the text or not, as occurs
on f. 71v. The musical hands look equally untidy with mistakes, such as notes
written at the incorrect pitch, being crossed out.
2 Physical Description and Provenance
The notebook is not large. The height of the paper cover is 192mm (7.5 inches)
and its width is 145mm (5.75 inches), thus making the size of the open book
just marginally smaller than the size of a piece of A4 paper in landscape for-
mat. The cover of the manuscript is not the original binding. It is a thickish,
paper cover of a greyish-blue colour that was attached to the notebook when
it was sold in the nineteenth century.3 The fact that the manuscript was re-
bound at some stage of its life is also indicated by the presence of previous
binding holes close to the inside margin on many of the folios. The paper of the
notebook does not appear to be of good quality to begin with, and it has fur-
ther deteriorated with time. Some edges have been torn off or worn away, and
the last two folios of the manuscript are very damaged and worn and have had
to be repaired. On many folios the ink has bled badly through the paper. Some
folios have not been cut as they are already of smaller size. This occurs for all
the folios from 65 to 76. Some folios appear to have been trimmed, resulting
in the writing at the top being cut off, as on f. 75r, while other folios have had
smaller pieces of paper pasted in on top of the original page in the notebook.
This occurs on ff. 70v–73r, and on f. 84v an extra page has been bound into the
notebook, but not pasted over the original f. 84v. The pasted-in sheets over
ff. 70v–73r all contain signatures of pupils and dates when they started dance
3 In Sweden in the nineteenth century manuscripts were legally required to be sold without
their bindings, so they were re-bound for sale in grey covers, which is the cover the manu-
script now has.

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A Dance Master ’ s Notebook 9
lessons. These folios, as well as ff. 75r–76r that also contain signatures of pu-
pils, all look very worn, much handled and faded compared to the rest of the
manuscript.
The paper is quarto, and there appear to be three different watermarks
that are partly visible. Unfortunately, at least one-half of each of these three
watermarks is lost in the binding. The largest watermark appears to be that
of a lion, similar to watermarks numbers 3119 and 3121 in Edward Heawood’s
publication.4 The other two watermarks are much smaller and I have not been
able to gain any impression of what they may be like.
Very little is known about the provenance of this manuscript. It was acquired
by the Kungliga Biblioteket in 1880. From the handwritten catalogue informa-
tion we know that in 1847 it was owned by the family Burensköld-Broman who
lived in Mellingeholm, north of Stockholm. The name that appears on f. 1r
‘Schürer v. Waldheim’ refers to a nineteenth-century owner, Captain Fredrik
August Schürer von Waldheim (b. 1808–d. 1857), and ‘Kat. 104’ is his catalogue
number. How the notebook arrived in Sweden is not known.
3 The Different Literary and Musical Hands
The dance master’s notebook contains fifteen different literary hands and six
different musical hands. There are seven major literary hands (H1 to H7), all
of which are associated with a substantial section of the manuscript, and are
clearly able to be differentiated. Hands 8 to 15 only occur once or twice, and it
is not so easy to distinguish between them with absolute certainty. Examples
of all these hands are given in Table 2.
H1 is the hand that occurs throughout the manuscript, for the list of bal-
let titles, the names under the figures, the text under the majority of the
music, and for the majority of the recipes. As can be seen from Table 1, H1 is
also the hand that always occurs with the musical hand M1. My hypothesis
is that H1 and M1 belong to the same person: the dance master who owned
the notebook, and who was also responsible for recording all the geometric
figures and shapes (F1). His handwriting is distinctive (large, loopy and messy
best describes it), and occurs in another early seventeenth-century manu-
script held at the Kungliga Biblioteket.5 This second manuscript is bound in a
4 Edward Heawood, Watermarks: Mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Facsimile edition of the
1957 edition (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2003). Heawood gives a date of 1589
for watermark 3119 and 1607 for watermark 3121 (p. 133).
5 Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, MS X 104.

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10 chapter 1
seventeenth-century binding with ‘Bassus’ on the front cover, that presumably

came from a bass part book of music. The contents are not related to dance or
music, however, and this manuscript is a heterogeneous collection of many
more resets, almost all of which are in the hand I have identified as H1. In spite
of the absence of any choreographic or musical material in this second manu
script, one must conclude that H1 was the owner of both manuscripts. H1
emerges as the authoritative ‘voice’ in the notebook, as it is the hand that on
occasions completes a text. This procedure is illustrated by the additions to
the conclusion of the first ballet plot recorded in the manuscript, L’enuie de
l’honneur de l’Amour. Unlike other ballet plots, L’enuie does not finish with a
Grand Ballet. After the two sentences starting with ‘Next, the passionate lov-
ers will enter and dance their ballet’, there is a dividing line drawn across the
left hand side of the page, then another four lines written by H2, but preced-
ed by an ‘X’. These four lines appear to end in the middle of a sentence ‘then
the three children look around’. A broken dividing line then occurs, followed
by four lines written by H1 describing the Grand Ballet. Here we have, in my
opinion, the dance master (H1) changing his mind as to the end of the ballet
and indicating this change with an ‘X’, then adding the text that describes the
Grand Ballet.
H2 belongs to the person who copied the six ballet plots into the notebook.
All six are in the same hand, no matter whether they occur at the beginning,
middle or end of the manuscript. It is much clearer and neater than H1, and
gives the impression of being written in less of a hurry. I hypothesize that the
person responsible for recording the ballet plots in the notebook copied the
material from another source; that is, a document, or documents, written by
the dance master. I base this hypothesis on the presence of a few copying er-
rors in the ballet plots. One example is on f. 105v where the word ‘grand’ in the
phrase ‘Puis le grand ballet de pages’ has been crossed out as it is a miscopying
from the following line ‘Puis le grand ballet entrerat’.
H3 is the copyist responsible for recording the text of the titles and poems of
the ballet entrées on ff. 29r–30v, the name ‘destourmelle’ on ff. 74r and 93r, the
page of resets on f. 113v and the text on f. 120v that mentions a ‘gavotte’. The dis-
tinguishing feature of this hand is the use of decorative motifs drawn around
the text, particularly one that is like an upper-case ‘S’ with a stroke through
it (see the example of H3 in Table 2). Also, for every occurrence of H3 with
music, the musical hand is M2. It is possible, therefore, that H3 and M2 are the
same person. Whether the copyist H3 is Destourmelle himself is less certain
since two of the musical pieces by Destourmelle are copied into the notebook
by H1.

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H4 and H6 each occur in only one section each, and are the hands of the
persons responsible for the instructions for the pike exhibition (H4) and the
instructions for making fireworks, ointments for burns and six non-fire-related
resets (H6). My conclusion is that H4 is the hand of an expert in staff weap-
ons, who the dance master requested to write into his notebook a sequence
of instructions for a virtuosic pike display. The reasons for this conclusion
are discussed more fully in chapter 5 which focuses on the pike exhibition,
but practical factors, such as the specialized nature of the vocabulary and the
amount of expert knowledge that would be required to write such a sequence
of instructions, all point to the author of these instructions being an expert
in the handling of a pike. Given that this hand only appears for these instruc-
tions, it seems most likely that its author also wrote them into the notebook
himself. A further argument supporting the conclusion that H4 is the hand of a
master-of-arms is that there is no known body of contemporary literature that
describes such an exhibition with a pike from which the material in the dance
master’s notebook could have been copied.
It is also possible that H6 is the hand of an artificer; that is, an expert in the
design and creation or composition of fireworks. Such people were frequently
gunners, who, from the sixteenth century onwards, wrote descriptions of the
necessary techniques for the construction of fireworks and also recipes for the
different types of fireworks.6 From ff. 34v–37v there are recipes for five differ-
ent kinds of fireworks, and two recipes for ointment to help heal burns.7 This
material could also have come directly from the hand of an expert. After the
recipes for fireworks and ointment, however, the sequence of material (and
hands) changes, as there is a page of resets in H1 that has been crossed out
(f. 38r), followed by another six resets that have nothing to do with pyrotechnic
matters, but are all in the same hand – H6 – as the fireworks material. These
six latter resets written by H6 include a recipe to improve one’s complexion,
instructions on how to fumigate the house during a plague, a recipe to help
relieve a cough and to aid in breathing, and instructions on how to make wheat
grow in poor soil. In the case of H6, therefore, it seems more likely that the
scribe is not a gunner or fireworks expert, but only one who copied such ma-
terial from a publication written by an artificer, of which there was a grow-
ing literature at this period, designed for both fellow practitioners and noble
6 Simon Werrett, Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 8.
7 This material will be discussed in much further detail in chapter 3, along with the connec-
tions between the invention and use of fireworks in court spectacles and the art of dance.

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12 chapter 1
patrons.8 If so, H6 evidently copied medical, cosmetic and agricultural recipes

into the notebook from another source or sources. Certainly H6 is the neatest
hand that appears in the dance master’s notebook, and each recipe follows on
from the one before, which indicates that the material was copied in a block in
one sitting, or in a short interval of time.
One possible explanation for the material in the hand of H6 being copied
in a short space of time is that a colleague, who was visiting the dance master
in Brussels, brought with him a book that contained firework instructions and
other recipes. The visitor then showed the book to the dance master who was
interested enough to have the visitor copy some of the material into his own
notebook. Once his colleague had left Brussels there were no more opportuni-
ties for H6 to enter material into the dance master’s notebook. A second pos-
sible scenario could be the arrival in Brussels of an expert artificer who came
to organize a fireworks display as part of a court celebration, and who also
had with him a document or book in which instructions for various fireworks
were recorded. The dance master was interested in the display, and was able to
arrange for instructions for fireworks that he had particularly liked, or that he
thought might be useful to him in the future, to be copied into his notebook.
H5 and H7 are the two remaining major literary hands. Both are respon-
sible for recording the verses of the airs de cour. H5 begins the copying of the
texts of the airs on f. 40v, and continues until f. 49v, at which point H7 takes
over, continuing until f. 64r. Even though H5 and H7 appear more similar to
each other than Hands 1 to 4, there are substantial differences in the manner in
which they copy the verses of the airs, and in the decorative elements of their
hands. When H5 wrote down the texts of the airs de cour he only recorded
the first verse, which, with one exception, he wrote underneath the melody.9
The music of all these ten airs copied by H5 is in the third musical hand (M3).
H7 had a different modus operandi. He copied the words of the airs onto a
separate page from that of the music, as well as recording all the verses of the
song. Furthermore, the music of all the H7 airs is written in the hand of M1. The
other distinguishing feature of H7 is that the verses he copies are separated by
a motif that looks like an ‘S’ with one or two strokes through it.10 H7 also ends
four of his airs with a more elaborate decorative motif (see Illustration 1).11
8 Werrett, Fireworks, pp. 36–8.

9 The exception is the air Donc pour aymer, where the second and third verses were copied
onto the page before the music and verse 1.
10 This motif is similar to that used by H3 but the ‘S’s are rounder and wider.
11 The one occasion that H7 does not divide the verses of the air with the ‘S’ marker, he ends
the song text with his characteristic decoration, so one can be certain that the hand is H7.

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illustration 1 Decorative motif by H7 to end

the text of the airs on ff. 56v,
60v, 61v and 64r in S 253

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14 chapter 1
There is a smaller number of musical hands than literary hands in the note-
book. M1 is the hand of the owner of the notebook. It occurs much more fre-
quently than the other musical hands and is found throughout the manuscript.
M1 is distinguished from the other musical hands by the manner of draw-
ing the soprano clef; that is, with straight lines either horizontal or sloping,
and the presence of dots inside the double bar lines.12 By contrast, M2 either
writes the dots outside the double bar lines, or both inside and outside the
double bar lines, and M2’s soprano clefs have wavy horizontal lines rather than
straight. M3 is distinguished by the note shapes; that is, the stems are more
consistently drawn from the side of the noteheads rather than the middle, as
well as the totally different shape of the treble clef. M2 and M3 occur in dis-
crete sections of the manuscript. Musical hands 4, 5 and 6 each occur only
once in the manuscript. Each hand has a different shape for the treble clef and
M4 has diagonal lines in the middle of the double bar lines. There is also an as-
sociation between musical and literary hands in the notebook. As mentioned
above, H1 and M1 occur together, as does M2 with H3, and M3 with H5. I have
argued that H1 and M1 are the same person, but perhaps M2 and H3 belong to
the same person, and M3 and H5 to a third person.
4 Questions of Dating and Geography
Almost all of the notebook is in French, which suggests the unsurprising con-
clusion that the dance master who owned the notebook was also French.
While the orthography throughout is highly variable and idiosyncratic, and
sometimes phonetic – as in ‘en gloiet’ for ‘anglais’ (f. 65v) – it also contains
many of the features common to French texts from this period. Examples of
such orthographic features include the use of ‘ct’ instead of ‘t’ as in faict and
poincte; the use of ‘z’ for some plurals and in words such as ‘ils’ and ‘quels’ (ilz
and quelz); the use of ‘es’ instead of ‘ê’ as in ‘même’ (mesme); and the consistent
use of auecq for ‘avec’. While it may seem self-evident, it is worth making the
point that the presence of French as the language of the notebook indicates
that our anonymous dance master was not Spanish, and therefore unlikely to
be directly connected with the archducal court in Brussels, or to have come
from Spain with Albert and Isabella in 1599. The household accounts of the
12 The presence of dots inside double bar lines was a common scribal variant of the pe-
riod. It was not an automatic indication of a repeat. See Rebecca Harris-Warrick and
Carol G. Marsh, Musical Theatre at the Court of Louis XIV: Le Mariage de la Grosse Cathos
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 77–8.

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Archdukes were all written in Spanish, and the majority of the personnel at
their court was Spanish, especially in the early years of their reign. It also means
that the dance master was not a native of Brussels, since Flemish was the na-
tive tongue of the inhabitants of the city, and all the city, guild and ecclesiasti-
cal records were written in that language.13 When collections of popular songs
were published in early seventeenth-century Brussels, many of the tunes were
airs de cour by French court composers such as Pierre Guédron and Antoine de
Boësset. While the music for these songs was preserved, the French texts were
not, with new lyrics in Flemish replacing the original French texts in order that
the songs would be accessible to all of the city’s elite and middle classes.14 Only
a small, cultured minority of people spoke French in the Netherlands in the
early seventeenth century.15 The fact that the ballet plots, pike instructions, re-
sets, the general description of the dance pupils, and other parts of the manu
script are all in French also indicates that the dance master was not English.
English musicians did live and work in Brussels at this time, the most celebrat-
ed being Peter Philips, who was employed by Albert and Isabella as the organ-
ist for the court chapel from 1597 to his death in 1628.16 There were also far
less prominent English musicians who lived and worked in the Low Countries,
such as Edward Hancock, who worked with Nicolas Vallet in Amsterdam, and
who taught music and dance at the school the two men operated in that city
during the mid-1620s. Unlike the preceding century, the seventeenth century
saw a proliferation of French dance teachers working in foreign (non-French)
courts and cities across Europe; so it should not be surprising, therefore, that
our anonymous dance master also belonged to this group.
In 1966 Peter Brinson concluded that the anonymous dance master was
working in Brussels circa 1614–1619. Brinson was basing his conclusion on the
range of dates which appear next to some of the signatures of the dance pu-
pils. The signatures with dates of 1614 all appear on pages that are pasted into
the notebook, which means that they could have been added after 1614. The
13 Paul Arblaster, ‘Antwerp and Brussels as Inter-European Spaces in News Exchange’, in
The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe,
ed. Brendan Maurice Dooley (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 197.
14 Maartje De Wilde, ‘Sound and Soul. An Introduction to Seventeenth-Century Musical and
Literary Life in Brussels’, in Embracing Brussels. Art and Culture in the Court City, 1600–
1800, ed. Katlijne van der Stighelen, Leen Kelchtermans and Koenraad Brosens (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2013), p. 259.
15 Peter Rickard, A History of the French Language, 2nd ed. (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989),
p. 83.
16 Klaartje Proesmans, ‘The Key Role of the Archducal Court in Spreading a New Musical
Style in the Low Countries’, in Albert and Isabella, 1598–1621, ed. Werner Thomas and Luc
Duerloo (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), p. 133.

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16 chapter 1
signatures and dates that were written directly into the notebook are all from
1616, 1617 and 1619. There are no other dates that appear in the notebook, but
the presence of airs de cour in the manuscript does support the timeframe sug-
gested by Brinson. The twenty identified airs that were copied into the dance
master’s notebook are all from collections published in the ten years from 1608
to 1618, with the majority of the songs from collections published from 1615
to 1617 (see Table 7 in chapter 6). In fact only three of the twenty airs appear
in collections published before 1614: Ne dois-je donc (1608), Donc pour aymer
(1612), and Que de douleurs (1610). Donc pour aymer appears in two collections
published in 1612 and 1613, but the other two airs also appear in collections
published in 1615 and 1617, collections that could well have been the source
used by the dance master for these two songs. So only one song out of twenty
was published before 1614 – Donc pour aymer – and in this case the song ap-
peared only one or two years before 1614. It is extremely unlikely, therefore,
that the notebook was started before 1608, the date the air Ne dois-je donc was
first published. Far more likely is that the notebook was compiled circa 1615
to 1619, the years that most of these airs first appeared, and were the current,
fashionable songs from Paris.
The conclusion that the dance master who owned the notebook was work-
ing in Brussels is based on the entry on f. 68r of the manuscript that records, in
the hand of the dance master H1, the starting date of the princes de la sau who
commenced their lessons on the 28th February at Brussels (a brucelle). As is
discussed in chapter 2, early seventeenth-century Brussels provided a number
of employment opportunities for a dance master, and so the conclusion that
the owner of the notebook was living and working in Brussels is eminently
plausible. A second entry in the notebook also supports the conclusion that
the dance master was working in the Low Countries. On f. 71v of the notebook
is the sole information regarding payment of any kind, and the currency men-
tioned is risdalle; that is, rijksdaaler.17 A rijksdaaler was a silver coin that circu-
lated in the Northern and Southern Low Countries in the seventeenth century.
It was one of the international trading currencies; that is, coins whose weights
were kept consistent and generally were not debased, thus allowing them to be
exchanged between different countries. The presence in the notebook of rijks-
daalers as opposed to local coinage such as stuivers or groots, may be an indica-
tion of the wider international connections of our anonymous dance master.
17 This entry is also in the hand of the dance master. There is no indication of what the pay-
ment was for.

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table 1 Contents of S 253
Folio Contents Hands
f. 1r List of Ballet Titles H1

f. 1v List of Ballet Titles con. H1
f. 2r Ballet Plot ‘L’enuie de l’honneur de l’Amour H2
fidelle de passioné’
f. 2v Top: Geometric Figures for 10 dancers F1 (top), H1 (top),
Bottom: Ballet Plot ‘L’enuie’ con. H2 (bottom)
f. 3r Geometric Figures for 10 dancers F1
f. 3v Blank
f. 4r Ballet Plot ‘Ballet des mineúrs des Paÿs’ H2
f. 4v Ballet Plot ‘mineúrs’ con. H2
f. 5r Geometric Figures for 5 dancers F1, H1
f. 5v Blank H1
f. 6v Geometric Figures for 6 dancers con. F1, H1
f. 9r Geometric Figures for 8 dancers con. F1, H1
f. 9v A Geometric Figure for 8 dancers F1
f. 11v Blank
f. 13v Geometric Figures for 10 dancers con. F1
f. 15r Geometric Figures for 11 dancers con. F1
f. 15v Geometric Figures for 12 dancers F1, H1
f. 17v A Geometric Figure for 12 dancers F1

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18 chapter 1
table 1 Contents of S 253 (cont.)

f. 19r Blank
f. 19v Blank
f. 20r Geometric Figures for 14 dancers F1
f. 20v Geometric Figures for 14 dancers con. F1
f. 21r Blank
f. 21v Blank
f. 23r Blank
f. 23v Blank
f. 25v French text: Instructions for making an alcoholic H1
cordial
f. 26r Figures – Letters F1
f. 26v Figures – Letters F1
f. 27r Figures – Letters F1
f. 27v Music ‘entre de ballet’ M1, H1
f. 28r Music ‘le ballet’ and ‘allemade nouuelle’ M1, H1
f. 28v French text: ‘Reset’ (recipe) H1
f. 29r Top: Music ‘lentres du ballet de tri ages le mer- M2, H3
quere’ then a poem ‘Nous dessendont du ciel en
terre’ for this ballet
f. 29v Top: Music ‘ballet de madame la marquis de M1 (bottom), M2 (top),
baez’ Bottom: Music ‘allemande nouuelle la mare’ H1 (bottom), H3 (top)
f. 30r Music ‘de lentre du balle de venus et cupitet’ then M2, H3
poem ‘Alons joiunies’ for this ballet
f. 30v Music ‘ballet du justisa / fortitutoç / prudenssia / M1 (entrées 2, 3, 4), M2
tenperrancia /fides / es jes / charitas / pacienscia (1st entrée), H1 (rest),
H3 (ballet title)
f. 31r Top: Music ‘entre de ballet’ M1 (bottom), M2 (top),
Bottom: Music 3rd entrée con. H1 (bottom), H3 (top)
f. 31v Music ‘ballet de griemas/grimas’ M1, H1
f. 32r Music ‘ballet de griemas’ con. M1, H1

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f. 32v Top: Music ‘e[nt]r[ée] nouuaue destournielle’ M1, H1

Then poem for ballet ‘Et dendeue par mis les
flere’
Bottom: Music ‘premeire er de ballet’
f. 33r Top: Verses 2 and 3 of ‘Donc pour aymer’ M1, H1 (bottom), H5
Bottom: Music ‘premeire er de ballet’ con. (top)
f. 33v Music ‘Donc pour aymer’ verse 1 under melody M3, H5
f. 34r Music ‘Donc pour aymer’ con. M3
f. 34v French text: Fireworks H6
f. 35r French text: Fireworks H6
f. 36r French text: Fireworks and a drawing of a rocket H6
f. 37r French text: Fireworks H6
f. 38r French text: ‘resets’ – crossed out (4 diagonal H1
lines)
f. 38v French text: Various remedies H6
f. 39r French text: Various remedies H6
f. 39v Top: French text: Various remedies H1 (bottom), H6 (top)
Bottom: French text: ‘reset’
f. 40r 3 verses of ‘Enchante de vos’ H8
f. 40v Music and 1st verse ‘Va four lamoureuse’ M3, H5
f. 41r Music M4
f. 41v Music and 1st verse ‘tandant que la froide’ M3, H5
f. 42r Blank
f. 42v Music and 1st verse ‘face le ciel’ M3, H5
f. 43r Blank
f. 43v Top: Music and 1st verse ‘Vn jour de la semaine’ M1 (bottom), M3 (top),
Bottom: Music ‘la uoltriere’ H1 (bottom), H5 (top)
f. 44r Top: Music ‘courant nouuelle’ M1, H1
Bottom: Music ‘la uoltriere’ con.
f. 44v Music and 1st verse ‘Las si jorno sois plaindre’ M3, H5
f. 45r Ballet Plot ‘Subiect du Ballet de sept Vertus’ H2
f. 45v Top: Music and 1st verse ‘Je pensois qu’Amour’ M3, H5 (top), H9
Bottom: French text: remedy for toothache (bottom)
f. 46r French Text: remedy for epilepsy H9

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20 chapter 1
f. 46v Music and 1st verse ‘Que de doulours’ M3, H5

f. 47r Top: Bass part ‘Que de doulours’ M3, H10
Bottom: French text
f. 47v Top: Music and 1st verse ‘Cest toy belle’ M3, H1 (bottom and
Bottom: French text that could be verses 4–6 of RHS), H5 (top)
Ballet of 8 savages on f. 48r? Also text at right
angles along inner edge
f. 48r Verses for ‘ballet de huict sauuages’ H1
f. 48v Music for ‘Ne dois je donc’ M3, H5
f. 49r Music for ‘Ne dois je donc’ – 2nd, 3rd & 4th parts M3, H5
f. 49v Music and 1st verse ‘Allons au nopce’ M3, H5
f. 50r Blank: [Possibily parts for ‘Allons’ were meant to
be copied on this page]
f. 50v Music and 1st verse ‘Cest trop courir’ M1, H1
f. 51r 4 verses ‘Cest trop courir’ with a title of ‘ballet’ H1 (title), H7
f. 51v Music for ‘Ces nimphes’ M1, H1
f. 52r Top: 3 verses ‘Ces nimphes’ from Ballet de H1 (title), H7
Madame. Bottom: Last verse of chanson ‘A Lyson’
with name ‘R Suioy’ just above this verse
f. 52v Music for ‘alison’ M1, H1
f. 53r Verses 1–5 of ‘A Lyson’ with name ‘R Suioy’ at H7
end verse 5
f. 53v Music for ‘Voyci mes cheres seure’ M1, H1
f. 54r 3 verses ‘Voicy mes cheres soeurs’ H7
f. 54v Music for ‘adorable princesse’ from ‘ballet de M1, H1
moncigneur – le princes’
f. 55r Verses 1–4 of ‘Adorable princesse’ H7
f. 55v Verses 5–8 of ‘Adorable princesse’ H7
f. 56r Music for ‘quont serui tant de pleurs’ M1, H1
f. 56v 4 verses ‘Q’uont seruy tant de pleurs’ H7
f. 57r Music for ‘adieu uolage’ M1, H1
f. 57v 5 verses ‘Ceste Anne si belle’ from ‘troisieme par- H7
tie du ballet de madame danse par de bergeres’
f. 58r Music for ‘ceste anne si belle’ from ‘troisieme par- M1, H1
tie du ballet de madame danse par des bergers’
f. 58v 4 verses of ‘Lors que je suis’ H7

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f. 59r Music for ‘lors que ie suis’ M1, H1

f. 59v 5 verses of ‘Fuyes Amants’ from ‘Seconde partie H7
du Ballet danse par Madame’
f. 60r Music for ‘fuiz amantz’ M1, H1
f. 60v 4 verses of ‘Je ne veux’ H7
f. 61r Music for ‘je ne ueux’ M1, H1
f. 61v 3 verses ‘Ò grands Dieux’ H7
f. 62r Music ‘O grande dieux’ M1, H1
f. 62v Verses 1–3 of ‘Soubs la fraischeur’ H7
f. 63r Music ‘Soubs la fraicheur’ M1, H1
f. 63v Verses 4–7 of ‘Soubs la fraischeur’ H7
f. 64r Verses 7–8 of ‘Soubs la fraischeur’ H7
Bottom: Name of ‘Harduin de St Jácques Par.’
f. 64v Music and 1st verse ‘Je uoudrois bien’ M1, H1
f. 65r 5 verses of ‘Je uoudrois bien’ H11 (probably)
f. 65v General description of dance pupils H1
f. 66r General description of dance pupils con. H1
f. 66v French text: verses H1
f. 67r French text: verses H1
f. 67v French text: verses H10 (probably)
f. 68r Signatures (not pasted in) and when ‘princes de H1
la sau’ started dance lessons ‘a brucelle’
f. 68v Music with text underneath M5, H10 (probably)
f. 69r Music with text underneath M5, H10 (probably)
f. 69v French text: recipes with ‘destourmele’ at bottom H1
of page
f. 70r Signatures of 2 pupils and when they started Various
f. 70v Pasted in signatures and general description of Various, H1
dance pupils
f. 71r When mâitre d’hotel of Prince of Lorraine started H1
original lessons
f. 71r Pasted in page of signatures Various
flap
f. 71r 4 signatures Various
back of
flap

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22 chapter 1
f. 71v Pasted in page of signatures and writing at right Various, H1 (right angle
angles text)
f. 72r Pasted in page of signatures Various
f. 72v Pasted in page of signatures Various
f. 73r Pasted in page of signatures Various, H1 (bottom)
Bottom: General description of dance pupils and
when people started
f. 73v Numbers – upside down French text: ‘reset’ H1
f. 74r French text about destourmelle H1 (bottom), H3
Bottom: when one pupil started lessons
f. 74v General description of dance pupils H1
f. 75r Signatures and general description of dance Various, H1 (RHS)
pupils on RH side of page
f. 75v Signatures and general description of dance Various, H1 (RHS)
pupils on RH side of page
f. 76r Signatures. Bottom: general description of dance Various, H1 (bottom)
pupils – crossed out.
f. 76v Violin tablature with text T1, H1
f. 77r Violin tablature with text M1, T1, H1
Bottom: Music for 5 courantes
f. 77v Music for ‘Lab fuiza’ M6
f. 78r Music for ‘Lozb que’ M6
f. 78v 4 blank staves
f. 79r 4 blank staves
f. 79v not in ms as numbering skips from 79 to 83
f. 80r not in ms
f. 80v not in ms
f. 81r not in ms
f. 81v not in ms
f. 82r not in ms
f. 82v Music ‘entre de balle’ M1, H1
f. 83r Music for ‘entre de balle’ con. M1, H1
f. 83v Music for ‘entre de ballet a la destournielle’ M1, H1
f. 84r French text: title ‘Reset’ M1, H1 (title), H12,
Bottom: last 4 notes of 2nd entrée from f. 83v

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f. 84v French text: recipe H13

flap
f. 84v French text: recipes H14 (perhaps H5)
f. 85r French text: recipes con. H14 (perhaps H5)
f. 85v French text: ‘resets’ H1
f. 86r French text: ‘resets’ H1
f. 87r French text: ‘resets’ H1
f. 87v Music for ‘uolte de madamme’ M1, H1
f. 88r Music ‘uolte de madamme’ con. M1, H1
f. 88v Music for ‘laúignoie’ M1, H1
f. 89r Music ‘laúignoie’ con. M1, H1
Bottom: music for ‘courante la vignonne’
f. 89v Music ‘la sipe[…]ns nouuelle’ M1, H1
f. 90r Music various M1, H1
f. 90v Music for ‘entre de ballet des le faus’ M1, H1
f. 91r Music for ‘entre de ballet des le faus’ con. M1, H1
f. 91v Music for ‘moleint’ and ‘la vallets courant M1, H1
nouuelle’
f. 92r Music for ‘la panole’ and ‘la vigonie’ M1, H1
f. 92v Music for ‘la dofine’ and ‘passemeze’ M1, H1
f. 93r Top: music for ‘la boimiere’. Then a sentence on M1 (bottom), M3 (top),
social utility of dancing. At the bottom is the H1 (bottom), H3
continuation of the ‘passemeze’ music (text – social dancing)
f. 93v French text: ‘reset’ H1
f. 94r Pike Exhibition H4
f. 94v Pike Exhibition H4

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24 chapter 1

f. 100r Blank
f. 100v Mandore Tablature for ‘Robinette’ and ‘viue louis’ T1, H1
f. 101r Mandore Tablature: last bar of ‘viue louis’. T1, H1
The rest of the page is ruled with blank staves
f. 101v 5 ruled blank staves
f. 102r 5 ruled blank staves
f. 102v 5 ruled blank staves
f. 103r Lute Tablature: ‘la courant’ by Lespine T1
f. 103v Lute Tablature: ‘la courant’ by Lespine con. T1
f. 104r Lute Tablature: ‘la courant’ by Lespine con. T1
f. 104v Lute Tablature: ‘la courant’ by Lespine con. T1
f. 105r Top: Lute Tablature: ‘la courant’ by Lespine con. T1, H1, H2
Bottom: Ballet Plot ‘L’assaút fúrieux des dames’ (bottom)
f. 105v Ballet Plot ‘L’assaút’ con. Then Ballet plot H2
‘Aultre Ballet De la fleur d’Amour des Amants et
Amantes’
f. 106r Ballet Plot ‘De la fleur’ con. H2
f. 106v Lute Tablature: ‘prelude’ by Lespine T1, H1
f. 107r Lute Tablature: ‘prelude’ con. then 2nd ‘prelude’ T1, H1
by Lespine
f. 107v Lute Tablature: 2nd ‘prelude’ con. T1, H1
f. 108r Lute Tablature: 2nd ‘prelude’ con. Then a ‘berga- T1, H1
masce’ by Lespin
f. 108v Lute Tablature: ‘bergamasce’ con. T1, H1
f. 109r Lute Tablature: ‘bergamasce’ con. Then a ‘balet’ T1, H1
by Lespin
f. 109v Lute Tablature: ‘balet’ con. Then a 2nd ‘balet’ by T1, H1
Lespin
f. 110r Lute Tablature: 2nd ‘balet’ con. Then a 3rd ‘balet’ T1, H1
by Lespins
f. 110v Lute Tablature: last notes of 3rd ‘balet’. Then a T1, H1
4th ‘balet’ by Lespin

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f. 111r Lute Tablature: 4th ‘balet’ con. T1, H1

f. 111v Lute Tablature: 4th ‘balet’ con. Then a ‘volte T1, H1
nouuelle’ by Lespin
f. 112r Lute Tablature: ‘volte nouuelle’ con. T1, H1
f. 112v Lute Tablature: ‘Courante’ by Lespin. Then a 2nd T1, H1
‘courant’ by Lespine
f. 113r Lute Tablature: 2nd ‘courant’ con. T1, H1
f. 114r Lute Tablature: 3rd ‘courante’ by Lespin T1, H1
f. 114v Lute Tablature: ‘lespanol’ by Lespin. Then a 4th T1, H1
‘courante nouuelle’ by Lespin
f. 115r Lute Tablature: 4th ‘courante nouuelle’ con. T1, H1
f. 115v Lute Tablature: ‘uolte’ by Lespine T1, H1
f. 116r Lute Tablature: ‘uolte’ con. T1, H1
f. 116v 1 Blank Stave with clef and time signature
f. 117r Ballet Plot ‘L’esperance des malcontens’ H2
f. 117v Ballet Plot ‘L’esperance’ con. H1 (bottom), H2
Bottom: French text: ‘resets’
f. 118r French text: ‘resets’ con. H1
f. 118v Song Text: ‘L’auignone’ H7
f. 119r Music for ‘courant de monsieur le pine’ and M1, H1
‘courant nouuelle de destourmelle’
f. 119v Music for a ‘courant’ and then text (upside down) M1, H1, H15
(upside down)
f. 120r French text: Possibly a list of herbs H1
f. 120v French text H3
f. 121r Music for ‘allemant’ and ‘courant nouuel’ M1, H1
f. 121v Music for ‘courant suises’, ‘entre de ballet’, ‘suict M1, H1
de ballet’, and another ‘entre de ballet’
f. 122r Top: French text. M1, H1
Bottom: music ‘entre’
f. 122v Last page in ms. It has been glued to another
stronger piece of paper.
The folios in bold appear in facsimile.

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26 chapter 1
table 2 Identification of hands in S 253
Name Sample Folio no.
H1 f. 1r
H2 f. 4r
H3 f. 74r
H4 f. 94r
H5 f. 41v
H6 f. 37r

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table 2 Identification of hands in S 253 (cont.)
H7 f. 52r
H8 f. 40r
H9 f. 45v
H10 f. 47r
H11 f. 65r
H12 f. 84r
H13 f. 84v
flap

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28 chapter 1
H14 f. 85r
H15 f. 119v
F1 f. 5r
M1 f. 27v
M2 f. 29r

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M3 f. 33v
M4 f. 41r
M5 f. 68v
M6 f. 77v
T1 f. 103r

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chapter 2
Dance in Early Modern Europe
Dance in early modern Europe pervaded daily life across all levels of society.
While everyone danced, what they performed, and how they moved, varied
according to the social level to which they belonged.1 The quantity of surviv-
ing material, however, is quite uneven, with the dance practices of the elite
and those of the middle level of society being the best documented, especial-
ly in regard to specific choreographic details. Much of what is known about
dancing by those at the bottom of the social pyramid is found in non-dance
sources such as legal cases of people prosecuted for dancing in churchyards on
the Sabbath.2 The discussion of dance in society in this chapter, however, will
mostly focus on the dance practices of the elite – those who wielded politi-
cal power – and the middle level of society, the merchants and citizens of the
towns, since it is these two groups who lie at the heart of our anonymous dance
master’s notebook as students and performers.
1 Dance as Entertainment
Whether the people dancing were villagers dancing in their local churchyard,
or members of the elite dancing in their private apartments, one reason for
the activity was entertainment: dancing was a source of pleasure and joy to
1 One must make the point that even though movement patterns and movement qualities
were different, the barriers between dances performed by the elite and those at a lower so-
cial level were not inflexible or impermeable, as dances that originated in an urban or rural
environment were adopted and adapted by the elite for their own use. For a discussion of this
interaction in France in the first half of the seventeenth century, see Margaret M. McGowan,
‘Ballets for the Bourgeois’, Dance Research 19, no. 2 (2001): 106–26.
2 For a discussion of non-elite dancing in late sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, see
Emily Winerock, ‘Reformation and Revelry: The Politics and Practices of Dancing in Early
Modern England, c. 1550–c. 1640’. PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2012; Winerock,
‘Churchyard Capers: The Controversial Use of Church Space for Dancing in Early Modern
England’, in The Sacralization of Space and Behaviour in the Early Modern World: Studies and
Sources, ed. Jennifer Mara DeSilva (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 233–56, and Christopher
Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010), pp. 328–90. For non-elite dance in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, particu-
larly in German-speaking regions of Europe, see Walter Salmen, ‘Dances and Dance Music, c.
1300–1530’, in Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Reinhard Strohm and
Bonnie J. Blackburn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 162–90.

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Dance in Early Modern Europe 31
those who participated, as well as to those who watched. Letters, diaries, dance
treatises, descriptions of festivals and other documents from this period all
record how dancing gave pleasure to the participants and to the audience. The
French king Charles IX provides an illustration of the entertainment provid-
ed by dancing. Brantôme records how one day, while in ill health, Charles IX
ordered all to leave him apart from a few close friends. He then ordered the
maréchal de Brissac and Filippo Strozzi, both exceptional dancers, to perform
for him, with Strozzi playing the lute while de Brissac danced galliards and
canaries. Brantôme records how the ‘king watched for a long time, full of plea-
sure and contentment at such a spectacle’.3 In 1552 the student Felix Platter
records in his diary how he was very eager to join in the balls given by well-to-
do merchants in Montpellier, where many hours were spent dancing branles,
galliards and the volta.4 The sixteenth-century Italian dance master Fabritio
Caroso opens his treatise Nobiltà di dame with a letter to his readers in which
he expresses the view that dancing induces joy in the souls of those who prac-
tise it, and that the activity banishes unpleasant thoughts and troubles.
In the course of our lives virtuous pleasures and solace for the soul are as
necessary as displeasing things and travail are harmful…. Among these
virtuous pleasures one places the practice of dancing, … since in human
interactions and society [dance] rouses the soul to joy, and when those
who find themselves oppressed by some trouble, it eases [these trou-
bles] and revives them, and holds at bay every annoying and unpleasant
thought.5
The enjoyment derived from dancing is a recurring theme in Antonius Arena’s

dance treatise, including the pleasure found in dancing in public during fes-
tivities such as carnival celebrations.
On the last day of Carnival, do the sprightly morescas, and farces too, and
also momeries…. That is the time, at the end of Carnival, when dancing
3 Margaret M. McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 156.
4 McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance, p. 8.
5 ‘Alla conversatione di questa nostra vita sono necessarij gli honesti piaceri, & le recreationi
dell’animo, quanto à quella i dispiaceri, e travagli sono pernitiosi…. frà le quali hà luogo l’uso
del Ballare, … poi che nelle conversationi, & società humane eccita gli animi alle allegrezze,
& quando quelli si trovano oppressi da qualche perturbatione, gli solleva, e ristora, e gli tien
lontani da ogni pensiero noioso, e dispiacevole’. Fabritio Caroso, Nobiltà di dame (Venice:
Muschio, 1600; facsimile ed., Bologna: Forni, 1980), p. 1.

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32 chapter 2
is triumphant, and everyone is en fête. People give themselves up to

enjoyment.6
2 Dance and Physical Exercise
Dancing was seen as a useful form of physical exercise for both men and
women. This view of dance is found in fifteenth-century Italian texts, such as
the 1475 letter that Francesco Filelfo, master of rhetoric at the Sforza court,
wrote to Matteo da Trevi, a teacher of Galeazzo Maria Sforza. In this letter
Filelfo states that
[m]any approve of dancing and performing balli because they exercise

the mind and the body together, as dancing derives from music. This ac-
tivity is praised by the philosophers because our soul, the heavens and
the universe are all regulated by the same harmonic proportions.7
By the sixteenth century the view that dance was beneficial to one’s health was
widely accepted, even by those who saw dancing as a sinful activity and argued
against the practice.8 Medical treatises, such as those written by the physicians
Jérôme de Monteux in 1557 and Joseph Duchesne in 1606, praised dancing, and
their authors often provided ‘lists of dance names … [and] detailed and enthu-
siastic explanations of the physical benefits these dances could provide’.9
6 Antonius Arena, ‘Rules of Dancing: Antonius Arena’, trans. John Guthrie and Marino Zorzi,
Dance Research 4, no. 2 (1986): 38.
7 ‘Molti approvano le danze e i balli, perché esercitano insieme il corpo e la mente, in quanto
derivano dalla musica. Questa viene lodata dai filosofi, perché il nostro stesso animo e il cielo
e l’universo tutto risultano regolati da proporzioni armoniche’, from Alessandro Pontremoli,
‘Memorabilia saltandi. Archivi e memorie per la danza alla corte degli Sforza’, in Ricordanze:
Memoria in movimento e coreografie della storia, ed. S. Franco and M. Nordera (Turin: UTET
Università, 2010), p. 250.
8 Alessandro Arcangeli, ‘Moral Views on Dance’, in Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politick,
1250–1750, ed. Jennifer Nevile (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 289. For an ex-
tensive discussion of the differing attitudes to dance in early modern Europe, see Arcangeli,
Davide o Salomè? Il dibattito europeo sulla danza nella prima età moderna (Rome: Viella,
2000).
9 Arcangeli, ‘Moral Views on Dance,’ p. 290.

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3 Dance as a Social Marker
The dance performed by the elite helped inculcate grace and elegance in its
practitioners both on and off the dance floor. The dances taught by the dance
masters helped to train all their students, but especially young girls and boys, in
the patterns of behaviour and deportment essential for membership in the so-
cial elite. If you moved ungracefully you immediately demonstrated to others
that you did not belong to the right class of society, as you could not perform
the movement patterns appropriate to that class. Dancing taught the chosen
members of society control over their body and over all their actions, both
when dancing and in day-to-day interactions with their colleagues and supe-
riors. It was visible evidence that a person was capable of appearing in public
without making a bad exhibition of herself or himself. If a person could control
his or her outward bodily movements, then they were capable of controlling
their inner emotions as well. The need for members of the elite to have control
over their bodily movements and gestures became increasingly important in
the sixteenth century, as the conduct demanded of courtiers became increas-
ingly intricate, both in terms of spoken courtesies and bodily movement.
A high level of skill was needed in order to perform gracefully in public,
without error. A dancer had to be able to learn the correct carriage of the body,
to master the steps and their variants and to memorize the choreographies.
Furthermore, the dancer had to possess a thorough understanding of the in-
teraction between the dance and the music, the ability to adapt the patterns
of each dance to the available space, the wit and invention to subtly vary each
step so that it was not performed the same way several times in a row, a know
ledge of the gestures and movements of the body which accompanied the
steps, an awareness of the phrasing of each step as well as the agility to cope
with the speed changes in the choreographies. To acquire such skill and ex-
pertise required many hours of teaching and practice, and only those who
were wealthy enough to have the leisure time to devote to this activity were
able to participate. Dancing in Renaissance Europe, therefore, functioned as
a social marker: in a visual age it was an ever-present symbol of the difference
between those in the elite level of society and those who were not. In external
comportment the courtiers expressed their claim to difference. Through their
dance training they moved and danced in a manner completely separate from
the rest of society. A striking example of how dance was used to define the
elite in society comes from Nuremberg in 1521. In that year those who held
political power wished to further limit the numbers of citizens entitled to vote.
Therefore they designated the voting elite as ‘those families who used to dance

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34 chapter 2
in the Rathaus in the olden days, and who still dance there’.10 In Nuremberg
it was the ability to dance in the ‘correct’ style that was used as a means of
excluding people from the group who exercised political power. Dance also
functioned as a method of discriminating between people of different social
levels when it appeared in dramatic productions. One example of dance in
drama reflecting its position in society more generally is found in early six-
teenth-century French secular plays. While in these plays the basse danse is
only performed occasionally, it more often forms part of a conversation in a
play ‘for the express purpose of demonstrating the sophistication and elegance
of the speaker’.11
4 Dance, Love, Courtship and Desire
Throughout early modern Europe dancing was an activity which both men
and women were able to enjoy together. Even if only women or only men were
dancing, there was usually the possibility of attracting the attention of mem-
bers of the audience by one’s performance. The opportunities social dancing
afforded for dalliance with the opposite sex were clearly recognized in a soci-
ety in which men’s and women’s lives were far more regulated and controlled
than is the case today. The fact that dancing was an opportunity for flirtation,
for inciting desire and for pursuing the object of one’s own desires, was one
of the reasons the practice was condemned by some groups in society, who
viewed dance as an incitement to lust.12 A further role of dance in Renaissance
society was that of ritualized courtship, which can be illustrated most clearly
by the choreographies recorded in the contemporary dance treatises, almost
all of which are for small groups of men and women. The step sequences and
floor patterns of these choreographies also aided in courtship, as they allowed
dancers to interact with their partners, to parade before them, to pursue them,
as well as engage in mock battles. The sixteenth-century French canon Thoinot
Arbeau is quite blunt in his dance treatise as to this role of social dancing. For
Arbeau the opportunity dancing provided for a man and a woman to be able to
‘inspect’ each other during the course of a dance was one of the benefits danc-
ing gave to a well-ordered society, since such inspection could reveal whether
10 Keith Polk, German Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages: Players, Patrons and
Performance Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 11.
11 Howard Mayer Brown, Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400–1550 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 156.
12 Arcangeli, ‘Moral Views on Dance’, p. 285.

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‘lovers are in good health and sound of limb … [or] if they are shapely or emit
an unpleasant odour as of bad meat’.13
5 Dance, Virtue and Ethical Behaviour
Dance was also viewed as a medium of moral instruction: men and women
when dancing represented virtues. Thomas Elyot makes this point very clearly:
Now because there is no pastime to be compared to that wherein may be

found both recreation and meditation of virtue, I have among all honest
pastimes, wherein is exercise of the body, noted dancing to be of an ex-
cellent utility, comprehending in it wonderful figures, or, as the Greeks do
call them, ideae, of virtues and noble qualities, and specially of the com-
modious virtue called prudence, whom Tully defineth to be the know
ledge of things which ought to be desired and followed, and also of them
which ought to be fled from or eschewed.14
This passage comes from Elyot’s The Boke Named the Governour, published in
1531, which Elyot wrote as a treatise on the education of young boys for ca-
reers in England’s administration. He firmly believed that virtue was to be de-
veloped through a programme of education and training. According to Elyot,
dance was a noble and virtuous pastime, as it provided both recreation and
a means to learn and comprehend the virtues and noble qualities necessary
for adult life, especially the fundamental virtue of prudence, ‘the porch of the
noble palace of man’s reason whereby all other virtues shall enter’.15 Through
the study and practice of the basse danse children could learn the important
moral truths that were essential for those engaged in public affairs and in the
government of the country.
And because that the study of virtue is tedious for the more part to them
that do flourish in young years, I have devised how in the form of dancing,
13 Thoinot Arbeau, Orchesography (1589), trans. Mary Stewart Evans, 1948. Reprint (New
York: Dover, 1967), p. 12. ‘les amoureux sont sains & dispos de leur membres … silz ont
l’alaine souefue, & silz sentent vne senteur mal odorat, que l’on nom[m]e l’espaule de
mouton’. Orchésographie. Facsimile of the 1596 printing (Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), p. Aii
verso.
14 Thomas Elyot, The Book Named the Governor, ed. S. E. Lehmberg (London: Dent, 1962),
p. 79.
15 Elyot, The Book, p. 79.

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36 chapter 2
now late used in this realm among gentlemen, the whole description of
this virtue prudence may be found out and well perceived, as well by the
dancers as by them which standing by will be diligent beholders and
markers, having first mine instructions surely graven in the table of their
remembrance.16
The basse danse, according to Elyot, was an exercise in virtue, with each step
of the dance signifying a different aspect of prudence. For example, the rever-
ence which begins every basse danse signifies the honour due to God, which
is the basis of prudence, and should be the starting point for all of mankind’s
actions.17 The branle step signifies ‘maturity’, by which Elyot means ‘modera-
tion’, that is, the mean between two extremes.18 The two single steps signify
providence and industry. By ‘industry’ Elyot is referring to the combination of
intelligence and experience, while ‘providence’ refers to the ability to foresee
what is necessary for a good outcome for the public one is governing and then
to act to ensure that this outcome is achieved.19 The reprise step signifies ‘cir-
cumspection’, that is, the knowledge or ability to see what caused disasters in
the past, and what will be the outcome of present actions. ‘Circumspection’
means being able to evaluate events and the consequences of events, so that
one can decide if a course of behaviour should be continued or abandoned.20
Because the double step of the basse danse was composed of three forwards
movements (or steps) it signified the three branches of prudence: natural au-
thority, experience and modesty.21
Elyot’s view of dance as a ‘visual manifestation’ and a ‘physical embodiment
of moral and political order’,22 was adopted and extended by the Jesuits in
the plays staged by students at their educational institutions. The Jesuits also
‘sought to inculcate an abstract virtue by physical enactment’23 through the
dancing that was frequently a part of their dramatic productions. The Jesuits’
educational philosophy was foremost to develop each student’s faith and com-
mitment to God, but they were also concerned with nurturing the body and

17 Elyot, The Book, pp. 79–80.
23 Barbara Ravelhofer, ‘Choreography as Commonplace’, in Commonplace Culture in Western
Europe in the Early Modern Period: Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Revolt, vol. 1, ed.
David J. Cowling and Mette B. Bruun (Leuven: Peters, 2011), p. 226.

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mind as well as the soul through the ‘training of memory, [the] advancement
of skills in use of the Latin language, enhancement of rhetorical delivery and
physical poise as well as lessons of virtue’.24 In the plays produced each year
the students were given an opportunity to display the results of their training
in the recitation and acting of the dramas, and in the dances they performed
during the course of the plays.
The play Crispus by Bernardino Stefonio was first performed in 1597, and it
became extremely popular, with additional productions in subsequent years,
and with eight editions of the play being published across Europe between
1601 and 1634.25 Crispus is a good illustration of the way in which dance was
integrated into the Jesuit dramas, and of the figures around which the chore-
ographies were built, since an edition of this play published in Naples in 1604
contains four figures performed by the sixteen dancers.26 The first dance was
devised around the figure of a two-headed eagle, a symbol of the Holy Roman
Empire, and it represented ‘the constant quest for honour and the defiance of
misfortune’.27 The figure for the second dance is a caduceus, and it corresponds
to a prayer that the Chorus of the play addressed to Christ in which they prayed
for the protection and salvation of Crispus.28 The third figure is a grid with
lines fanning out from the centre representing the spread of malicious ru-
mours and calumnies that, once started, extend to the limits of the universe.
The fourth dance was centred around a choreography that traced both a laby-
rinth and a cross, which together ‘represented the human condition and the
need for Christian guidance’.29 As Barbara Ravelhofer explains, when dancing
the paths of the labyrinth the students were ‘living their faith … [because] they
were made physically aware that, even if a situation seemed chaotic, a higher
order was at work, and things would eventually come to a resolution’.30
An argument that links physical movement with ethical behaviour and
virtue might seem far-fetched today, but Renaissance Europe still accepted
Cicero’s ideas on comportment and gesture as expressed in his work De officiis,
24 Louis J. Oldani and Victor R. Yanitelli, ‘Jesuit Theater in Italy: Its Entrances and Exit’,
Italica 76, no. 1 (1999): 19.
25 Ravelhofer, ‘Choreography as Commonplace’, p. 223.
26 The published text represented the version of the play performed in Naples the previous
year. For a reproduction of these four figures, see Marc Fumaroli, ‘Le Crispus et la Flavia
du P. Bernardino Stefonio S. J. Contribution à l’histoire du théâtre au Collegio Romano
(1597–1628)’, in Les fêtes de la Renaissance, 3 vols., ed. J. Jacquot and E. Konigson (Paris:
Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1975), III: Plates I and II.
28 Fumaroli, ‘Le Crispus et la Flavia’, p. 522.

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38 chapter 2
a treatise that ‘influenced either directly or indirectly, almost every medieval

and Renaissance account of the body in motion: dance, the visual arts, rhe-
torical theory and practice, table manners, to mention only a few obvious
instances’.31 The basis of Cicero’s work was that movements of the body were
the outward signs of the state of a person’s soul. Thus when the fifteenth-
century Italian dance master Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro wrote in his dance
treatise that ‘this virtue of the dance is none other than an external action
reflecting interior spiritual movements’,32 he was following a long-established
tradition that went from Cicero to Saint Ambrose,33 to the twelfth-century
treatise by Hugh of Saint Victor, De institutione novitiorum,34 to late medieval
works addressed to princes and nobility on the control of bodily movement,35
to fifteenth-century humanist treatises on education,36 and also to humanist
writings more generally on the movements of the body: people’s carriage, their
gestures, and general demeanour while attending to their everyday activities.
Matteo Palmierei’s 1439 treatise Vita civile is a good illustration of the senti-
ments expressed in humanist writings.
Now I will discuss that which is appropriate to the body, both in its
movements and when it is at rest…. Often it happens that by small signs
one recognizes great vices, and these signs give to us a true indication of
31 Dilwyn Knox, ‘Gesture and Comportment: Diversity and Uniformity’, in Forging European
Identities, 1400–1700, ed. Herman Roodenburg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007), p. 293.
32 ‘La qual virtute del danzare non è altro che una actione demonstrativa di fuori di movi-
menti spiritali’. Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro, Guilielmi Hebraei pisauriensis de practica seu
arte tripudii vulgare opusculum, incipit, 1463, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fonds it.
973, f. 5v.
33 Saint Ambrose (c. 340–397) adapted Cicero’s work so that it applied more particularly to
a Christian context. For example, in his treatise De officiis ministrorum he wrote that ‘a
state of mind is perceived in comportment of the body. Hence a motion of the body is,
so to speak, an expression of the soul’. See Dilwyn Knox, ‘Disciplina: The Monastic and
Clerical Origins of European Civility’, in Renaissance Society and Culture: Essays in Honor
of Eugene F. Rice Jr., ed. J. Monfasani and R. G. Musto (New York: Italica Press, 1991), p. 109.
34 Written sometime before 1125, De institutione novitiorum, was the first treatise devoted en-
tirely to comportment. In it Hugh makes quite clear that learning virtue involves control-
ling movements of the body, since for him outward comportment was the sign of inner
harmony and virtue. See Stephen J. Jaeger, ‘Humanism and Ethics at the School of St.
Victor in the Early Twelfth Century’, in Mediaeval Studies 55 (1993): 61.
35 Knox, ‘Disciplina: The Monastic and Clerical Origins of European Civility’, p. 115.
36 For example, in their treatises Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini and Maffeo Vegio repeated the
monastic ideals of comportment, declaring them to be appropriate for their well-born
students. See Knox, ‘Disciplina: The Monastic and Clerical Origins of European Civility’,
p. 120.

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the state of our soul, as for example, a haughty glance signifies arrogance,
a lowered mien signifies humility, while to lean to one side indicates sor-
row…. In walking one must consider one’s age and rank. One must not
walk too upright, nor make one’s steps slow, hesitant and of such gravity
that one appears pompous, like those in a procession of ecclesiastical dig-
nitaries. Neither should one spread one’s clothes or walk so swollen and
rounded that the street appears not capable of holding one…. Neither
does one wish to walk too quickly, as this signifies fickleness, and dem-
onstrates that one is lacking in constancy, but rather every movement
should express an ordered modesty, in which is observed one’s proper
dignity, having nature always as our teacher and guide.37
The same view is expressed in sixteenth-century writings on dance, as, for

example, in Caroso’s Nobiltà di dame, where he comments that
since it [dance] is joined with poetry and with music, its powers are
among those other worthy [arts], and it is a part of those same [arts of]
imitation which represent the working of the soul through movements
of the body.38
In his defence of dance published in Paris in 1599 entitled Trois dialogues de

l’exercice de sauter, et voltiger en l’air, Arcangelo Tuccaro makes similar state-
ments, arguing that through dancing the dancer is able to ‘understand and [to]
know virtue’.39
37 ‘Seguita dire quello che ne’ movimenti e riposi del corpo si convenga…. Spesso adviene
che per piccoli cenni si conosce maximi vitii e dàssi inditii veri di quello sente l’animo
nostro, come per elevato guatare si significa arrogantia; pel dimesso, humilità, per ris-
trignersi in su il lato, dolore…. In nello andare si de’ considerare l’età et il grado: non
andare intero, né muovere i passi tardi, rari e con tanta gravità che si paia pomposo et
simile alle processioni delle degnità sacerdotali; non si de’ e’ spandere i vestimenti et an-
dare gonfiato et tondo, siché apaia non capere per la via…. Non vuole però anche l’andare
essere sì presto significhi leggereza, et dimonstri non essere in ella persona constanzia,
ma ogni movimento si riferisca a una ordinata verecundia, in nella quale s’osservi la pro-
pria degnità, avendo sempre la natura per nostra maestra et guida’. Matteo Palmieri, Vita
Civile, ed. Gino Belloni (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), pp. 95–7.
38 ‘poiche è congionta con la Poesia, & con la Musica, facultà frà l’altre molto degna; & è
parte di quella imitatione, che representa gli effetti dell’animo con movimento del corpo’.
Caroso, Nobiltà di dame, p. 1.
39 Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 82. Van Orden is quoting from f. 174r of Tuccaro’s Trois dialogues.

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40 chapter 2
6 Dance and Civic Pride
So far we have discussed the different roles of dance in society on an individual

level, but dance also played a part in society at an official or state level, one
example of which is the royal entry. Royal entries were ceremonies in which
a city’s status and rights, and those of its corporations, were reaffirmed,40 and
dance frequently played a major role in these entries. The time, effort and
expense devoted by the guilds and governing councils to the choreographic
components of these entries indicate the important role of dance in a city’s
demonstration of its civic pride. This is illustrated by the 1570 and the 1599
entries into Madrid. The entry in 1570 occurred nine years after Philip II moved
his court to Madrid, and the city wanted to emphasize its new status as the
seat of the court. The town council, therefore, commissioned six dances to
be performed during the king’s entry at considerable cost to themselves.41
The town council also insisted that they preview the dances twenty days be-
fore the entry occurred, in order to make sure they were of high enough quality
and to allow time for any necessary changes to be made if they were unhappy.
For the 1599 entry the town council commissioned nineteen separate dances
at a staggering cost of 5,777 ducats, shared between the city itself (one dance),
the surrounding villages (four dances) and the guilds and merchants (fourteen
dances). The contracts demanded that these dances were ‘to be very brilliant,
as the occasion requires’.42
7 Dance and Social Order
Throughout Renaissance Europe dance played an important part in ritual

events, and was part of the ordered, formal behaviour demanded by these
rituals. This concern for ‘order’ and the correct protocols was so strong that it
was not ignored even during supposedly spontaneous acts of festivity during
Carnival. For example, it was the custom in late fifteenth-century Ferrara dur-
ing Carnival for the duke and members of his family to unexpectedly arrive
40 Nicolas Russell and Hélène Visentin, ‘The multilayered production of meaning in
sixteenth-century French ceremonial entries’, in French Ceremonial Entries in the Sixteenth
Century: Event, Image, Text, ed. Nicolas Russell and Hélène Visentin (Toronto: Centre for
Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007), p. 16.
41 David Sánchez Cano, ‘Dances for the royal festivities in Madrid in the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries’, Dance Research 23, no. 2 (2005): 127. The rest of the information in
this paragraph about these entries comes from pages 125–8.
42 Sánchez Cano, ‘Dances for the royal festivities’, p. 127.

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at a private house and to join in the festivities there.43 But such occasions
were carefully planned and ordered, as can be seen in a letter by Francesco
Bagnacavallo to Isabella d’Este, where he details all the planning that preceded
a festa for the signorial family. Bagnacavallo is also careful to remark on how
the dancing before dinner was ordered by the expected rules, and, upon the
banquet commencing, how the guests were all seated in order of precedence.44
The order in which people danced at court balls, at wedding festivals, and at
state events reflected their position in the social hierarchy: who danced with
whom, and in what order was important, and when this order was not fol-
lowed much speculation ensued.45 This is clearly illustrated at the court of the
French king Henri III, where there was a very clear hierarchy for the order of
dancing at the court balls.
The king danced with the queen, followed by nobles of the highest rank
and their ladies; the monarch could then choose to dance with the bride
of a great marriage, or with any lady he favoured. The queen danced with
no one except the king, or possibly her brother, the duc de Mercoeur, or
with some other prince, on the express command of His Majesty.46
8 Dance and Politics
Throughout early modern Europe courtiers danced in court spectacles, in the

ballets de cour, masques, fêtes, masquerades and intermedi. Each event had its
own specific political and social context, but in most, if not all, of these events
dancing had a political purpose, and was used as a political tool by sovereigns
for both domestic and international audiences.47 In fact, choreographic activ-
ity occupied a key place in the plans of the rulers of France, and was used
not only to impress neighbouring courts, but also to make sure that French
43 Richard Brown, ‘The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara 1450–1505: A Study in the
Socio-political Implications of Renaissance Spectacle’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Edinburgh, 1982, p. 308.
44 Brown, ‘The Politics of Magnificence’, pp. 313–4.
47 Ellen R. Welch, ‘Rethinking the Politics of Court Spectacle. Performance and Diplomacy
under the Valois’, in French Renaissance and Baroque Drama: Text, Performance, Theory,
ed. Michael Meere (Lanham: University of Delaware Press, 2015), p. 103. Welch’s essay
(pp. 101–16) emphasizes how multimedia court spectacles could contain multiple mean-
ings and could be interpreted in different ways by different members of the audience.

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42 chapter 2
courtiers had little spare time.48 While this strategy may well have been initi-
ated by François I,49 it was still followed by Henri IV, who, in January 1600 gave
orders for more than the usual number of ballets to be performed in order to
impress the duke of Savoy with the grandeur and magnificence of the French
court.50 In 1610 the masque Tethys Festival was a central part of James I’s politi-
cal agenda in the creation of his son Henry as Prince of Wales, thereby empha-
sizing ‘the strength of the Stuart dynasty and the advantages of a peaceful reign’,
a message James I hoped would resonate with parliament and encourage that
body to grant him the income he wanted and needed to maintain that peace-
ful reign.51 The Ballet des Polonais (1573) was planned by the Queen Mother,
Catherine de’ Medici, to convey several messages that related to her concerns
in foreign and domestic policy. The major purpose of this ballet was to pro
ject the idea of a Valois empire, with her son Henri as a military commander
and a ruler fit to be King of Poland. Catherine, however, was also very concerned
to present an image of herself as ‘a loving mother, a guardian of dynasty, and
a promoter of its power – and, finally, a strong woman who for the sake of the
kingdom was capable of overcoming female sentiments’.52 Representing the
sixteen provinces of France, the sixteen noble ladies who danced the Ballet des
Polonais were chosen for their beauty and feminine appeal, yet their complex
figured choreography that lasted for an hour was full of martial and bellicose
characteristics and suggestions. It was through the juxtaposition of the beauty
and grace of the noble ladies with the martial patterns of their dancing that
the multiple messages desired by Catherine were conveyed to those watching.
Dancing in court spectacles was also a vehicle for an individual’s self-
advancement, and was seen by contemporaries as a sign of who was current-
ly in favour and who was not,53 as is illustrated by Jonson’s masque Mercury
Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court (1615). By 1613 Robert Carr Earl of
Somerset had gained immense influence and power at the English court
through his friendship with James I. In the summer of 1614, however, when
James I met George Villiers, the political landscape began to change. Villiers’

51 Anne Daye, ‘“The power of his commanding trident”: Tethys Festival as Royal Policy’,
Historical Dance 4, no. 2 (2012): 19.
52 Ewa Kociszewska, ‘War and Seduction in Cybele’s Garden: Contextualizing the Ballet des
Polonais’, Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2012): 812.
53 Sharon Kettering discusses this aspect of court spectacles in early seventeenth-century
France in ‘Favour and Patronage: Dancers in the Court Ballets of Early Seventeenth-
Century France’, Canadian Journal of History 43 (2008): 391–415.

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increasing favour with the king made him a magnet for those courtiers – and
also the queen – who were opposed to Somerset and his faction. Somerset him-
self was alarmed at Villiers’ promotion, and did all he could to hinder his rising
influence. In November 1614 Somerset prevented Villiers from obtaining a posi-
tion in the Bedchamber by arranging for Robert Ker, one of his Scottish cous-
ins, to be given this position in Villiers’ place.54 The rivalry between Somerset
and Villiers, and the factions behind them, was played out in Jonson’s masque.
It was the first masque in which Villiers performed, but which also included
Ker among the dancers. From surviving letters of John Chamberlain and John
Donne it is clear that they expected this masque, and specifically the danc-
ing of Villiers and Ker, would reveal to them and other courtiers the relative
prestige of the two men, and thus the state of Somerset’s favour with the king.55
9 Dance in Drama
As John Powell has remarked, it should not be surprising that the plays and
ballets of the early seventeenth century should have so much in common,
since leading playwrights of the time also provided verses for the ballets de
cour.56 The participation by playwrights in danced spectacles was not con-
fined to France, as a similar situation existed in England with authors such
as Ben Jonson writing for the public theatre and for court masques. From his
work as a dramatist, Jonson was well aware of the tradition of ending a theatre
performance with a jig, and from his work writing masques for the court over
a period of about three decades, he had regular contact with musicians and
dancers.57 Because dance was so ubiquitous in society the presentation of dif-
ferent types of dancing on stage would resonate with the audience and elicit
reasonably predictable responses to it: dance was part of an audience’s collec-
tive memory in early modern Europe.58 The important roles that dance played
in society at this time was mirrored by the various ways dramatists used dance
54 Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), p. 221.
55 See Ben Jonson, Works, 11 vols., ed. C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1950), X: 553, and P. M. Oliver, ed., John Donne: Selected Letters (New
York: Routledge, 2002), p. 80.
56 John S. Powell, Music and Theatre in France 1600–1680 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000), p. 77. Powell goes on to discuss the shared characteristics on pp. 77–81.
57 Barbara Ravelhofer, ‘Dance’, in Ben Jonson in Context, ed. Julie Sanders (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 171.
58 Ravelhofer, ‘Dance’, p. 173.

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44 chapter 2
in their comedies and tragedies. If one includes discussion of dances and danc-
ing between characters in plays, as well as occurrences of dance performances,
it appears that dance was as frequent a part of dramatic presentations as it was
in daily life. In England, for example, there are over two hundred extant com-
edies from 1553 to 1625, with all except twenty-nine of them either mentioning
dancing or containing scenes where the actors dance.59
Dance functioned as entertainment in both scripted and improvised dra-
mas, such as those presented by the commedia dell’arte troupes. Often com-
edies or farces concluded with a dance or several dances that were not related
to the preceding play, but ‘were meant to be simply enjoyed for their entertain-
ment value’.60 In late sixteenth-century England both comedies and tragedies
ended with a jig; that is, a dramatic entertainment where the characters sang
and danced as well as acting.61 As Stephen Orgel has commented, sometimes
a jig was ‘comic or burlesque, but it could also be dignified and elegant, a short
formal dance by the performers’.62 The dancing component of a jig could be
extensive, with much of it being improvised, and jigs often lasted for an hour.63
Dancing often functioned purely as entertainment when it was part of wed-
ding scenes in plays. One illustration of this is the commedia play performed
on 8 March 1568 in Munich as part of the wedding celebrations of Crown
Prince Wilhelm of Bavaria and Princess Renée of Lorraine.64 The play which
was filled with music and acrobatics, concluded with the characters perform-
ing Italian dances to celebrate the wedding of Zanni, the former servant of
Pantalone (who was played by the celebrated musician and composer Orlando
Lassus), to Camilla.65
59 Mary V. Pyron, ‘ “Sundry Measures”: Dance in Renaissance Comedy’, Ph.D. dissertation,
Vanderbilt University, 1987, p. 18. Pyron’s list is taken from that in Alfred Harbage, Annals
of English Drama 975–1700. Revised by Samuel Schoenbaum (London: Methuen, 1964).
60 Powell, Music and Theatre, p. 98.
61 Ken Pierce, ‘Coarse, Odd and Comic: A New Study of Jigs’, Dance Chronicle 38, no. 1
(2015): 81.
62 Stephen Orgel, Foreword to Shakespeare’s Songbook, by Ross W. Duffin (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2004), p. 12.
63 William N. West, ‘When is the Jig Up – and What is it Up To?’, in Locating the Queen’s Men,
1583–1603: Material Practices and Conditions of Playing, ed. Helen Ostovich, Holger Schott
Syme and Andrew Griffin (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p. 203.
64 M. A. Katritzky, ‘The Diaries of Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria: Commedia dell’arte at the
Wedding Festivals of Florence (1565) and Munich (1568)’, in Italian Renaissance Festivals
and their European Influence, ed. J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Lewiston: Edwin
Mellen Press, 1992), pp. 147–50.
65 Katritzky, ‘The Diaries of Prince Ferdinand’, p. 149.

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In a passage discussing the benefits of dance to society, the fifteenth-

century Italian dance master Guglielmo Ebreo stated that ‘the character of
everyone is made known by the dance’ (la qual da apertamente a cognoscere
la qualità di tutti).66 His comment could also serve as a model for dramatists
in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, who also used dance in their
plays to reveal the true nature of a character, especially if that character was
disguised for some reason. In Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, for example, it
is Perdita’s dancing that reveals her inner nobility and royal pedigree to King
Polixenes and Prince Florizel, as well as to the audience of the play. ‘Nothing
she does, or seems / But smacks of something greater than herself, / Too noble
for this place’ (ll. 157–159) is the conclusion of Polixenes after watching her
dance.67 In Cynthia’s Revels (1600) Jonson uses dance as one means of demon-
strating the pride and self-love of Lady Philantia.68 As Ravelhofer has pointed
out, dance was a particularly apt tool for playwrights to use in the course of
unfolding the personal relationships between characters because it was – and
still is – a communal activity, that ‘thrives with onlookers and unfolds its dy-
namic in group interaction’.69
Playwrights also utilized dance as a dramatic device to move the plot in
a new direction, as illustrated by the melodramatic tragicomedy Agarite by
Sieur Durval, which was performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1633. In this
play the author called for a ballet that was used as a cloak for a premeditated
murder.70 A Ballet des quatre vents is organized by the plotters in order to
hide the murder they are planning to commit. The ballet, which takes place
on the eve of the victim’s wedding, is performed in semi-darkness, with the
candles being extinguished and the only light for the dancers being provided
by torches that shone through coloured glass. The culmination of the ballet is
a thunderstorm, with pistol shots being fired to create the necessary thunder
and lightning. When the storm is finished and the hall relit, the audience is
presented with a dead body of one of the four dancers on the floor of the hall
who has been shot. Thus a murder occurs in front of the audience while they
are distracted by the ballet.71 The use of dancing or masquing as a cover for
murder and treachery was also common in Jacobean revenge tragedies, such
66 Gugliemo Ebreo, MS fonds it. 973, f. 19v.

67 Pyron, ‘“Sundry Measures”: Dance in Renaissance Comedy’, p. 52.
69 Barbara Ravelhofer, ‘Middleton and Dance’, in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton,
ed. Gary Taylor and Trish Thomas Henley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 137.
70 Powell, Music and Theatre, pp. 98–9. The rest of the information about this play is taken
from p. 99 of Powell’s monograph.
71 Powell, Music and Theatre, p. 99.

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46 chapter 2
as John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (c. 1600). In this play the dance in the last
act allows the three murderers to disguise themselves, as well as heightening
the suspense.72
Throughout the early modern period dancing invoked debate as to its mer-
its or the harm it caused to individuals and to society, with its supporters often
defending dance with arguments drawn from the Platonic and Pythagorean
philosophic tradition. For Plato the beauty and order of the cosmos could be
interpreted as a measured dance, with human dancing an imitation of this
celestial dance.73 Plato’s belief that ‘human dance was in imitation of the ce-
lestial dance, and that both reflected an order based on harmony and reason,
remained a commonplace of neo-classical thought until the age of Newton’.74
This belief can be found in dance treatises such as the work of Tuccaro,75 in the
writings of poets such as Ronsard,76 and in educational treatises such as Elyot’s
The Boke Named the Governour, where his chapter on dance begins with a rep-
etition of Plato’s worldview.77 Dance as a symbol of order and harmony would
be easily recognized by the audiences of court danced spectacles, as well as by
the educated members of the audience who attended plays in public theatres.
Playwrights used dance in the same fashion in their works, especially in ro-
mantic comedies, where a final communal dance would often signify harmony
72 Alan Brissenden, ‘Jacobean Tragedy and the Dance’, Huntington Library Quarterly 44, no. 4
(1981): 251.
73 Some of the detailed accounts of how meaning was found in the geometric shapes and
ordered movements of Renaissance dance include chapter 4 (pages 81–106) in John C.
Meagher’s Method and Meaning in Jonson’s Masques (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1966); Sarah Thesiger, ‘The Orchestra of Sir John Davies and the Image of
the Dance’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973): 277–304; Françoise
Carter, ‘Celestial Dance: A Search for Perfection’, Dance Research 5, no. 2 (1987): 3–17;
Françoise Carter, ‘Number Symbolism and Renaissance Choreography’, Dance Research
10, no. 1 (1992): 21–39; A. W. Johnson, Ben Jonson: Poetry and Architecture (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994); Thomas M. Greene, ‘Labyrinth Dances in the French and English
Renaissance’, Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 4.2 (2001): 1403–66; and McGowan, Dance in
the Renaissance, pp. 110–8.
74 Graham Pont, ‘Plato’s Philosophy of the Dance’, in Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politick,
1250–1750, ed. Jennifer Nevile (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 275. See
also James Miller, ‘The Philosophical Background of Renaissance Dance’, York Dance
Review 5 (1976): 10–1, and John Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in
English Poetry 1500–1700 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), chapters 1 and 2.
75 See Tuccaro, Trois dialogues, f. 36r–v.
76 See Margaret M. McGowan, Ideal Forms in the Age of Ronsard (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985), especially chapter 6 pages 209–41, and McGowan, ‘The Arts
Conjoined: A Context for the Study of Music’, Early Music History 13 (1994): 171–98.

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and cohesion.78 John Ford’s The Broken Heart has a dance as the centrepiece of
the final act to celebrate three weddings.79 The choreography for three couples
is interrupted three times when bad news of the deaths of those close to her is
brought to Princess Calantha. Understanding as she does the symbolic impor-
tance of the wedding dance, Calantha continues to dance, refusing to allow her
personal calamity to interrupt the enactment of harmony and order.
While in The Broken Heart Ford has used dance as an affirmation of order,
playwrights also used dance to represent disorder, or discontinuity, as in
Jonson’s Epicene, where dancing indicates riot, noise and discomfort, the exact
opposite of order and harmony.80 Dance also appeared in plays as a symbol of
vice, drunken revelry or lewdness, as an incitement to lust, or as a represen-
tation of wickedness and corruption.81 In tragedies dance was often associ-
ated with deception, and provided a cover for evil, as well as frequently being
associated with death.82
10 Dance in Brussels
In 2001 Keith Polk began his article on instrumental music in Brussels with
the statement: ‘[p]rospects for a study of music in Brussels in the 16th century
would appear to be bleak’.83 At first glance the same situation might also ap-
pear to apply to a study of dancing in Brussels during the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries. However, when the disparate sources of information
on dance activity in Brussels during this period are brought together, and aug-
mented by information from other centres in Europe, it is possible to present a
picture of dancing in Brussels in both the courtly and civic spheres.
Just as in other European cities (as we will see in chapter 4), dance teachers
lived and worked in sixteenth-century Brussels. Their existence is documented
by the statutes of the musicians’ guild of Saint Job. These musicians were free-
lance players who were not employed either by the court or by the church.
Members of the guild taught both music and dance, as well as providing in-
strumental ensembles to perform at banquets, weddings and other festivities.

79 The information on this play is from Ravelhofer, ‘Middleton and Dance’, p. 137.
81 For examples of such usage from English comedies circa 1600 see Pyron, ‘ “Sundry
Measures”: Dance in Renaissance Comedy’, pp. 60–3.
82 Brissenden, ‘Jacobean Tragedy and the Dance’, p. 251.
83 Keith Polk, ‘Instrumental Music in Brussels in the Early 16th Century’, Revue Belge de
Musicologie 55 (2001): 91.

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48 chapter 2
Musicians employed by the court were ‘completely beyond the reach of guild
officials’, and the musicians who performed in the official civic ensembles, al-
though they belonged to the guild, were still able to operate outside the guild’s
regulatory environment.84 Among the restrictions laid out in the statutes
was a prohibition on members of the guild performing with non-members.
Furthermore, the guild sought to restrict the paid teaching and performing
to only those musicians who were both members of the guild and citizens of
Brussels.85 Even though the statutes date from 1574, they refer to an earlier docu
ment from 1507.86 Thus we have evidence that dance was taught in Brussels
from at least the beginning of the sixteenth century, and that this instruction
took place in dance schools.
Evidence of the elite dances enjoyed and performed in Brussels is pre-
served in the luxurious manuscript presented to Margaret of Austria.87 This
manuscript contains the steps and music of fifty-eight basse danses, as well as
instructions on how to perform the four steps of the basse danse, and informa-
tion on the choreographic structure of these dances; that is, the rules by which
the four steps were organized into differing sequences. All of this material was
recorded on twenty-five folios of ‘black-dyed parchment ruled with lines of
gold ink on both sides’.88 The sumptuous nature of the manuscript extended
to every aspect of the musical and written text, with the ‘musical clefs and the
descriptive headings of the dances … in gold; the text of the treatise, the notes
of the music and the steps of the dances … all in silver; and the fancy initials …
in a combination of both metals’.89 The manuscript is believed to have been
created for Margaret in the last few years of the fifteenth century.90 Margaret
of Austria served as the regent of the Low Countries from 1507 to 1515 and then
84 Polk, ‘Instrumental Music’, p. 98.

85 Piet Stryckers, ‘Music and Music Production in Seventeenth-Century Brussels’, in
Embracing Brussels. Art and Culture in the Court City, 1600–1800, ed. Katlijne van der
Stighelen, Leen Kelchtermans and Koenraad Brosens (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), p. 73.
For a more extensive discussion of the guild regulations, see pages 94–9 and 108–10 of
Edmond van der Straeten’s Les ménestrels aux Pays-Bas (Brussels: A & F Mahillon, 1878).
Reprint (Geneva: Minkoff, 1972).
86 The text of the statutes are reprinted in their original Flemish in Van der Straeten, Les
ménestrels aux Pays-Bas, pp. 99–107. Statute 18 on page 105 deals with the operation of
dance schools.
87 The manuscript was listed in an inventory of the library of Margaret of Austria in 1523, but
it is now held in Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, MS 9085.
88 David Wilson, The Basse Dance Handbook: Text and Context (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon
Press, 2012), p. 75.
89 Wilson, Basse Dance Handbook, p. 75.
90 For a discussion of the reasons for this dating, see Wilson, Basse Dance Handbook, p. 77.

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again from 1519 to her death in 1530. Even though her principal residence dur-
ing these years was in Mechelen, she made frequent visits to Brussels during
her tenure as regent, and musicians employed by the court would have moved
between these two centres as well.91 In the first half of the sixteenth century
Brussels supported a community of first-rate instrumentalists,92 both at the
court and employed by the civic authorities, thus providing a pool of compe-
tent musicians who were available to accompany dancing at balls and other
festivities throughout the city.
The carnival celebrations held in Brussels in 1550 were the culmination of
the heir to the Habsburg empire Prince Philip’s journey through the coun-
tries ruled by his father Charles V. These celebrations provide an illustration
of danced entertainments enjoyed by the court in Brussels, especially when
Charles V, and then Philip II, were in residence. On 18 February 1550 a dra-
matic entertainment was staged by the court that began with a joust, and
ended later in the evening with a banquet followed by a danced spectacle.93
The conceit behind the joust was that Don Alonso Pimentel, who had been
treated badly by Cupid, would accept combat against all comers, and, if he
was successful, Cupid would be hanged. Don Alonso was, of course, victori-
ous, and Cupid was indeed killed. In the evening eight masked nobles who
were dressed as friars and six professional singers entered the hall, all carrying
lighted wax candles and singing in a solemn manner. Cupid was borne in on
a bier carried by two sacristans. The bier was set down in the middle of the
hall in front of Eleanor, the queen of France, and Mary of Hungary, who was
Regent of the Low Countries. Then six masked male courtiers entered, led by
Philip,94 and all were costumed as gods. The six gods were accompanied by six
nymphs, who were also masked.95 The twelve masked gentlemen entered the
hall dancing an alemana (allemande). The music for their dance was provided
91 Polk, ‘Instrumental Music’, pp. 94–5.

92 Polk, ‘Instrumental Music’, p. 97.
93 The information on the 1550 danced spectacles in Brussels is taken from Daniel Heartz,
‘A Spanish “Masque of Cupid”’, Musical Quarterly 49, no. 1 (1963): 59–74. Heartz draws on
the account of Jean de Vandenesse, Charles V’s chronicler, and the much more detailed
account by Juan Calvete de Estrella, which was published two years later as part of a larger
work entitled El felicisimo viaje del muy alto y muy poderoso principe Don Felipe (Antwerp,
1552).
94 The other five nobles were ‘the Prince of Piedmont, Don Antonio de Toledo, Ruy Gomez
de Sylva, Don Hernando de la Cerda, and Don Alonso Pimentel’. Heartz, ‘A Spanish
“Masque of Cupid”’, p. 61.
95 The roles of the nymphs were performed by six male courtiers; that is, ‘the Count of
Gelves, Don Pedro de Avila, Don Rodrigo Manuel, Don Pedro de Velasco, Don Diego de
Cordova, [and] Don Luys Capata’. Heartz, ‘A Spanish “Masque of Cupid” ’, p. 61.

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50 chapter 2
by the musicians who entered with them, also dancing the alemana.96 Cupid
was restored to life by one of the gods and one of the nymphs, and immediately
sprang up and fired an arrow at the guest of honour, Madame de la Thuloye,
then led her into the middle of the hall and danced with her. Once the danc-
ing had been initiated by Cupid and Madame de la Thuloye, the other masque
participants, the gods, nymphs and friars, all took partners from among the
ladies who were present. The dancing then continued for ‘the better part of
the night’.97 A few days later on the following Sunday more dancing occurred.
On this occasion twenty masked gentlemen entered dancing an alemana ac-
companied by musicians. The twenty gentlemen then performed a dance in
front of the ladies of the court, before inviting the latter to dance with them.
From the carnival celebrations of 1550 we can gain a picture of court
danced spectacles in mid-sixteenth-century Brussels. Gone was the basse
danse of a generation before: the court now danced at their masquerades the
newly-fashionable alemana. These masquerades were a combination of danc-
ing, music and song, with lavish costumes and an elaborate conceit that in-
cluded Cupid, gods and nymphs, characters that continued to appear in
danced entertainments at European courts throughout the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries. The social dancing between the masked dancers and
the audience members that concluded the spectacle was also a characteristic
of court danced spectacles across Europe, and one that continued into the sev-
enteenth century.
The next substantial source of dance performances at the court in Brussels
comes from the reign of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella. On 18 February
1608, as part of the carnival celebrations for that year, a ballet entitled Les noces
de Psyché et de Cupidon took place in the great hall of the palace, where it was
performed by noble ladies of the court. It is worth discussing this performance
in detail, not only because of the scarcity of contemporary sources, but also
because of the interesting parallels – and differences – between this ballet and
the six ballet plots recorded in the dance master’s notebook from the same
time period.98
96 Heartz, ‘A Spanish “Masque of Cupid”’, p. 66.

97 Heartz, ‘A Spanish “Masque of Cupid”’, p. 61.
98 The information on the 1608 ballet in the following paragraphs is taken from Ernest
Gossart, Les espagnols en Flandre (Brussels: Lamartin, 1914), pp. 301–8, and a reason-
ably detailed, contemporary account of the performance written in Spanish. Gossart
draws his description from this Spanish source that was published in an appendix to
Antonio Rodríguez Villa’s publication, Correspondencia de la Infanta Archiduquesa Doña
Isabel Clara Eugenia de Austria con el duque de Lerma y otros personajes (Madrid, 1906),
pp. 338–47.

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The ballet took place on the floor of the hall: there was no stage. At one
end of the hall was a dais on which Isabella and Albert sat, and to the right of
this dais and a little behind it was the seating reserved for the ambassadors
of the pope and the king of Spain. The rest of the court sat on two rows of
benches that extended along both sides of the hall. The opposite end of the
hall from the archducal dais was occupied by a machine (a mountain repre-
senting Parnassus) hidden behind a curtain. Throughout the course of the per-
formance various performers exited from, and returned to, the mountain. The
other piece of stage machinery in this ballet was a cloud that was used to carry
performers into the middle of the hall. The resting position of the cloud was on
the ground beside the mountain. No other scenery seems to have been present.
After Isabella and Albert had entered the hall, followed by members of
the court, and seated themselves on the dais, the performance commenced.
Coming from behind the curtain were flashes of lightening and the sound of
thunder, while at the same time the cloud rose up from the floor of the hall,
moved to the centre of the hall, and then descended slowly back to the ground
again, where, to the accompaniment of more flashes, Cupid emerged with his
eyes bandaged, a golden bow in one hand, a quiver full of arrows, and a large
leather sack on his shoulder. The cloud then disappeared as noisily as it had
arrived, while Cupid advanced towards the Archdukes.
A long speech from Cupid ensued during which he invited the Archdukes
to his wedding celebrations. He then withdrew two papers from his leather
bag, which contained the words of the airs that were going to be sung, and
kneeling, handed the papers to Albert and Isabella. Cupid then distributed
copies of the song texts to the other members of the audience, before he disap-
peared behind the curtain. At this point the curtain ‘disappeared’ (desapareció
el velo)99 and a craggy mountain was revealed. A painted figure of Pegasus sat
on the top of the mountain, while lower down Apollo was surrounded by the
Nine Muses, each of whom carried a different instrument. Cupid and Psyche
were seen near the bottom of the mountain in a hollow. Psyche was played by
Clara Laura, one of Isabella’s ladies-in-waiting.100
Instrumental music was then played by Apollo and the Nine Muses, after
which Apollo sang of the glory of Cupid. The Nine Muses then called upon
the principal goddesses to come and assist at the wedding. The large cloud
returned, descending again into the middle of the hall, to the accompaniment
of more thunder and lightning. In the interior of the cloud were revealed six
goddesses, illuminated by invisible lights. The goddesses were represented by
99 Villa, Correspondencia, p. 341.


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52 chapter 2
six of Isabella’s ladies-in-waiting; that is, Mlle d’Epinoy (Juno), Dona Catalina
Livia (Diana), Mlle de Croÿ (Flores), Mlle de Licques (Venus), Dona Maria
Walter Zapata (Pallas) and Mlle de Willerval (Ceres). Once they had exited the
cloud the six goddesses danced their ballet to warm approbation, and then
returned to the mountain next to Cupid.
Apollo and the Muses sang another air, the text of which appealed to the
Hours and to the small cupids to come to the wedding. In response to this
song, eight Hours emerged from crevices in the mountain, and together with
Cupid and Psyche, all descended to the floor of the hall, where Psyche and the
eight Hours danced their ballet. The Hours were danced by two dwarfs and
six well-born girls, and their costumes included wings to indicate the rapidity
with which Time passed. No choreographic information is given in the account
of the ballet, and consequently we do not know what steps or figures (if any)
were performed. But it seems reasonable to assume that the dance master who
devised the choreography for this ballet could well have included fast, light
steps and rapid movement around the dance space by the performers to fur-
ther represent the swiftness of Time. The entrée of the Hours and Psyche was
followed by an entrée of six small cupids, who also emerged from crevices in
the mountain. This dance was performed by the six cupids holding hands in
a circle with Cupid in the middle. The cupids danced and sang to the accom
paniment of violins.101 This entrée concluded with a courteous reverence, after
which all the dancers returned to their positions on the mountain.
A musical interlude followed with Apollo and the Muses singing another
air in Spanish about the triumph of true love. This song ushered in the Grand
Ballet, the final dance in which all performers participated; that is, Cupid,
Psyche, the six goddesses, the eight Hours and the six small cupids. Reverences
again completed this dance, after which the noble ladies and girls went to take
their places on the benches at the sides of the hall. The six noble ladies were
paired with six noblemen,102 and arranged themselves on the floor of the hall
in order of precedence. After the command for the social dancing to begin was
given by the Archduke Albert, Charles de Guise duke of Aumale led the danc-
ers in a branle.103 Dancing continued for a further two hours with many other
dances being performed, before Albert and Isabella retired.
101 ‘ellos asidos de las manos, en coro, teniendo en medio á Cupido danzaban y cantaban al
son de muy bien acordados violines’, Villa, Correspondencia, p. 345.
102 See Gossart, Les espagnols, p. 308 for the names of the partners of the six noble women.
103 The Spanish account calls this dance ‘un brande, danza muy usada en estos Estados’, Villa,
Correspondencia, pp. 346–7.

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The Spanish account of the 1608 ballet is found in a handwritten manu-

script of four folios.104 There is no name given as to who wrote the account,
but it reads like an official report of the event, as it starts by discussing the pur-
pose of the entertainment, and continually emphasizes the ingenuity, magnifi-
cence and splendour of the spectacle, and the astonishment and pleasure of
those watching. The account is also careful to relate where the Archdukes and
other important persons were seated in relation to one another, as well as pro-
viding the names of the noble performers and listing who danced with whom
in the opening dance of the ball that followed the ballet. It could well have
been written to increase the status of the court in Brussels and to help to aug-
ment Albert and Isabella’s desire to be seen as sovereign rulers. It was well-
established by the first decade of the seventeenth century that such danced
spectacles were a frequent and important part of court festivals. Albert and
Isabella could well have wanted to assert their equality in this regard by having
such a record of the 1608 dance performance.105
Another reason why the account reads more like an official report of the
event, rather than a description of the spectacle by the person in charge of the
performance, is that no mention is made of who choreographed the dances,
nor of who was responsible for devising the conceit (if this was a different per-
son from the dance master), nor of who was in charge of organizing and co-
ordinating the performance. We do not have any evidence or names of dance
masters who worked in Brussels at this time, either at the court or free-lance
for the city. The exception is Juan (or Hans) Vermeulen, a member of a local
family who was a member of the meninos of the Archduke; that is, young men
who were responsible for the entertainment of the Archduke. Vermeulen was
known as the dansador, and he had the responsibility of teaching dance steps
to the Archduke.106 We do not know whether Vermeulen was involved in any
way in this ballet, but given the description we have of the ballet, there must
have been a dance master involved to choreograph the four danced entrées,
and to teach these choreographies to the performers and to take rehearsals be-
forehand. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries rehearsing for

105 For a discussion of the various ways in which Albert and Isabella sought to promote their
independence from Spain and assert themselves as true sovereigns, see the volume of es-
says edited by Werner Thomas and Luc Duerloo, Albert and Isabella, 1598–1621 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1998).
106 Diederik Lanoye, ‘Structure and Composition of the Household of the Archdukes’, in
Albert and Isabella, 1598–1621, ed. Werner Thomas and Luc Duerloo (Turnhout: Brepols,
1998), p. 112. See page 110 of this essay for a chart that shows the position of the meninos in
the court structure.

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54 chapter 2
danced theatrical events by members of a court was taken very seriously: the
number of rehearsals was not small. For example, Medici court records from
1600 to 1640 indicate that rehearsal periods of six to eight weeks were frequent
for large-scale events, and similar time periods were the norm for rehearsals
at the French court in the later sixteenth century. Reports written six to eight
weeks before the 1581 wedding celebrations record that the king ‘was absorbed
in his horse ballets and tourneys, and the queen and her ladies in preparation
for their ballets, to the extent they do nothing else’.107 There was a similar situa-
tion in England. For example, in 1611 the two dance masters Jeremy Hearne and
Nicolas Confesse were paid for their ‘peyns bestowed almost 6 weeks continu-
ally’ for the masque Oberon, while in 1616 masquers are recorded as practising
for fifty days.108
Les noces de Psyché et de Cupidon has a number of similarities with the six
ballet plots recorded in the dance master’s notebook, as well as with other
contemporary ballets de cour. The 1608 ballet has four separate danced entrées
including the Grand Ballet, with first six, then nine, then seven, then sixteen
dancers. The ballet plots from the dance master’s notebook have a similar
number of danced entrées; that is, eight or fewer. A further shared structural
feature of the 1608 ballet and other ballets de cour and the six ballet plots is the
manner in which they end; that is, with a Grand Ballet followed by reverences
to the rulers or guests of honour, then a period of several hours of social danc-
ing by members of the audience and the noble performers. The staging is also
similar in that both the 1608 ballet and the ballet plots from the dance master’s
notebook take place on the floor of a hall rather than on a stage, with very
little fixed scenery. A mountain from which dancers emerge occupies a central
place in both the 1608 ballet and in the Ballet des mineúrs des Paÿs (f. 4r–v).
The machinery is more complicated in the 1608 ballet with its large cloud that
ascended into the air at one end of the hall, moved to the middle of the hall,
then descended slowly, all the while carrying either Cupid or the six goddesses.
The triumphal chariots that appear in most of the six ballet plots in the dance
master’s notebook would be simpler technically speaking, as all movement
around the hall would be terrestrial, not aerial.
That the 1608 ballet at the court in Brussels participated in the wider
European tradition of danced spectacles is revealed in another feature; that

108 Barbara Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), p. 75. For further discussion of the rehearsal practices in danced
spectacles across Europe, see Jennifer Nevile, ‘Dance Rehearsal Practices in Early Modern
Court Spectacles’, Parergon 28, no. 1 (2011): 135–53, and for the situation in France, see
McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance, pp. 61–90.

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is, the distribution of song texts to audience members. In Brussels Cupid per-
formed this service at the beginning of the performance. In the 1575 masquer-
ade held in honour of Diane de Foix at the house of a prominent lawyer in
Bordeaux, poems were written for the guest of honour or other members of
the audience, were distributed at various point during the masquerade, and
then read aloud by members of the audience.109 From the early seventeenth
century onwards the ballets de cour performed at the French court had a print-
ed programme that was distributed to members of the audience. Included in
these programmes were the texts of the songs and the names of the performers
and the roles that they played.
The participation of the sovereign in the performance of court ballets even
when he or she was not dancing but only seated among the spectators, can
be seen from the second half of the sixteenth century. For example, the Balet
comique de la royne, performed at the French court in 1581 as part of the wed-
ding celebrations of the duc de Joyeuse, and Mademoiselle de Vaudemont,
half-sister of the Queen, begins with the appearance of Sieur de la Roche.
Lord de la Roche, coming from Circe’s garden, ran into the middle of the
room. Stopping there, he turned his frightened face toward Circe’s garden
to see if the enchantress were following. When he saw that no one was
pursuing him, … [he was] somewhat reassured, [so] he walked slowly to-
ward the King and, having made a deep bow to his Majesty, began, with
assured demeanor and in language full of sage eloquence, to speak as fol-
lows…. When his speech had ended, he knelt before the King, as though
putting himself under his protection.110
109 Jasmine Dawkins, ‘Provincial Entertainment in the Renaissance: Le Triomphe de Diane by

Pierre de Brach’, Nottingham French Studies 8, no. 1 (1969): 12. The text of this masquerade
by Pierre de Brach is contained in his work Les Poèmes (Bordeaux: Simon Millanges, 1576),
pp. 171r–201v.
110 Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx, Le Balet comique de la royne, 1582. Translation by Carol and
Lander MacClintock (np: American Institute of Musicology, 1971), pp. 41 and 43. ‘le sieur
de la Roche … sortant du iardin de Circé, courut iusques au milieu de la salle, où arresté
tout court, tourna tout effrayé le visage du costé du iardin pour voir si Circé l’enchanteresse
le poursuiuoit. Et ayant veu que personne n’accouroit apres luy, … puis s’estant vn peu
r’asseuré, & ayant comme prins haleine, il marcha au petit pas vers le Roy: & apres auoir
faict vne grande reuerence à sa majesté, commença auec vne action asseuree, & vn la[n]
gage ressentant vne sage eloquence, de parler ainsi que s’ensuit…. Sa harangue finie, il
meit vn genoil en terre aupres du Roy, comme se mettant en seureté sous sa sauuegarde’.
Facsimile ed., Margaret M. McGowan, ed., (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval & Early
Renaissance Studies, 1982), pp. 7v and 9v.

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56 chapter 2
In Brussels in 1608 Cupid’s speech to the Archdukes certainly did not have the
political implications of de la Roche’s address to Henri III, but the same device
was used in both spectacles.
So far we have evidence of dance teaching and performance in Brussels at
the court and at the civic level. A third sphere of dance activity in Brussels,
that of dance performances as part of dramatic productions, is document-
ed by the play produced in February 1614 by the Jesuit college in Brussels.
The first Jesuit school in the Southern Low Countries was opened in 1574,
with seventeen more institutions starting up throughout the region by the early
seventeenth century.111 The Jesuit education in Brussels was strongly support-
ed by Albert and Isabella, but it was not until 1603 that the first classes started
there, due to the direct intervention of Isabella herself,112 as up until 1603 the
‘nations’, one of the three factions involved in the governing of the city, had
opposed the construction of a college by the Jesuit order.113 The Jesuit college
in Brussels was one of the larger institutions in the Southern Low Countries,
with around four hundred pupils from 1604 onwards. By 1638 the number of
pupils had grown to 491.114 From its inauguration in 1604 to its closure on 20
September 1773, the college produced around 1,200 school plays.115 The four
hundred male students were divided into five classes depending upon their
previous level of education, with a sixth class added in 1620 to cope with the
pressure of student numbers. Throughout every year members from each class
performed a play, while the final play to celebrate the end of the academic
year was held in mid-September, for which students from all classes were eli-
gible for selection. Thus in a normal school year the college in Brussels would
present six (or seven from 1620) plays, all of which were open to the public.
In addition to these productions the Jesuits were also responsible for organiz-
ing additional spectacles for occasional events, such as entries of sovereigns,
regents or new bishops; processions; commemorations of historic events; the
111 Goran Proot, ‘Augustine on Stage in the Southern Low Countries in the Early Modern
Period’, in Augustine Beyond the Book: Intermediality, Transmediality and Reception, ed.
Karla Pollmann and Meredith Jane Gill (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p. 111.
112 Werner Thomas, ‘Andromeda Unbound: The Reign of Albert and Isabella in the Southern
Netherlands, 1598–1621’, in Albert and Isabella, 1598–1621, ed. Werner Thomas and Luc
Duerloo (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), p. 10.
113 Margit Thøfner, ‘The Court in the City, the City in the Court: Denis van Alsloot’s depic-
tions of the 1615 Brussels “ommegang”’, Netherlands Yearbook for the History of Art 49
(1998): 205. The ‘nations’ were a grouping of nine civic organizations representing the
forty-eight craft guilds of the city.
114 Proot, ‘Augustine on Stage’, p. 117.

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canonization of Jesuits, and the consecration of new buildings.116 The plays

produced by each class were performed at set times throughout the year. The
most advanced students who formed the rhetoric class performed first in ei-
ther December or January. Students from the next level – poetry – produced
their play at the beginning of Lent, with that of the syntax class presented
after Easter. The grammar class followed a month later, with the figures class
some time later again. After 1620 when the lowest level class – rudiments –
was added, these students performed in either July or August.117 Therefore,
the Brussels Jesuit college play produced in February 1614 for which there is
documentation of the choreographic figures, was probably the play produced
by the poetry class, that is, by more senior students. The play could have been
produced to celebrate a one-off event, but this is unlikely, as in 1614 the Jesuit
college in Brussels already produced an extra play; that is, a stupendous drama
in honour of the canonization of Teresa of Avila.118 Mounting seven plays in
one year, one of which was extremely elaborate, would be a heavy workload,
without adding another occasional play.
The play performed by the students at the Jesuit college on 9 February 1614
was written half in Latin, half in French, and retold episodes from the life of
William IX, duke of Aquitaine (d. 1137).119 Now held in the Bodleian Library at
Oxford,120 the manuscript contains not only the music from the play, but also
the figures created by the dancers in Act 2. These figures occur in the Balet des
onze Anges, and are interspersed with the music on ff. 66–69 of the manu-
script. The figures are notated with the position of each dancer being repre-
sented by a small lozenge. The fifth and seventh figures spell out the names
Jesus and Maria, while figures one to four, six, and eight to nine are the same,
or very similar to figures recorded in the dance master’s notebook.
The first figure is a cross, with dotted lines joining the eleven lozenges. It is
almost identical to the ninth figure on f. 14r of the dance master’s notebook,
also for eleven dancers and which is labelled as a cross (croi). The second
figure from the Balet des onze Anges is a string of lozenges, and is exactly the
same as the third figure on f. 15r, also for eleven dancers. The third figure from
116 Goran Proot, ‘Musique, danse et ballet dans le théâtre scolaire des jésuites de la Provincia
Flandro-Belgica (1575–1773)’, Revue de la Société liègeoise de musicologie 27 (2008): 127.
117 Proot, ‘Musique, danse et ballet’, p. 126.
118 Proot, ‘Augustine on Stage’, pp. 118–9.
119 The title of this play is Comoedia D. Guilielmus Dux Aquitaniae. E. A. Francis, ‘Jeu de la
conversion de Saint Guillaume d’Aquitaine’, Humanisme et Renaissance 4, no. 3 (1937): 293.
120 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Add. A. 33. E. A. Francis concludes that the manuscript in
the Bodleian ‘appears to be a presentation copy to Philip William, Prince of Orange, from
the stamp on the side of the binding’. Francis, ‘Jeu de la conversion’, p. 293.

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58 chapter 2
the 1614 Jesuit play is made up of two lozenges separated by a straight line
in the middle. It is almost identical to the tenth figure for twelve dancers on
f. 16r of the notebook that is labelled lozane. The only difference between these
two figures is accounted for by the extra dancer in the figure from the note-
book which has been added to the three dancers who already made up the
straight line. The fourth dance figure from the Jesuit college play is also a string
of two lozenges, but this time with a straight line at the bottom of the figure
rather than in the middle. Once again the only difference between this figure
and the third figure for ten dancers on f. 12v of the notebook is the number of
dancers that make up the straight line.
The sixth figure from the Balet des onze Anges also has dotted lines joining
the positions of the eleven dancers, which help delineate the figure. This fig-
ure is most like the thirteenth figure for thirteen dancers on f. 18r, but rotated
ninety degrees, and with only one dancer in the middle of the two ‘Vs’ rather
than the three on f. 18r. The eighth and ninth figures from the Balet des onze
Anges are based on a square, and so there is a number of ‘square’ figures in
the dance master’s notebook that are almost identical. For example, the tenth
figure for twelve dancers on f. 16v is the same as the eighth figure from the 1614
Jesuit play except that it has a dancer in front and behind the square, rather
than just one in front. The figure in the dance master’s notebook that is closest
to the ninth figure formed by the eleven angels is one for only six dancers; that
is, the third figure on f. 6v.
Once again we do not know who provided the choreography for the Balet
des onze Anges; that is, whether the dance master responsible was employed
by the college in a permanent position and gave dance lessons to the students
on a regular basis, or whether the choreographer was employed just for the
production of the play. Evidence from other centres, however, point to the em-
ployment of dance masters, who were also instrumentalists, on a casual basis
in the early seventeenth century. For example, there are records from the Jesuit
college in Lille from 1604 that document the presence of five instrumentalists
who were employed by the town, but who also came to the college four or five
times a week in order to provide dance classes for the students, and to play for
the rehearsals of the next play.121 Given the similarity in the figures from these
two manuscripts, it is tempting to hypothesize that the choreographer for the
121 Municipal records indicate that it is only in the second half of the seventeenth century
that dance masters were employed in Jesuit colleges as more-or-less permanent employ-
ees. Margaret M. McGowan, L’art du ballet de cour en France 1581–1643 (Paris: Éditions
du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1963), p. 208. For further discussion on
dancing in Jesuit dramas in France in the early seventeenth century, see pages 205–27 of
this work.

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1614 Jesuit play in Brussels is the same person as the anonymous owner of the
dance master’s notebook, but there is no concrete evidence on which to base
such an hypothesis. All one can say for sure is that the Jesuit college in Brussels
had access to a capable and competent dance master. It is worth noting that
the lack of any choreographic attribution in the 1614 Brussels Jesuit play is not
an unusual occurrence in the records of Jesuit college dramas at this time. For
example, the Annali of the Jesuit seminary in Rome records information on
the spectacles performed by their students every year from 1565 until 1647. For
some of these productions dancing is mentioned in the Annali, but the name
or names of a dance master is never recorded there.122
The plays produced by the Jesuit college in Brussels ranged from those with
modest stage settings and properties to those for which no expense was spared.
An example from the lavish end of the spectrum is a play produced in 1610 that
included an artificial lake complete with giant swans.123 One would have to as-
sume that the 1614 play on the life of William IX was closer to those produced
according to a more modest scale, since there is only one ballet in the three
acts of the play. Yet even these more modest plays provided regular opportuni-
ties for the Brussels public to see choreographed group dancing similar to what
occurred in danced court spectacles to which they might not have had access.124
The Jesuits were not the only organization in Brussels that produced plays
for the public: the Chambers of Rhetoric also did so. These organizations were
found throughout the Low Countries from the first half of the fifteenth cen-
tury onwards, in both large centres like Brussels and Antwerp, and in small
towns as well. The Chambers of Rhetoric were essentially guilds, whose mem-
bers were devoted to the writing, production, and performance of plays in
the vernacular.125 The plays were often staged at local fairs and as part of the
122 Alessandra Sardoni, ‘“Ut in voce sic in gestu”: Danza e cultura barocca nei collegi gesuitici
tra Roma e la Francia’, Studi musicali 25, nos. 1–2 (1996): 311.
124 It is clear that audiences at the time did appreciate and enjoy the dancing that they saw
in Jesuit productions, as illustrated by the 1613 play by the students at the Jesuit college in
‘s Hertogenbosch, where the audience members were ‘pleased by “the magnificent stage
scenery and the ballet of dancing and singing tritons”’. Ingeborg de Cooman, ‘Dance and
Ballet in Seventeenth-Century Theatre of the Southern Netherlands’, in Terpsichore, 1450–
1900: Proceedings of International Dance Conference Ghent, Belgium, 11–18 April 2000, ed.
Barbara Ravelhofer (Ghent: Institute for Historical Dance Practice, 2000), p. 116. Cooman
is quoting from M. A. Nauwelaerts, Latijnse school en onderwijs te ‘s Hertogenbosch tot 1629
(Tilburg: 1974), p. 303.
125 For a description of the organization of the Chambers of Rhetoric, the types of plays they
performed, the performance spaces used, and their role in processions, entries and other
urban rituals, see Anne-Laure van Bruaene, ‘ “A wonderfull tryumfe, for the wynnyng of a

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60 chapter 2
celebration of the patron saint of the Chamber, as well as for the theatre com-
petitions organized by the Chambers of Rhetoric.126 By the mid-sixteenth cen-
tury, just before the start of the Dutch Revolt in 1566, Brussels had a population
of around fifty thousand making it a substantial city,127 and boasted three
Chambers of Rhetoric, whose members were recruited from the middle level
of society: merchants, highly-skilled artisans such as painters and tapestry
weavers, and shopkeepers.128 The Jesuit colleges and the Chambers of Rhetoric
sometimes cooperated with each other, as, for example, in 1621–22 where the
Jesuit college in Antwerp borrowed costumes from one of the Chambers of
Rhetoric in that city, the Olijftak.129 Furthermore, just as the plays produced
in the Jesuit colleges included figured dances by the students, so too did the
Chambers of Rhetoric incorporate dancing into their productions.
Documents concerning dancing in the three Chambers of Rhetoric in
Brussels have survived from the end of the seventeenth and into the eighteenth
century, but not for the early seventeenth century. Given the records surviving
from Antwerp that document dancing in plays in the first half of the seven-
teenth century, it seems reasonable to conclude that a similar situation must
have existed in Brussels in the early decades of the seventeenth century. From
the records of the Antwerp Chambers of Rhetoric it is clear that during the
first five decades of the seventeenth century dancing often occurred in plays
that contained pastoral scenes, with dances by characters such as shepherds or
nymphs, or in scenes of villagers dancing.130 At this time the dances were still
performed by the actors, as had happened in the previous century, but from
pryse”: Guilds, Ritual, Theater, and the Urban Network in the Southern Low Countries, ca.
1450–1650’, Renaissance Quarterly 59, no. 2 (2006): 374–405.
126 Van Bruaene, ‘“A wonderfull tryumfe”’, pp. 376 and 384.
127 Antwerp at the same time had a population of around ninety thousand, but Ghent and
Amsterdam only had about thirty thousand and twenty-five thousand inhabitants re-
spectively. See Margit Thøfner, A Common Art: Urban Ceremonial in Antwerp and Brussels
during and after the Dutch Revolt (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2007), p. 37. By compari-
son, in 1550 London’s population was similar to that of Brussels being around fifty-five
thousand, but London’s population increased dramatically in the subsequent fifty years
to reach a figure of about two hundred thousand in 1600, making it the third largest city
in Europe behind Paris and Naples. But the rest of the urban centres in England c. 1600
were much smaller than Brussels, with the next three largest cities in England only hav-
ing populations of fifteen thousand (Norwich) or twelve thousand (York and Bristol). See
Jean E. Howard, Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy 1598–1642 (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 1.
128 Van Bruaene, ‘ “A wonderfull tryumfe” ’, pp. 382–3.
129 Cooman, ‘Dance and Ballet’, p. 116.

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1600 onwards the Chambers of Rhetoric hired professional musicians and/or

dance masters to provide the choreography and to teach the dances to the ac-
tors.131 It is not until after 1650 that we find evidence of professional dancers
being employed by the Chambers of Rhetoric in Antwerp, with dancers being
hired from the city of Brussels, as well as other centres in the French-speaking
Netherlands, or even further afield from France.132 In 1626 the Violieren, one
of the three Chambers of Rhetoric in Antwerp, hired the musician and dance
master Hans van der Briel to choreograph two dances for the play Sophonisba
Africana, and then to teach these two dances to the eight actors who had to
perform them.133 In one of these two dances the eight actors danced with
torches. This information about the torches comes from a stage direction
in a 1635 edition of the play,134 and it is worth noting because of the use of
torch dances in court ballets and masques in the late sixteenth and early sev-
enteenth centuries.135 Unfortunately, the 1635 edition of Sophonisba Africana
does not provide any other information about the choreography of the torch
dance, so we do not know what steps and floor patterns were employed in this
dance, but its presence in the Violieren tragedy might point to the adoption
by the Chambers of Rhetoric of some danced theatrical elements from court
spectacles into their choreographic repertoire.
The same play Sophonisba Africana also illustrates a further characteristic
of the dances in the Chambers of Rhetoric plays; that is, the vast majority of
the dances were for a group of performers, whether shepherds, peasants, or
allegorical characters.136 Apart from simple dances in a circle or a line, cho-
reographies for larger numbers of participants usually require more rehears-
als in order to coordinate all the individual dancers’ movements around the
dance space. Such dances also were far more likely to require someone to
choreograph the movement patterns beforehand, and then to teach the dance
to the performers. All of this points to the presence of a dance master. In spite
of the lack of records concerning dance in the Brussels’ Chamber of Rhetoric
plays in the early seventeenth century, it still seems a distinct possibility that
these plays provided another opportunity for a dance master working in
Brussels to gain employment, and for the citizens of Brussels to watch, and to
participate in, choreographed group dances.

134 Cooman, ‘Dance and Ballet’, pp. 117–8.
135 See chapter 3 for a discussion of torch dances in court spectacles.

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62 chapter 2
The Chambers of Rhetoric were also involved in local processions and in the
performance of tableaux vivants during such processions. Dancing was a part of
these processions, as illustrated by the local Holy Cross procession in the town
of Bergen op Zoom. In the early sixteenth century the Chamber of Rhetoric in
that city, the De Vreugdebloem had the responsibility for organizing, preparing
and setting up, and coordinating the tableaux vivants and the dances for this
procession, particularly the dance around the Golden Calf.137 Dance was still
part of public processions one hundred years later, including the ommegang in
Brussels. This procession was an important civic and religious ritual that in a
symbolic form united the municipality despite all the political, social and reli-
gious tensions that were present in the city.138 The ommegang was a procession
that involved all levels of society in Brussels, from ducal officials to artisans,
the secular and religious clergy, members of the militia guilds, and members
of the municipal government. In Brussels the number of citizens who took
part in these processions were often as high as five thousand or more.139 The
accounts of the Archduke Albert reveal that dancers were among the partici-
pants, as each year the Archduke paid forty-eight florins to sword dancers for
their performance in the Brussels’ ommegang.140 Sword dances were very pop-
ular in the Southern Low Countries in the seventeenth century, and occurred
in plays as well as in processions. For example, the play Vlaemsche Vrede-vrengd
from 1659 by J. Lambrecht includes a sword dance by six performers to a sung
accompaniment.141 The dance begins with the entry of Mars who dances for
the first verse of the song. For the second verse Mars is joined by a Spaniard
and a Frenchman, and the latter two continue to dance the sword dance. Then
a Danish and a Swedish swordsman arrive, and all four dance to the third verse
of the song. The fourth verse sees an English and a Flemish swordsman join the
dance, which is now choreographed for six dancers.142
137 Van Bruaene, ‘ “A wonderfull tryumfe” ’, p. 386.

138 Thøfner, ‘The Court in the City’, p. 190.
139 Thøfner, A Common Art, p. 47.
140 Jean-Philippe van Aelbroeck, Dictionnaire des danseurs à Bruxelles de 1600 à 1830 (Liège:
Mardaga, 1994), p. 16. The accounts that detail these payments are found in the Archives
générales du Royaume, CC 1838.
141 The information on this sword dance is from Cooman, ‘Dance and Ballet’, p. 125.
142 Once again the stage directions for this play do not provide any specific choreographic
information.

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11 Conclusion
Even though the records of dance activity in Brussels in the sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries are not extensive, it is clear that the city enjoyed
a thriving culture of music and dance, both in the city itself and in the court
establishment. Brussels was a wealthy city, with its economic prosperity based
on the production of luxury items, especially textile products such as tapestries,
damask and lace, as well as furs and goldsmith’s ware. Along with Antwerp,
it was a major commercial centre, and attracted many foreign merchants as
well as musicians. Brussels was also the centre of the royal government of the
Habsburg Netherlands, and so its population included courtiers and members
of the ever-increasing bureaucracy.143 Charles V stayed in Brussels for several
lengthy periods from 1540 to 1555; that is, in 1540, 1543 to 1544, 1548 to 1550 and
1554 to 1555. When Charles V was in residence his court numbered around two
thousand five hundred persons, including servants.144 His successor Philip II
arrived in Brussels in September 1555 and continued in residence until 1559.
The Archdukes Albert and Isabella arrived in Brussels in 1599, with both re-
maining in the city until they died, Albert in 1621 and Isabella in 1633. Their
court was international in character, with most of its positions being filled
by Spaniards, but also with Italians, members of the local nobility, as well as
English, Irish, Scottish and French exiles,145 and Germans who were employed
as palace guards. Even though Brussels suffered under decades of warfare, the
city and court were rich and diverse enough to support dance teaching. There
were enough wealthy citizens who could afford to pay for dance lessons, and
for musicians to accompany dancing at weddings and other festivities. Brussels
and the Southern Low Countries were part of a common European dance tra-
dition of the time, so much so that it surprised Marguerite de Valois when she
visited Flanders in 1577.146
After Albert’s death in 1621 the court in Brussels contracted, and Isabella’s
attention turned away from festivities to religious matters. After her death in

144 Harald Deceulaer, ‘Fashion, Innovation and Regional Distribution. The Clothing Trades
in Brussels, Sixteenth – Eighteenth Centuries’, in Embracing Brussels. Art and Culture in
the Court City, 1600–1800, ed. Katlijne van der Stighelen, Leen Kelchtermans and Koenraad
Brosens (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), p. 23.
145 Paul Arblaster, ‘Antwerp and Brussels as Inter-European Spaces in News Exchange’, in The
Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe, ed.
Brendan Maurice Dooley (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 195.

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64 chapter 2
1633, however, the court in Brussels became home to a number of royal exiles,
and the performance of court ballets recommenced. 1634 saw the Balet des
Princes Indiens performed in honour of the new governor-general Ferdinand
of Austria.147 Robert Ballard was responsible for the music for this ballet, and
the dancers included noblemen from the Brussels’ court, as well as profes-
sional dancers.148 In the early 1630s there are records of the activities of the La
Grené family of musicians and dance teachers,149 who were active in Brussels
in teaching and performing over a number of decades. Thus as the seventeenth
century progressed, so too did Brussels see its dance traditions continue to
flourish.
147 For an extensive discussion of this ballet and its social and political context, see Stijn
Bussels, ‘Le Balet de Princes Indiens 1634’, in Terpsichore, 1450–1900: Proceedings of
International Dance Conference Ghent, Belgium, 11–18 April 2000, ed. Barbara Ravelhofer
(Ghent: Institute for Historical Dance Practice, 2000), pp. 105–14.
148 Bussels, ‘Le Balet’, p. 109.
149 Stryckers, ‘Music and Music Production’, p. 73.

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chapter 3
Ballet Plots, Dance Figures and Fireworks
Scattered through the 122 folios of this collection of diverse material are out-
lines for six ballets.1 These outlines, or ballet plots, are not very long when
compared to the published livrets (the printed programmes that were devel-
oped under Louis XIII), yet they do provide us with a substantial amount of
information concerning danced dramatic spectacles from what appears to be
a non-courtly environment. From their descriptions it is clear that the six are
all ballet à entrées, that is, a danced dramatic work of separate parts, each of
which was tied only loosely to the overall theme of the work as expressed in
its title. The number of entrées in each of the six ballet plots is small, eight or
less, and the number of dancers in each entrée is likewise small in number,2
although the Grand Ballet at the conclusion of each ballet is choreographed for
either six, ten, twelve or fourteen dancers. Thus the size of these ballets means
that they fall into the smallest of the three categories of ballets as described by
Saint-Hubert in his 1641 La manière de composer et faire réussir les ballets, that
has only ten to twelve entrées.3 The number of dancers in each of the entrées in
these six ballet plots also agrees with Saint-Hubert’s dictum that the optimal
number of dancers for an entrée lies between three and six.4 While the pub-
lished ballet de cour livrets included the names and role of each performer in
every entrée, this element is missing from the ballet plots recorded in the dance
master’s notebook. Thus we do not know for whom these ballets were devised,
or when and if they were performed, although the most logical assumption
is that they were indeed enacted in a large hall. These ballet plots also share
other features with the better-known ballets de cour from the French court,
such as the use of machines or triumphal carts, the characters portrayed, the
terminology employed by their author, the use of musicians and torchbearers,
and the use of combative dancing as well as imitative dancing and mime.
1 A facsimile of the ballet plots is provided, while a transcription and an English translation
can be found in Appendix 1.
2 In the ballets where the number of dancers for each entrée is clear, these numbers range from
three to seven.
3 By comparison, royal ballets, the largest of his three categories, usually had thirty entrées. See
Saint-Hubert, La manière de composer et faire réussir les ballets, trans. Andrée Bergens, ‘How
to Compose a Successful Ballet’, Dance Perspective no. 20 (1964): 26.
4 Saint-Hubert adds that the entrées in large, spectacular ballets should have more than six
dancers, as should a Grand Ballet. Saint-Hubert, La manière de composer, p. 29.

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66 chapter 3
1 Structure and General Characteristics of the Ballet Plots
One standard feature that recurs in four of these ballet plots is the entry of a
triumphal chariot, which is pulled along either by cleverly constructed animals
(a lion and a lioness, or seven unicorns, or two stags) or by three goddesses.
The chariot is used as a means of facilitating the entrance of the main char-
acters in the ballets, and also groups of costumed musicians. For example in
the ballet L’enuie del’honneur del Amour fidelle de passioné a lutenist dressed
as Orpheus sits playing in the chariot, while around the chariot more musi-
cians appear playing various instruments and dressed as slaves from different
countries. In the ballet of the Seven Virtues the triumphal cart is accompanied
by musicians, and singers, the latter of whom include two singers dressed as
nymphs who sing the subject of the ballet while the chariot processes around
the hall. In the ballet De la fleur d’Amour there are musicians inside the chariot
dressed as Pantalones who play duets with a singer at the front of the chariot
representing an Angel.
Sometimes the instrumentalists and singers are just designated as such,
while at other times they are named by the character they represent: Orpheus,
Pantalone, or slaves. In the latter case it is not made explicitly clear whether
the people playing instruments are the same as those who perform a danced
entrée later in the ballet. In the case of Orpheus he does not reappear again,
but the four Pantalones and the slaves of every nation do return to dance their
ballet, and thus open up the possibility that the people performing these roles
were skilled in both music and dance, as opposed to having musicians appear-
ing at the beginning of the ballet to be later replaced by dancers similarly cos-
tumed. Certainly in the French court ballets the performers were multi-skilled,
so much so that one of the leading scholars on the ballet de cour Georgie
Durosoir feels that the ability of the performers to move between the differ-
ent disciplines required by the ballet de cour lay at the heart of this medium.5
The composer, violinist, dancer and choreographer Jacques de Montmorency,
or Belleville as he was known to his contemporaries, is an excellent example
of these multi-skilled artists. Belleville was the leader of the violons du cabinet
(a smaller, elite group of musicians taken from the larger King’s Chamber) and
he composed the string parts for the dance music of the ballet de cour for a
5 Georgie Durosoir, ‘Les compositeurs du ballet de La Délivrance de Renaud: l’art musical

confronté aux exigences du ballet de cour’, in La Délivrance de Renaud. Ballet dansé par
Louis XIII en 1617. Ballet danced by Louis XIII in 1617, ed. Greer Garden (Turnhout: Brepols,
2010), p. 56.

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Ballet Plots, Dance Figures and Fireworks 67
number of years.6 In the ballet La Délivrance de Renaud Belleville is specifically

named in the livret as the choreographic director of the dancers who portrayed
the Demons invoked by Armide. Durand also adds the comment that Belleville
was ‘generally in charge of all the music and dances for the ballet’.7 In the
same ballet the celebrated character dancer Marais took the role of Armide, a
role that involved both dancing and singing.8 Given the practices in the French
court ballets, it therefore seems mostly likely that a similar situation existed for
the performance of these ballets from the dance master’s notebook.
Another recurring feature of the triumphal chariots is the figure of Fortune
(f. 2r, f. 45r and f. 105v). In two of her three appearances Fortune appears carry-
ing pennants which represent the principal characters: the seven virtues from
the Ballet de sept Vertus and the male and female lovers from the ballet De la
fleur d’Amour. In the latter, when the male and female lovers enter to dance
their ballet towards the end of the spectacle, they dance while carrying a pen-
nant in their hands. Thus one may conclude that the purpose of Fortune’s ear-
lier entry and parade around the hall with these pennants was one method the
choreographer used to inform the audience in advance of the characters that
would appear later.
While the six ballet plots share common elements, they are not all iden-
tical. The appearance of Fortune holding pennants is one example of this
variability. In the ballet L’assaút fúrieux des dames a triumphal cart enters to
begin the ballet. This time, however, Fortune is not one of the characters in
or around the chariot. Yet in the Grand Ballet performed by the ladies and
the most courageous warriors, each dancer carries a pennant. So for this bal-
let the tactic of using Fortune as a mobile and living livret was not employed
by the choreographer.
The number of characters sitting or standing on the triumphal carts also
varies from just three (Orpheus, Fortune and the goddess Cypris; that is, Venus)
to what must have been a rather crowded cart with Fortune, Mars, the Queen
6 Durosoir, ‘Les compositeurs du ballet’, p. 60.

7 ‘Belleuille (qui generallement auoit fait tous le Airs & toutes les dances du Ballet)’. Étienne
Durand, Discours au vray du ballet dansé par le Roy (Paris: Pierre Ballard, 1617), f. 19r, trans.
Charles T. Downey and Greer Garden, in La Délivrance de Renaud. Ballet dansé par Louis XIII
en 1617. Ballet danced by Louis XIII in 1617, ed. Greer Garden (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), p. 252.
8 For more information on Armide’s moving solo air ‘Quel subit changement’ which was com-
posed by Guédron, see Greer Garden, ‘Vocal Music, Singers and Singing in La Délivrance de
Renaud ’, in La Délivrance de Renaud. Ballet dansé par Louis XIII en 1617. Ballet danced by Louis
XIII in 1617, ed. Greer Garden (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 69–70, and for information on the
other danced roles of Marais see Georgie Durosoir, ‘Illustre … et inconnu: quelques notes sur
Marais’, in La Délivrance de Renaud. Ballet dansé par Louis XIII en 1617. Ballet danced by Louis
XIII in 1617, ed. Greer Garden (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 157–9.

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68 chapter 3
of Sheba, four Pantalones, as well as an unspecified number of knights, and

perhaps also a cupid and a singer dressed as an angel.9 Thus the size of these
carts must have been relatively large in order to accommodate those being
transported in them. This was certainly the case for the 1606 ballet staged
to celebrate the marriage of Henri, duc de Bar with Margherita, daughter of
Vincenzo Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. The ballet began with the entry of eight
pages, each of whom carried two large torches of white wax. The pages were
followed by a group of instrumentalists and a group of singers, the latter of
whom were dressed as slaves and were attached to a triumphal chariot that
they pretended to pull into the hall. The chariot carried twelve goddesses and a
Cupid on the front.10 The account books reveal that the triumphal chariot was
a substantial sixteen feet in length by twelve feet in width, (that is, 4.5m long
by 3.4m wide).11
A further example of the variability in the ballet plots is the presence in half
of the ballets of a group of pages, who enter, dance together, then retire from
the hall. On one occasion the pages’ entrée begins the ballet, while in the other
two ballets the pages dance later, nearer to the closing Grand Ballet. The lack
of a consistent presence of the pages, as well as the changing position of their
entrée, points to the flexible structure of these ballets. One wonders whether
the presence or absence of dancing pages in these ballet plots is a small clue
as to their performance context; that is, were the ballets with pages written to
be performed for an environment in which a number of young dancers were
readily available, while the ballet plots without the pages were created for a dif-
ferent context in which such a group of dancers was not present? Certainly en-
trées for pages or young children were a common feature of the ballet de cour,
as is illustrated by the Ballet de la reine from 1605 and the Ballet de Madame ten
years later. In the Mascarade des eschecs (1607) sixteen young children danced
as pawns ‘very prettily’ ( fort joliment), with the first group of red pawns per-
forming different figures and steps to the second group of white pawns,12 while
in the 1619 Ballet de la reyne eight small boys danced together to imitate the
contrary nature of the winds.13
9 Although the angel and cupid could be positioned in front of the chariot rather than in it.
The text does not make this absolutely clear (S 253, f. 106r).
10 Paulette Choné and Jérôme de La Gorce, Fastes de cour au xviie siècle. Costumes de Bellange
et de Berain (Oise: Éditions Monelle Hayot, 2015), p. 74.
11 Choné and La Gorce, Fastes de cour, p. 48.
12 Paul Lacroix, Ballets et masquerades de cour de Henri III a Louis XIV (1581–1652), 6 vols.
(1868; facsimile reprint, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968), I: 167.
13 Paul Lacroix, Ballets et masquerades de cour de Henri III a Louis XIV (1581–1652), 6 vols.
(Geneva: J. Gay et fils, 1868), II: 204.

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The flexibility in the structure of these ballet plots is highlighted by the way
in which the ballets begin, a place where one might perhaps expect more con-
sistency, even if only for an announcement of the subject of the ballet. Two
ballets do begin with the entrance of singers who, through their songs, present
the subject of the ballet to the audience. In one ballet this also happens, but
only after the performance of the pages’ ballet. In the other three ballets there
are no announcements or presentation of the subject at all: not at the begin-
ning, nor at any time during the course of the ballet. Two of these three ballets
begin with the entrance and parade of the triumphal chariot, where the char-
acters are displayed before the audience. But in the Ballet des mineúrs des Paÿs
there is no triumphal chariot, nor any other method of presenting the subject
of the ballet to the audience, with the ballet commencing with the entrée of
the miners. This latter ballet also has additional features that distinguish it
from the five other ballet plots in the dance master’s notebook. For example,
it is the only ballet plot in which no mention is made of musicians or singers
in any capacity whatsoever. It is also the ballet with the greatest number of
entrées – eight – and the only one which employs stage machinery, that is, a
mechanical device representing a grotto, out of which emerge birds and small
wild animals, followed by two satyrs and two wild moors, then finally six small
dwarfs (f. 4r).
One aspect of the ballet plots that is consistent, however, is the manner in
which they finish. After the Grand Ballet there is a short phrase which states
that they will dance whatever they feel like;14 that is, the dance performers and
members of the audience dance together. It is interesting that the dance mas-
ter does not specify exactly what dances were performed at this stage of the
spectacle. One must assume, therefore, that the performers as well as audience
members participated in the social dances that were commonly performed at
balls. Certainly in Brussels in 1608 the social dancing that followed the ballet
commenced with a branle. In 1585 Henri III set out not only which dances
were to be danced at the balls held at the French court, but also the order in
which they were to be performed; that is, pavanes, allemandes, branles, cou-
rantes, la volta and finally galliards.15 Similarly, the dancing that occurred dur-
ing the revels in the English masques were the social dances currently enjoyed
in the ballroom, such as the measures, galliards, corantos and la volta. These
14 The only ballet plot that does not end in this manner is the first one L’enuie de l’honneur
de l’Amour, where the ending has been altered by the dance master. See chapter 1 for a
discussion of this alteration.
15 David Potter and P. R. Roberts, ‘An Englishman’s View of the Court of Henri III, 1584–1585:
Richard Cook’s “Description of the Court of France”’, French History 2, no. 3 (1988): 341.

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70 chapter 3
dances were very familiar to the noble performers and to the members of the
audience who partnered them, and this familiarity with the repertoire, the
sequence of dances, and with the order of precedence that determined who
danced with whom, allowed the revels to proceed without rehearsal and with
some measure of spontaneity.16 The key difference between the social dancing
that occurred as part of the English masques and in the French ballet de cour
was that in England the social dancing was integrated into the masque, with
the final main-masque dance being performed after the revels.17 In France the
ball followed the completion of the ballet, and the ballet plots from the dance
master’s notebook follow the French fashion in this regard. Yet the fact that
a reference to the social dancing which occurred after the conclusion of the
Grand Ballet is included in the ballet plots from the notebook is significant.
These ballet plots were not fully developed livrets: they were several stages
closer to the beginning of the production process, more like a summary than a
complete description of a danced spectacle, and as such they lack a number of
features that are commonly found in a typical livret.18 Therefore, the inclusion
of a sentence referring to social dancing in these ballet plots is an indication
of how essential social dancing was to the overall structure of a ballet de cour.
2 Torchbearers in the Ballet
The presence of torchbearers at some point or other is also a recurring feature

of the ballet plots recorded in the dance master’s notebook. Three of these
ballets include an entrée in which the dancers are holding torches, while in
the other three ballets the torchbearers walk alongside the triumphal chariot
as it parades around the hall. Torchbearers were used in sixteenth-century
English masques as one method of providing additional lighting to illumi-
nate the dancers and the dancing space. They were also employed to add to
the display of brilliance and splendour and to help create a sense of wonder
in the minds of the spectators.19 By the early seventeenth century their pres-
ence had become less frequent and from 1613 torchbearers also performed as
16 For a discussion of how the revels were organized and managed, see Anne Daye, ‘ “Youthful
Revels, Masks, and Courtly Sights”: An Introductory Study of the Revels within the Stuart
Masque’, Historical Dance 3, no. 4 (1996): 15–9.
17 Daye, ‘Youthful Revels’, p. 10.
18 See below in the section entitled ‘What is left out of the ballet plots’ where this question
is considered in detail.
19 Anne Daye, ‘Torchbearers in the English Masque’, in Early Music 26, no. 2 (1998): 247.

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dancers in the English masques.20 Similarly, in the masquerades at the French

court pages would often enter carrying torches or candles and then arrange
themselves around the performance space so as to provide an even lighting
for the rest of the performers.21 When expense was not a consideration bees-
wax candles were used instead of tallow ones, as the former provided greater
illumination while burning more cleanly with less smoke, thus making them
more desirable for use in masques.22 Illuminating an entry of aristocratic danc-
ers by torches of white wax ensured that there was much less smoke haze, and
the dancers’ costumes were brighter and had greater visual impact. As men-
tioned previously, the ballet held at Nancy in 1606 began with the entry of eight
pages each of whom carried two torches of white wax. The costume designs by
Jacques Bellange for this ballet include images of two pages with their white
wax torches.23 Both these designs convey a visually stunning impression with
the elaborately and sumptuously decorated costumes of the pages from their
headgear to their shoes, and with the large torches they hold in each hand. It
is interesting to note that both pages are wearing flexible but sturdy gloves in
order to protect their hands from any dripping wax, which is shown as running
down the sides of the torches. In this ballet the pages do not dance, but in
other early seventeenth-century ballets de cour there are examples of dancers
entering carrying torches and then continuing to dance with their torches. In
the 1605 Ballet de la reine, for example, twelve pages enter ‘each holding two
white torches in his hands, dressed in incarnat and white, wearing little white
boots covered in tinsel, making a thousand passages and figures’.24 Danced
spectacles were also a common practice at the Spanish royal court from the
mid-sixteenth century onwards,25 and the Spanish spectacles shared the prac-
tice of using pages carrying torches. The performance at Valladolid in 1605 to
20 Daye, ‘Torchbearers’, p. 260.

21 Melinda J. Gough, ‘Marie de Medici’s 1605 ballet de la reine: New Evidence and Analysis’, in
Early Theatre 15, no. 1 (2012): 129, ftn. 1.
22 Barbara Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume and Music (Oxford: Oxford
23 The designs are reproduced in full colour on pages 76 and 77 of Choné and La Gorce,
Fastes de cour.
24 ‘douze pages avec deus flambeaux blancs chascun en leur mains uestues dincarnat et
blanc portant de petites botines blanches couvertes de clinquan faissant mille passages
et figures’. See Gough, ‘Marie de Medici’s 1605 ballet de la reine’, p. 123 for the original
French text and p. 129 for Gough’s translation. This account of the 1605 ballet is from
an unsigned letter written by an audience member. The manuscript is now held in
Carpentras, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine, MS 1794, ff. 429r–430v.
25 Mark Hutchings and Berta Cano-Echevarría, ‘Between Courts: Female Masquers and
Anglo-Spanish Diplomacy, 1603–5’, in Early Theatre 15, no. 1, (2012): 97.

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72 chapter 3
celebrate the ratification of the peace treaty between Spain and England, for
example, started with an initial song, then the entry into the hall of thirty mu-
sicians all playing their instruments followed by twenty-four pages carrying
lanterns.26 Once this procession had reached its proper place in front of the
four-year old Infanta, twenty-eight ladies and gentlemen appeared in a gallery,
all carrying candles. Once all twenty-eight had been lowered to the floor of the
hall via a mechanical cloud, the group performed a dance with their candles
still in their hands.27
Cesare Negri published two theatrical torch dances in his treatise Le gratie
d’amore in 1602, the Ballo fatto da sei dame and the Ballo fatto da sei cavalieri.
While we cannot determine the precise relationship between Negri’s choreo-
graphic practice and that employed in the ballets I have just been discussing,
his choreographies do provide one model of what was possible for dancers to
perform while carrying a large burning torch. Negri’s choreographies include
far more than simple processing in a line. The dancers execute jumps, cross di-
agonally, and weave around each other in hays, with each crossing movement
necessitating a change of the torch from one hand to the other in order to pres-
ent the appropriate ‘empty’ hand to the next approaching dancer.
Thus these six ballet plots from the dance master’s notebook present both
stages in the changing usage of torchbearers as identified by Anne Daye in
regard to English Tudor and Stuart masques. In half of the ballets the torch-
bearers do not dance, but are mobile light towers for the procession of the
cart, musicians and other characters around the hall. In the other three ballets
the torchbearers are dancers who perform an entrée while holding their torch,
thus creating what must have been stunning ribbons of light. Even when the
torchbearers were not dancing the effect of massed candles was to increase the
sense of splendour for the audience, as Beaujoyeulx emphasizes in his descrip-
tion of the Balet comique de la royne.
In addition to these lights, [twenty-four large tapers of white wax carried

by twelve pages] around the edge of the basin, the seats, and the dolphins
of the fountain, there were a hundred tapers of white wax, each two feet
long. All this splendour converted the darkness of the night into a great
joyous light and made the water of the fountain, represented by gold and
silver, dazzle the eyes of the spectators by its brilliance.28
26 Hutchings and Cano-Echevarría, ‘Between Courts’, p. 101.

27 Hutchings and Cano-Echevarría, ‘Between Courts’, p. 102.
28 Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx, Le Balet comique de la royne, 1581, trans. Carol and Lander
MacClintock (np: American Institute of Musicology, 1971), p. 49. ‘Outre lesquelles

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The effect of torchlight, whether fixed or mobile, on the costumes of the danc-
ers is highlighted by Étiènne Durand’s description of Louis XIII’s costume as
the Demon of Fire in the ballet La Délivrance de Renaud.
[H]is flames were enamelled and made with such skill that fire itself was
rendered more striking through them, as the beams of light from the
room’s countless torches were directed upon them, and those watching
them received their reflection. His mask and headdress were made in
the same manner as his costume, and were it not for the extreme gentle-
ness of his actions, one would have thought that from that moment His
Majesty had covered himself with fire in order to consume his enemies.29
Exactly how many candles were used in the 1617 ballet is not recorded, but two
years earlier a description of the Ballet de Madame records that the Great Hall
of the Bourbon palace was lit with 1,200 white wax candles.30 In addition to
these candles that were fixed on ‘consoles and silver brackets’,31 the first entrée
was performed by nine children each of whom carried two torches, and whose
dance provided a moving light display.
Each of these little children bore on his head four great lights and in
his hands two great torches that flared from the wrists upwards, which
meant that the flame was a good two feet high, without there being, how-
ever, any spark from it and without its in the least way troubling those
who were carrying them…. The vessels in which the torches were placed
lumieres, au circuit des bassins, chaires & dauphins de la fontaine y auoit cent
fla[m]beaux de cire blanche, de deux pieds de longueur: toute laquelle splendeur con
uertissoit l’obscurité de la nuict en vne ioyeuse & grande clairté, & faisoit que l’eau de
la fontaine representee par l’or & l’argent, esblouissoit par son estincelleme[n]t les yeux
des regardans’. Facsimile ed., Margaret M. McGowan, ed. (Binghamton, NY: Center for
Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), p. 17r.
29 ‘& ses flammes estoyent esmaillées & faites auec vn tel artifice, que le feu mesmes se
rendoit plus esclatant par elles, lors que les rayons des flambeaux innombrables de la
salle estoyent adressez dessus, & que ceux qui les regardoyent en reçeuoyent la reflexion.
Son masque & sa coiffure estoyent de mesme composition que son habit, & n’eust esté
la douceur extresme de ses actions on eust creu que deslors sa Majesté s’estoit couuerte
de feu pour consommer ses ennemis’. Durand, Discours au vray, f. 6r, trans. Downey and
Garden, in La Délivrance de Renaud, p. 246.
30 An anonymous contemporary description of this ballet is found in the publication
Description du Ballet de Madame (Lyon: Yvrad, 1615). Sections from this account have been
translated in William D. Howarth, ed., French Theatre in the Neo-Classical Era, 1550–1789
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 95–9.
31 Description du Ballet de Madame, trans. in Howarth, ed., French Theatre, p. 96.

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74 chapter 3
were glided, and while the children danced it seemed as if it was not they
that were there, but just lights that were continually changing position.32
3 Characters of the Ballet Plots
The characters in the ballet plots from the dance master’s notebook represent
familiar figures: gods and goddesses, nymphs, lovers, knights, war-like females,
satyrs, moors, Pantalones, dwarfs, slaves from every nation, as well as miners,
dancing storks and unicorns. For example, slaves were a common character in
the ballets performed at the court of Lorraine in Nancy in the years 1602, 1603
and 1606.33 One of the entrées in the 1610 Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme,
for example, is performed by a group of dwarfs, who, armed with a mace and
shield, engage in combat among themselves. The same ballet also features
dances by different groups of twelve nymphs, twelve knights and three Turkish
slaves, characters who also make their appearance in the ballet plots from the
notebook, as well as a young Moor who directs the dancing in the first entrée.
While the range and type of characters described in these six ballet plots are
similar to those found in contemporary ballets from the French court, the lat-
ter possessed far more coherent, well-developed narratives which tied togeth-
er such a diverse medley of characters.
The six ballet plots recorded in the dance master’s notebook, however, are
far more skeletal and simple, with only a loose connection, or sometimes none
at all, between one entrée and the next. Often one group of dancers will fol-
low a second group with the only connection between these two groups being
that they engage in combat with one another. For example in the Ballet des
mineúrs, the six dwarfs perform a victory dance, after which the dwarfs remain
in the hall, but with their backs to the door through which a group of storks
will enter. The dwarfs then turn around, and seeing the storks coming towards
them, charge at the storks and the two groups engage in danced combat,
with the dwarfs eventually driving the storks from the hall. The storks do not
re-appear, nor do they appear to have any other relationship to other charac-
ters in the ballet. Even when gods such as Saturn or Mars, or goddesses such as
Venus or Minerva appear, they do not have any impact on the plot.

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4 Choreographic Descriptions
The quantity and detail of the choreographic description also varies between
the six ballet plots recorded in the dance master’s notebook. Two of the six
ballet plots only record that a group of characters will ‘enter and dance their
ballet’.34 The other four ballet plots are slightly more generous in what they
reveal about the choreography, with the most persistent reference to the dance
performers as ‘dancing their figures’. It is clear that entrances into, and exits
out of, the hall were to be made in figures, as were the rest of the entrée, as for
example, in the ballet De la fleur d’Amour.
Then the female lovers will hold a palm branch in their hands with a taf-
feta pennant in the colours of their male lovers, with a sun and stars on
it, and they will all enter in figures, and they continue until the end of the
ballet (f. 106r).
Earlier in this ballet the entrée of the four Pantalones, Franchescina and Isabella
is similarly described as ‘a ballet of grimaces with figures, after which, all still
in figures, they will leave the hall’ (f. 106r). Thus it is clear from these six bal-
let plots that their choreographies were constructed around geometric shapes
and patterns, not only for more ‘abstract’ dances like those of the female lovers
that do not have an obvious narrative, but also for those choreographies which
depict combat, or involve mimed actions. This is clearly demonstrated by the
entrée of the miners, where ‘at the end of [their entrée] they will turn their
backs to the doors as the mechanical device representing a mountain in the
shape of a grotto will enter. And as the miners turn around they will act aston-
ished, still dancing their figures, and will then come and surround the moun-
tain in order to work with their tools and to discover what is inside [it]’ (f. 4r).
The references to danced figures in the ballet plots from the notebook
are very similar to the descriptions of other ballets de cour, as well as to late
sixteenth-century French court fêtes and English masques. Geometric figures,
squares, circles, triangles, groups of dancers forming each letter of a noble’s
name, continually changing panoramas of shapes dissolving one into an-
other, are all characteristic of the accounts of these spectacles. For example,
Durand’s livret of the 1617 La Délivrance de Renaud comments several times
34 For example, in the ballets L’enuie de l’honneur de l’Amour, and de sept Vertus (S 253, f. 4r–v
and f. 45r).

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76 chapter 3
on the ‘beauty of their figures’ (la beauté de leurs figures)35 and how much the
spectators appreciated the beautiful dances, the varied figures and the playful
movements.36 Similar references to danced figures also occur in the descrip-
tion of the entrées from the 1610 Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme, while the
Grand Ballet from the 1581, Le Balet comique de la royne, is described as having
‘forty passages or geometrical figures. These were all exact and well-planned in
their shapes, sometimes square, sometimes round, in several diverse fashions;
then in triangles accompanied by a small square and other small figures’.37 On
other occasions the figures formed by the dancers were letters spelling out the
name of the person in whose honour the festivity was being held. When the
ballet was part of wedding celebrations the dancers could also form the initials
of the bridal couple, as happened in 1606 at Nancy when the twelve masked
ladies descended from the triumphal chariot and commenced their ballet,
whose choreography included the depiction of the initials of the bride and
groom, that is, ‘M’ and ‘H’.38 Thus a canon of dance figures and letters such as is
recorded in the dance master’s notebook was a flexible and dynamic tool in the
creative resources of the dance masters of the day. Figures were obviously used
as a method of creating the appearance of continuous shifting movements, of
dissolving and re-forming patterns and shapes which amazed and delighted
the audience.
What is not revealed, or commented upon, in these choreographic de-
scriptions is the steps employed by the dancers. Even though sixteenth and
early seventeenth-century French dance masters did not describe or record
their choreographies in terms of step sequences and movement directions
to anywhere near the same extent as did the late sixteenth-century Italian
dance masters Fabritio Caroso and Cesare Negri, steps are mentioned in some
of the descriptions of the ballet de cour. Sometimes the reference to steps is
very general, as in the Grand Ballet that concluded the 1615 Ballet de Madame,
where the fifteen noble ladies varied each musical air of the Grand Ballet
35 Durand, Discours au vray, f. 9r, trans. Downey and Garden, in La Délivrance de Renaud,
p. 247.
36 See Durand, Discours au vray, ff. 6r, 7r, 8r and 25r, trans. Downey and Garden, in La
Délivrance de Renaud, pp. 246, 247 and 254.
37 Beaujoyeulx, Le Balet comique, trans. Carol and Lander MacClintock, p. 90. ‘danserent le
grand Balet à quarante passages ou figures Geometriques: & icelles toutes iustes & con-
siderees en leur diametre, tantost en quarré, & ores en rond, & de plusieurs & diuerses
façons, & aussi tost en triangle, accompagné de quelque autre petit quarré, & autres peti-
tes figures’. Facsimile ed., McGowan, ed., pp. 55v–56r.

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with different steps.39 In this account there is no indication of what these

steps were, but at other times specific steps are mentioned, such as caprioles,
entrechats, a demy sault rond, and other different jumps starting from one foot
or from both feet.40 At other times the word ‘step’ is qualified by different ad-
jectives; for example, grave and sweet (grave & doux), rapid (prompt), slow
(à pas lent), light (lèger), low and strong (bas & fort), and ‘sometimes elevated,
sometimes close to the ground’ (tantost par haut, tantost par terre).41
It is also clear that dance masters of the period believed that certain steps
were appropriate when forming certain figures while other steps were not.
This is illustrated by the entrée of the two pots de fleurs and two hiboux from
the 1610 Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme. The flower pots enter first and
when the owls enter they do so with ‘slow steps, making a semblance of jump-
ing’ (lesquels marchans à pas lent, faisant semblant de sauter).42 The two owls
then join the flower pots, although they dance different steps from those the
latter did, and the owls ‘do not allow their steps to agree with their figures’
(ils ne laissoient pas de s’accorder à leurs figures).43 The necessity for dance
steps and gestures to be in harmony, or agreement, with the accompanying
music, the costumes of the dancers, and in social dancing particularly, the
gender of the dancer, is a long-held principle that goes back to the fifteenth-
century Italian dance treatises. A constant refrain in Guglielmo Ebreo’s dance
treatise is that in order to be eloquent the bodily movements of a dancer had to
be in harmony with the steps and gestures performed and with the clothes he
or she was wearing. Movements that would look dignified and seemly when
dancing in a long garment would appear slightly ridiculous when dancing in
a short tunic. Similarly, the jumps, turns and flourishes that appear elegant
when wearing a short garment would have the opposite effect if observed on a
dancer in a long tunic. Two hundred years later the same principle of harmony
still existed. Saint-Hubert was most insistent that the choreographed dance
steps must be appropriate to the music that accompanied each entrée, and to
the character being represented.44
Mesura (‘measure’ or ‘proportion’) was one of the fundamental principles
of the quattrocento Italian dance practice, and the word was often used to
40 For example in the 1605 Ballet de la reine and in the 1610 Ballet de Monseigneur de
Vendosme.
41 All these examples occur in the Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme.
42 Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme (Paris: Jean de Heuqueville, 1610), p. 19.
43 Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme, p. 19.
44 Saint-Hubert, La manière de composer, p. 29.

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78 chapter 3
describe dancing in a variety of sources from the fifteenth century onwards.45

That this principle was still important in the dance practice of the early seven-
teenth century is illustrated by its appearance in the description of the danced
combat in the Ballet des mineúrs from the dance master’s notebook. In this
ballet plot six small dwarfs emerge from the mountain, each carrying a cutlass
in his hand. The dwarfs then charge at the miners and chase them from the
hall, with the admonition that ‘all this is to be done in good rhythm (cadence,
that is, with the dancers’ movements in time with the music), mesura, and in
danced figures’ (f. 4r). Given that not a great deal of choreographic information
is provided by these ballets plots, what is included is significant.
5 Gestures, Masks and the Portrayal of Emotions
One way in which dance masters encoded meaning at the macro-level of their
choreographies was through the use of geometric shapes and figures and the
spelling out of names. Geometric figures, either planes or solids, were one way
of representing the cosmos. The figure of a square, for instance, represented
the earth, while a circle represented the divine world, while the triangle (or
pyramid) represented the path from one world to the other: movement from
the physical, sensual life to an intellectual understanding of the divine realm.
In addition to these uses, danced figures were also employed as the basis of im-
itative, pantomimic dancing in which specific situations and specific emotions
were depicted. Indeed it is clear from the information recorded in the six ballet
plots from the dance master’s notebook that their choreographer used various
means to create and convey meaning in the dances: shapes and figures, arm
and hand gestures and mimed actions. One illustration of this is the entrée of
the malcontents, ‘who will dance their ballet, all using different grimaces, all in
figures and with a number of signs and in a number of [different] ways’ (f. 117r).
Unlike today where the word ‘grimace’ is commonly taken to mean an exag-
gerated or distorted facial expression, in the choreographic sources from the
first half of the seventeenth century the word is used more widely to describe
extravagant gestures, mostly performed with the arms, but sometimes with
the legs. The word occurs frequently in the ballets de cour from the 1630s, but,
as we can see from the anonymous dance master’s ballet plots, and from other
45 For further discussion on the principles of misura and gratia and their significance in the
fifteenth-century Italian dance treatises, see Jennifer Nevile, The Eloquent Body: Dance
and Humanist Culture in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2004), pp. 76–80, 84–6.

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ballet livrets circa 1600 to 1620, these types of gestures also occurred in the ear-
lier ballets. In the ballets from the first two decades of the seventeenth century
the word ‘grimace’ is used in relation to grotesque or burlesque characters. The
word occurs by itself, as well as with other words which describe actions or
steps; for example, grimaces, capers and entrachats,46 jumping and grimacing,47
and gestures and grimaces.48 In the ballet plots recorded in the dance master’s
notebook the word ‘grimace’ also occurs in conjunction with different figures.
One has to conclude, therefore, that the performance of whatever extravagant
gestures was indicated by the term ‘grimaces’ had limits, and these gestures
could not have been so extreme as to distort, obscure or hinder the formation
of the different geometrical shapes and patterns.
It was almost universally the case that male dancers wore masks, as did the
musicians who provided the music for the ballet. Female figures wore masks
much less frequently. One occasion we know that the twelve noble ladies
were masked was in 1606 at the ballet performed in honour of the Lorraine-
Gonzaga marriage. After their ballet was concluded, the twelve ladies removed
their masks and returned to sit on the dais with the invited princes.49 While
the use of masks by dancers would have obscured changes in facial expres-
sion, this did not mean that an array of blank, expressionless features was seen
by those watching. As Paulette Choné reminds us when describing the masks
seen in the costume designs of Bellange, these masks appear malleable, almost
living, and truly expressive of the character that the dancer was portraying.50
Unfortunately, one cannot state definitely whether the dancers and musicians
of the ballet plots from the notebook were masked or not, since the ballet plots
do not mention masks at all. Yet these outlines do not discuss any aspect of
the performers’ costumes in great detail, and so it is entirely possible that the
performers followed the usual practice and wore masks.
Throughout the early modern period dance, through its connection to music
and through the continuation of classical beliefs linking outward movement
to interior spiritual states, was inextricably linked to emotion. The emotional
content of the choreographies composed during this period was complex, and
operated on multiple levels, both in social dances and in theatrical danced
spectacles. Often it was the combination of multiple choreographic elements
in a single dance that created the portrayal of emotions. This is illustrated
46 These terms all occur in the 1605 Ballet de la reine.

47 These terms all occur in the Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme.
48 These terms all occur in the Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme.
50 Choné and La Gorce, Fastes de cour, pp. 128–33.

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80 chapter 3
in the victory dance by Diana and her nymphs over Cupid and his followers
from the 1575 masquerade by Pierre de Brach. The joy of the victors is expressed
through lively, energetic steps – hops and jumps – gestures like hand-clapping
and foot-stamping, a multitude of rapid, ever-changing patterns and figures,
and a series of complicated interactions between the dancers.51 That the de-
piction of specific emotions by the dancers was just as important to the anony-
mous dance master as it was to de Brach, is confirmed by the fact that the
ballet plots found in the notebook often mention the emotional state of the
dancers: the astonishment of the miners, the joy of the dwarfs at their victory
over the storks, the wild and furious nature of the dancing of the ladies from
the ballet L’assaút fúrieux des dames. In this last case, the emotions portrayed
by the dancers are also revealed by several choreographic elements: gestures,
grimaces, and other signs with the dancers’ arms and hands.
6 What Is Left Out of the Ballet Plots
As mentioned previously, the six ballet plots in the notebook are closer to
frameworks rather than complete descriptions of a danced spectacle. Various
elements of performance are either not mentioned, or are only briefly de-
scribed. One element which receives short shrift is the music for the ballets.
While musicians are mentioned, both instrumentalists and singers, there are
no details as to how many musicians were present, nor what instruments
they played, with the exception of the musician costumed as Orpheus playing
the lute. Late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century danced spectacles at
the French court employed large groups of musicians. For example, the 1615
Ballet de Madame employed ‘thirty-four musicians from the King’s Chamber
and Chapel’,52 while the 1581 Balet comique de la royne utilized forty singers
51 ‘en dançant vn balet gay, inuenté tout a propos, ores s’entre-faisants sauter l’vne l’autre,
ores s’entre-frappans des mains, puis des pieds, ta[n]tost se tenans d’vne main seulement,
puis des deux ensemble, ores elles tournoyoient comme en rouë d’vne vitesse presque
incroyable, auec vne infinité de passages, cadances, & mesures, coup sur coup entre-
coupées, qui ne se peuuent representer qu’en les voya[n]t a l’oeil’, Pierre de Brach, Les
Poèmes, (Bordeaux: Simon Millanges, 1576), p. 195v. For an extensive discussion of this
masquerade, see Margaret M. McGowan, ‘Recollections of Dancing Forms from Sixteenth-
Century France’, Dance Research 21, no. 1 (2003): pp. 17–23, and Jasmine Dawkins,
‘Provincial entertainment in the Renaissance: “Le Triomphe de Diane” by Pierre de Brach’,
Nottingham French Studies 8, no. 1 (1969): 3–15.
52 Garden, ‘Vocal music, singers and singing’, p. 68.

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and instrumentalists,53 which included ‘lutes, harps, flutes, violins and other
instruments’,54 although different combinations of instruments and voices
were employed at different times in any such spectacle. For the dance music
in the Balet comique de la royne, for example, Beaujoyeulx specified ten vio-
lins, by which he meant ten instruments belonging to the violin family;
that is, violins, violas and bass violins, which were tuned a tone lower than
violoncellos.55 In the ballet La Délivrance de Renaud the musical forces were
much larger than those employed in 1581 and 1615. For example, the ensemble
that was positioned among the foliage of Armide’s garden comprised sixty-four
voices, twenty-eight viols and fourteen lutes.56 Towards the end of the ballet
two ensembles played together which meant that an even larger group was
heard, that is, ninety-two singers and forty-five instrumentalists.57
Furthermore, there is no mention of specific airs or choruses in the bal-
let plots recorded in the dance master’s notebook – even when singers enter
in order to present the subject of the ballet to the audience the verses that
they sang are not recorded. This state of affairs is slightly unusual in that vocal
music was normally a part of the ballets de cour, providing both a break for the
audience between the entrées, and also at times heightening the dramatic con-
tent of the spectacle.58 The 1608 ballet Les noces de Psyché et de Cupidon per-
formed in front of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella had songs interspersed
with the dances. In this case the songs served to introduce the next group of
dancers (the Hours and six small cupids), or to reinforce the theme of the bal-
let; that is, the triumph of true love. Even in more impromptu danced theatri-
cal events outside of the French court, such as the masquerade performed in
1575 in honour of Diane de Foix, comtesse de Gurson, words and songs played
an important part, as the masquerade’s creator Pierre de Brach explains.
53 Carol MacClintock, Introduction to Le Balet comique de la royne, 1581, by Balthazar de

Beaujoyeulx, trans. Carol and Lander MacClintock (np: American Institute of Musicology,
1971), p. 19.
54 Beaujoyeulx, Le Balet comique, trans. Carol and Lander MacClintock, p. 48. ‘ioüans de
lyres, lutz, harpes, flustes, & autres instrumens’. Facsimile ed., McGowan, ed., p. 17r.
55 Jeremy Barlow, ‘Honneur a la dance: A Choreographic Analysis of Le Premier Ballet in Le
Balet Comique de la Royne’, in Terpsichore, 1450–1900: Proceedings of International Dance
Conference Ghent, Belgium, 11–18 April 2000, ed. Barbara Ravelhofer (Ghent: Institute for
Historical Dance Practice, 2000), p. 66.
56 Durand, Discours au vray, f. 3r, trans. Downey and Garden, in La Délivrance de Renaud,
p. 245.
57 Durand, Discours au vray, f. 22v, trans. Downey and Garden, in La Délivrance de Renaud,
p. 253.
58 Garden, ‘Vocal music, singers and singing’, p. 67.

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He emphasizes that the verses and songs explain ‘the nature of the action,
[participate] in the emotions roused by the mime and the dance’, and reinforce
the victory of Diana over Cupid, that is, the triumph of Chastity over Love.59
For the French court ballets the composers of such songs were often celebrated
musicians, such as Pierre Guédron and Antoine de Boësset, but in the ballet
plots from the notebook no musicians or composers are named, nor are any
song texts recorded. Yet it is clear from the presence in the dance master’s note-
book of vocal airs from several ballets de cour performed at the French court in
the second decade of the seventeenth century, that the omission of any refer-
ence to vocal airs in the six ballet plots was not due to ignorance of the pre-
vailing norms on the part of the dance master. Rather their absence supports
my hypothesis that these ballet plots are closer to a summary of a ballet that
contained the broad outline of the action and the nature of the entrées, and
which could be presented to the person who had commissioned the spectacle
for their approval. The requirement for a draft or outline of a dance master’s
ideas for his proposed choreographies to present to the royal, or noble, instiga-
tor of a danced spectacle must have been common, especially given the royal
interest in the creation of danced spectacles, as well as in their performance in
them. This very procedure Beaujoyeulx claims happened in the creation of the
Balet comique de la royne, where the queen of France ordered him ‘to draw up a
plan for her’ (luy dresser quelque dessein). Beaujoyeulx continues: ‘When I had
written it [the plan] out I immediately went back to the court to present it to
the Queen…. Her Majesty, after having me read the discourse in the presence
of several princesses and ladies who were with her – when my work had been
examined, commanded me to carry out my plan forthwith’.60 Furthermore,
two such drafts have survived in the papers of Georg Rudolf Weckherlin, who
had made a successful career as an author and producer of danced spectacles
for the Duke of Württemberg’s court at Stuttgart from 1616 to 1618. As part of his
duties as secretary to the Duke, Weckherlin not only created several ballets but
he also produced detailed accounts of the festivals in these three years.61 By
59 McGowan, ‘Recollections of Dancing Forms’, p. 21.

60 Beaujoyeulx, Le Balet comique, trans. Carol and Lander MacClintock, p. 35. ‘finablement
ie m’ arrestay sur le dessein, qui depuis a esté mis à execution: lequel ayant redigé par
escript, ie retournay aussi tost en Cour, le presenter à la Royne,…. Saditte maiesté m’en
aya[n]t deslors faict lire le discours, en la presence de plusieurs princesses & dames qui se
trouuerent pres d’elle: & mon œuure ayant esté examiné, saditte maiesté me commanda
de promptement l’executer’. Facsimile ed., McGowan, ed., pp. 2r–v.
61 Sara Smart, ‘The Württemberg Court and the Introduction of Ballet in the Empire’, in
Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe, 2 vols., ed. J. R.

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1627 Weckherlin had moved to England where he was employed as secretary to

Lord Conway, the then Secretary of State. In the period between 1627 and 1633
Weckherlin composed two drafts for a masque he had devised for the queen,
Henrietta Maria. The first draft for the proposed masque is entitled Le Subiect
d’un Ballet, and what it contains is similar to the anonymous dance master’s
ballet plots.
The amount of detail provided on the performers’ costumes and the lack
of any awareness of the audience or the latter’s reaction to the performance
compared to the published contemporary livrets, also supports the hypothesis
that the ballet plots are just a summary or outline. The livret for the Ballet de
Monseigneur de Vendosme, one of the largest and most spectacular ballets of
the early seventeenth century, for example, provides an enormous amount of
detail concerning the costumes of all the dancers, down to the types of fab-
rics used and details of decorations. In fact, far more pages in the livret are
devoted to a description of the costumes than to the choreographic descrip-
tion. In the ballet plots from the dance master’s notebook, however, the atten-
tion given to the costumes is much less than in the 1610 publication. Important
features are noted, such as the malcontents’ costumes covered with painted
tears, hats like wide dishes, and small boots; the weapons carried by the dwarfs;
or essential props such as the mirrors borne by the miners that are used to
dazzle and subdue the dwarfs, Venus’s bow and arrows; and the symbols that
adorn the pennants carried by the furious ladies and the courageous warriors,
and by the male and female lovers. Other costumes, however, go completely
unmentioned. For example, no details are provided of the costumes worn
by the five female courtiers, nor of the costumes of the storks. For the latter
there is no mention of any masks, or the materials from which the costumes
were constructed (whether, for example, they were covered in feathers to
simulate the appearance of real storks). Even for the court ladies (or perhaps
courtesans) from five different countries there is no mention of the fabrics or
metal decorative threads used, the colours and decoration of the costumes,
or if any jewels were worn. In other ballet de cour descriptions, even when the
author obviously did not wish to go into such detail as is found in the 1610 bal-
let, there is still an attempt to describe in general terms the splendour of the
costumes worn by royalty, as, for example, in the Ballet de la reine from 1605.
Here the author says it is impossible to adequately describe the costumes of
the queen and the princesses, but all he can say is that ‘on their costumes,
Mulryne, Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly and Margaret Shewring (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004),

II: 35.

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84 chapter 3
which were carnation and white, one saw only diamonds, pearls, gem orna-
ments, precious stones, and jewels. Seeing it, you would have said that they
were covered with stars. All was only light, brightness, flames, suns. In brief,
the rays from their costumes blinded the eyes of the spectators’.62
The livret of the 1617 La Délivrance de Renaud provides a very clear example
of the way the published livrets often mediated between the performance it-
self and those who observed it. Throughout the description of this ballet de
cour, Durand notes the effect the dancing had on the spectators, in passages
such as ‘their entrée was ornamented with such beautiful dances, such varied
figures, and such playful movements that they left those who saw them with
the belief that they would be unable to see anything better’, or ‘the beauty of
their figures almost made us forget what we had admired before, and everyone
hardly knew what to take pleasure in, for having had too much enjoyment’.63
Durand writes as a spectator himself, recounting a performance that has oc-
curred in the recent past. By comparison, the six ballet plots from the dance
master’s notebook do not contain any reference to an audience, or to a perfor-
mance that has actually happened. Most of the action is described in the fu-
ture tense. Furthermore, unlike other ballet de cour livrets, there is no mention
of to whom the performance was directed. The characters enter, dance, then
leave the hall, or sometimes arrange themselves at the sides of the hall, but
they never advance towards a particular member of the audience. There is no
indication that the ballets were performed in front of Archduke Albert and his
wife Isabella at the royal palace in Brussels, or whether they were performed in
a nobleman’s house. In ballets performed at the French court before the king,
the monarch took an active part in the performance even when he was not
dancing. For example, near the end of the Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme,
the twelve knights, having been released from their immobility, move towards
the King, giving him thanks for their deliverance.64
62 ‘sur leur habis estoient incarnas et blancs on ne uoioit que diamans que perles quen-
seignes que joyaux que pierraries uous eussiés dict à le uoier quelles estoient couvertes
destoilles ce nestoyt que lumière que clarté que flambeaux que des soleil bref les ray-
ons de leur habits offusquoient la ueue des assistans’. See Gough, ‘Marie de Medici’s 1605
ballet de la reine’, p. 123 for the original French text and p. 130 for Gough’s translation.
63 ‘leur entrée fut ornée de si belles dances, si diuerses figures, & si follastres actions, qu’ils
laisserent à ceux qui les veirent vne creance de ne pouuoir rien voir de mieux’, and ‘la
beauté de leurs figures, fit quasi oublier ce qu’ auparauant on auoir admiré, & chacun ne
sçauoit a quoy se plaire pour auoir trop de plaisir’. Durand, Discours au vray, ff. 6r and 9r,
trans. Downey and Garden, in La Délivrance de Renaud, pp. 246 and 247.
64 ‘Durant ceste musique, les douze chevaliers marchoient tous d’vn pas grave droict vers sa
Majesté, luy rendant grace de leur totalle delivrance’. Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme,
p. 31.

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Another important omission from these ballet plots is the names of the
performers. Thus, it is impossible to tell whether the dancers, singers and in-
strumentalists were both men and women, or if the women’s roles were some-
times, or always, taken by men. In the French ballet de cour men, whether
royal, aristocratic or professional dancers, frequently danced women’s roles.
One only has to think of Marais portraying the sorceress Armide, or Louis
XIII dancing the part of an old woman in the Ballet de la vieille cour in 1635.
In the Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme, for example, the role of the two
female giantesses were danced by two male nobles, the marquis de Termes
and the marquis de la Ferté.65 Royal and aristocratic women also performed in
ballet de cour, most often in larger ensemble dances, especially in the ballets
commissioned by the queen, as with Marie de’ Medici’s dancing with eleven
princesses in the 1605 Ballet de la reine. At the ballet performed in Nancy in
1606 twelve noble ladies costumed as goddesses descended from the triumphal
chariot to dance their ballet in couples.66 Records of professional women danc-
ers, however, do begin to appear later in the ballets from Louis XIV’s reign. Thus
the most likely practice as regards the ballet plots recorded in the notebook is
that the female roles were danced by men. It would make sense that combat-
ive dances, of which many of the entrées in the six ballet plots are, would be
performed by men rather than women, as the former were trained in the use of
arms and techniques and practices of combat. Having said this, however, some
entrées could have been danced by both sexes, with the most obvious example
being the three male and three female lovers, whose separate entrées and then
their ensemble dance conclude the ballet De la fleur d’Amour. Their dances
are all in figures, as was usual for the Grand Ballet, and there is no indication
of any combative or mimed action. Similarly, in the ballet L’esperance des
malcontents, the concluding Grand Ballet is performed by five dancers all
dressed as Mercury, and five female courtiers from France, Spain, Italy, Hungary
and England. In this case the female courtiers could also have been danced by
women as opposed to cross-dressed men.
65 Georgie Durosoir, Les ballets de la cour de France au xviie siècle (Geneva: Mélophiles
Editions Papillon, 2004), p. 34. For further discussion on the roles in the French court
ballets from 1613 to 1620, and who danced those roles, see Sharon Kettering, ‘Favour and
Patronage: Dancers in the Court Ballets of Early Seventeenth-Century France’, Canadian
Journal of History 43, no. 3 (2008): 391–415.

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86 chapter 3
7 Clues to the Staging of the Ballets
There are only a few clues as to the staging of the ballet plots in the notebook.
The six ballets are described as occurring on the floor of a hall, not on a stage
or raised platform. The triumphal chariots arrive and process around the hall,
and then retire, which could not happen if most of the hall was taken up with
an elevated stage and seating for those watching. There is almost no indica-
tion of scenery in the ballet plots. Often the performers just retire to the side
of the hall or exit from the hall. They are never described as retiring to a for-
est or to a grotto that had been constructed at a strategic point around the
hall. There is only one ballet plot in which stage machinery is mentioned,
that is a ‘mechanical device representing a mountain in the shape of a grotto’
(f. 4r), from which subsequent performers emerge. In this case the mountain
is just described as entering through the doors of the hall. Nothing is said as to
how the mountain moves into the hall. Furthermore, there are no instructions
for the removal of the mountain, so one has to assume that it remains in the
hall for the entire ballet. The performance of these ballets on the floor of a hall
is also consistent with the staging of the ballet at the Brussels’ court in 1608.
This ballet took place in a hall, with benches along each side, and a dais at
one end for Albert and Isabella. The dais faced the mountain out of which the
performers emerged to dance on the floor of the hall. The fact that at the end
of five out of the six ballet plots the performers and audience members dance
together also points to the performance occurring on the floor of a hall rather
than on a stage. In the French ballets de cour c. 1600 to 1650 there is only one
instance of members of the audience moving onto the stage to dance with the
performers; that is, in the 1641 Le Ballet de la Prosperite des armes de la France.
In this instance the king and other members of the audience walked across a
bridge, which had emerged from the stage into the auditorium, in order to join
in social dances with the performers on stage.67
There is also no mention of an audience in the ballet plots, to where they
might be sitting, or their reaction to what is being performed. There are only
two indications that imply there will be people watching the ballet. The first
occurs at the end of the Ballet des mineúrs, where the miners, with the dwarfs
on their shoulders, ‘all make a reverence before they retire’ (‘et ala fin de leur
ballet prendront chascun leur nein sur leurs espaules et en faisant la reuerence
pour se retirer’, f. 4v). Normally dancers would address a reverence to another
person: their partner, to the king or prince (the ‘Presence’), or to the guest in
whose honour the ballet was being staged, as indeed happened in the 1608
court ballet performed in Brussels. This phrase then presupposes the existence
67 I would like to thank Margaret McGowan for drawing my attention to this occurrence.

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of an audience, and perhaps also of a ‘Presence’. The second indication of an

audience is the final sentence in the ballet plots that refers to the performance
of social dances by the performers and members of the audience.
8 The List of Ballet Subjects
The dance master’s notebook begins with a list of ballet subjects or titles. The
list is written in the hand of the dance master (H1), and starts reasonably neat-
ly recording ballet subjects down the left-hand side of f. 1r, before degenerating
to an untidy scrawl on f. 1v. Three of the ballet plots found in the notebook are
also mentioned in this list; that is, L’enuie de l’honneur de l’Amour fidelle de pas-
sioné, L’esperance des malcontens and L’assaút fúrieux des dames contre les plús
courageux des combas victorieux. The nineteen titles written on the left-hand
side of the folio are short. Some refer to a nationalistic subject, such as the en-
tries ‘ballet in the French style’ (ballet a la fransoiz), ‘Hungarian ballet’ (ballet
hongrois) and ‘ballet of the Persians’ (ballet de perses). Others, such as the ‘satyr
ballet’ (ballet de satir), apparently refer to the main character(s) of the bal-
let. The most obvious question that springs to mind regarding this list is what
was the purpose of recording such a list of ballet subjects or titles? Were these
more than twenty ballets all ballets that the dance master had created himself?
Were some of the titles just referring to ballets in which he was not involved
but had seen as a member of the audience? Or, was the list a record of both the
ballets that the dance master had composed, along with a list of useful sub-
jects for possible future ballets? Apart from the titles of the three ballet plots
recorded in the notebook, there are connections between some of the ballet
subjects and other dance-related material in the notebook. For example, the
ballet de la sinne has the same name as two of the dance figures. Did this entry
refer to a ballet which the dance master had composed in which the figure la
sinne (f. 11r) and the figure sinne (f. 8r) featured prominently? Two more entries
could possibly refer to dance music that is recorded in the notebook. The ballet
a les pantolle might be related to the musical piece called panole/panoelle on
f. 92r, while the ballet de boimme might refer to the music on f. 93r la boimiere.
9 Dance Figures
One of the unique features of the dance master’s notebook is that it records
a canon of widely used dance figures or patterns which formed the basis of
the choreographed danced spectacles performed at the French and English
courts in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The folios on

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88 chapter 3
which the drawings of figures for five to sixteen dancers appear are close to
the beginning of the manuscript (ff. 2v–25r), and record just over 450 dance
figures. Following the figures for sixteen dancers there are three pages (ff. 26r–
27r) on which the dance master has notated the letters of the alphabet as they
are formed by groups of dancers, from as few as ten performers to as many as
twenty-three dancers for some letters. The staggering variety in this collection
of figures is a telling reminder of just what was meant when contemporary
witnesses wrote of their amazement at the bewildering variety in the figures
which unfurled before their eyes, and why it was so difficult for those watching
the shifting panorama before them to be precise, clear and detailed in their
accounts of what they saw. While it is easy to identify that one figure is related
to another when sitting at a desk, and slowly, and repeatedly, looking at the
pages of a manuscript, it is far more difficult to do this while watching a con-
stantly changing parade of images and patterns that may, or may not, be re-
peated during the course of the dance.
As well as recording more than 450 figures, the anonymous French dance
master also provided names for some of the figures. There are thirty differ-
ent names, some of which appear repeatedly, like piramie, and some of which
only occur infrequently, like leunnes. The labelling of the figures appears to be
haphazard, in that not all figures of a certain shape have a name attached to
them. For example, among the unnamed figures lurk a number of ‘pyramids’,
‘pinecones’ and ‘lozenges’. The named figures can themselves be divided into
several categories. The largest category comprises figures whose name is de-
scriptive of their shape, and whose shape represents a physical object. These
named figures which form the first category are listed in Table 3. The second
category is composed of figures in the form of geometrical shapes, the prime
example in this category being the pyramid figures, and the figures in the shape
of a lozenge or diamond. The figures in this category are listed in Table 4. Less
frequent are the semi-circular, or ‘U’ shapes labelled croisans (crescent). The
shapes labelled carriaue (that is, carreau, a square) also belong in the category
composed of geometrical shapes. The majority of the figures which have this
name form the shape of a square, usually with one or more dancers inside the
square. The figures labelled do contre do68 and do a do69 also outline geometric
shapes. The figure on f. 14r is formed by eleven dancers, eight of which outline
the shape of a square (two dancers at each corner), and the remaining three
dancers form a triangle inside the square. The do a do figures depict a triangle,
68 The seventh figure on f. 14r.

69 The twelfth figure on f. 6r and the ninth figure on f. 7r.

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with two dancers at each corner. The third category comprises a few miscel-
laneous figures which do not fit within either of the other two categories, and
a figure whose name I have not been able to translate. The figures in this cate
gory are listed in Table 5.
table 3 Named figures that represent a physical object
French name from S 253 English
batoir bat
baton rompeu broken stick
ceur heart
coup[e] cup or goblet
croi cross
croi de lorin cross of Lorraine
dare/dair dart
estoille star
leunnes moon
langue de sacpon serpent’s-tongue
martiaue hammer
monde world
palet quoit
pome de pin pinecone
salleman salamander
solleille/soller sun
tourteau tortoise
table 4 Named geometric figures
carriaue a square
conne a conical figure
croisans crescent
do contre do/do a do back-to-back
loxan/loran lozenge
piramie pyramid

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90 chapter 3
table 5 Miscellaneous named figures
entre entrée
angantre entrance
sebelie wooden bowl used for the lading or turning of new wine
lasare ?
sinne/ la sinne signa
lourica/ leurica possibly an old word for bagpipe
sandelei perhaps ‘sangdedé’, a small pocket dagger
a The shape associated with ‘sinne’ is the same as that associated with ‘la sinne’. Elsewhere in
the notebook the dance master has written ‘en fesant per trois fois le sinne de la crois’ (f. 69v).
It is unclear whether ‘la sinne’ is a case of an incorrect article, or refers to something else.
The folios of figures drawn by the anonymous dance master also include
figures which are not named. Many of these figures are further examples of
already named shapes: a heart, pyramid, pinecone, tortoise, lozenge, et cetera.
For example, while the dance master has labelled six figures as pyramids, an-
other fourteen pyramids are left un-named. Similar ratios hold for the named
and un-named pinecones, lozenges and darts. For the other figures, like heart,
hammer, carriaue, there are equal numbers of named and un-named figures,
while for other figures like tortoise, world, crescent, broken stick and star, the
ratios are reversed, with more named than un-named examples. By far the
largest category of un-named figures are those which form either a single geo-
metric shape, or composite figures made up of two or more geometric shapes.
Often these figures will be built around the lozenge shape, for example, com-
prising either a string of lozenges, lozenge and triangle shapes, or lozenge and
pyramid shapes. Composite figures with squares are also found, even an exam-
ple of the squared circle (see Illustration 2). There are also composite figures
in which discreet geometric shapes are combined to form a larger shape; for
example, a star formed by a circle and four triangles, a star with four triangles
and a lozenge at its centre, or a lozenge created with four triangles, as in the
eleventh figure on f. 16v.
A further sub-set of the un-named figures I have called ‘line’ figures. This
is because the figures do not, at first glance, fall into any regular geometric
shapes, but appear to be made up of straight lines of dancers, either with an
even or uneven number of dancers in each line. Many of the figures in this
notebook, both named and unnamed, are recorded in two ways, with one

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illustration 2 Example of a squared circle – the eleventh

figure on f. 12v in S 253
illustration 3 A heart on top of a triangle – the fifth figure

on f. 16v in S 253
illustration 4 An upside-down heart on top of a downwards

pointing triangle – the first figure on f. 17r in
S 253

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92 chapter 3
being the reverse of the other; for example, pyramids whose apex is at the
top of the page, and reverse pyramids whose apex points towards the bottom
of the page. Composite figures are also treated in the same manner. For ex-
ample, the fifth figure on f. 16v is a heart on top of a triangle (Illustration 3),
while there are seven other figures which are the reverse of this image: an
upside-down heart on top of a downwards-pointing triangle (Illustration 4).
The presence of so many reverse images of individual figures in the note-
book is significant for two reasons. First, it points to the fact that the note-
book is a relatively systematic record and codification of a large number of
different shapes which could be used by a dance master in the creation of a
newly-composed choreography for a danced spectacle. The systematic record-
ing of so many different figures by our anonymous dance master, both in their
front-facing and their reverse images, parallels the listing and description of
the different steps in the late-sixteenth-century Italian dance treatises, most
of which were performed in both duple and triple metre. The shapes created
by the dancers of the French fêtes and English masques were just as important
to the choreographers of these spectacles as the varieties of capriola, zurlo and
gagliarda mutanza were for Caroso and Negri. For the sixteenth-century Italian
balletti, the step sequences were an important part of a dance’s structure. The
dance figures or shapes as exemplified by this notebook, occupy a similar posi-
tion for the structure of the French and English theatrical dances. Second, the
presence in the notebook of reverse images of individual figures also implies
that when performed these figures were meant to be viewed from a certain
direction. If this were not the case, and the dance figures were conceived of
as being viewed equally from all sides with no direction being privileged, then
there would be no point in recording two views of essentially the same images,
at least for the simple figures such as the pyramids or pinecones.
The folios of dance figures reveal more than just the shape formed by the
dancers: they also indicate the direction each dancer is facing. For the figures
in which the dancers are arrayed in horizontal or vertical lines, the squiggles
indicating the dancers are all drawn in the same orientation, indicating that
the dancers are all facing in the same direction, that is, the top of the page. For
the figures that involve diagonal or circular lines, the squiggles are drawn not
perpendicular to the page, but aligned with the slope of the curve or diagonal.
The difference in orientation of the squiggles can be clearly seen in the ten
figures on f. 3r. In the second, third, fourth, seventh, eighth and tenth figures
the squiggles are all in the same orientation: the dancers are facing ‘the front’,
that is, the top of the page. In the first, fifth and ninth figures the squiggles are
in different orientations, with some facing ‘the front’, while others are aligned
along a diagonal indicating which dancers are facing in towards the centre of

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illustration 5 The 5th, 7th and 9th figures from a 1616 balletto showing
the dancers facing in various directions.
the circle (fifth and ninth figures), or which are facing towards the point of the
arrow (first figure). The differing orientation of individual dancers when form-
ing diagonal or circular patterns is confirmed by other contemporary sources.
For example, one of the figures in the 1617 ballet La Délivrance de Renaud that
is illustrated in the livret is a ‘V’.70 The picture of the fourteen dancers clearly
shows some facing the apex of the ‘V’, while others face across the ‘V’ to the
dancers on the other side. The different orientation of the dancers when form-
ing their various figures is very clear in the thirteen figures for a balletto com-
posed for the 1616 carnival celebrations at the d’Este court.71 In this document
each dancer is represented by a circle, and the direction each dancer is fac-
ing is indicated by a short arrow. When the eight dancers form a circle or two
squares, for example, they all face into the centre of the circle or the squares.
Illustration 5 shows three of the figures from this balletto where the dancers
face in different directions.
A few of the figures are drawn with two differently shaped squiggles. These
can be seen on f. 3r, f. 9v and the last two figures on f. 17r. The purpose of the
change in shape must be to indicate which dancer is male (or a male charac-
ter) and which is female (or a female character). Sometimes the dancers just
alternate male/female, as in the sixth and last figures on f. 3r. For other figures
the dance master wanted to represent a more complicated arrangement, as
in the third figure on f. 3r when one gender is assigned to the positions on
the outside of the figure, while the other gender occupies the five positions in
the centre of the figure. The sole figure on f. 9v is for eight dancers, and is made
up of four lines of dancers: one dancer in the first line, then two dancers in the
next, three dancers in the third line and two dancers in the rear line. In this
70 Durand, Discours au vray, f. 25v.

71 These figures are reproduced on page 37 of Giovanni Maria Sperandini’s Feste, spetta-
coli e tornei cavallereschi nella Modena di Cesare d’Este (1598–1628) (Modena: Edizioni
Artestampa, 2008).

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94 chapter 3
instance the first and third lines have ‘S’-shaped squiggles, while the second
and fourth lines have ‘O’-shaped squiggles.
10 Alchemy and Fireworks
From the mid-sixteenth century onwards the intellectual climate in both con-
tinental Europe and England fostered an interest in symbols, and in fact the
‘manipulation and interpretation of symbols became a popular intellectual
sport in the sixteenth century’.72 Symbols were seen as having a great power
both to draw heavenly power down to earth, and to help raise human under-
standing closer to a knowledge of the divine. Marsilio Ficino, in his treatise,
De vita, (1489) is explicit on the power of ‘figures’ ( figurae) to influence human
activity. And these ‘figures’ include music, people’s gestures, facial expressions,
movements and dance.
You are not unaware that harmonious music through its numbers and
proportions has a wonderful power to calm, move, and influence our
spirit, mind, and body. Well, proportions constituted out of numbers are
almost figures of a sort, made, as it were, out of points and lines, but in
motion. And similarly harmonious rays and motions penetrating every-
thing, they daily influence our spirit secretly just as overpowering music
generally does openly…. Therefore, you should not doubt, they say, that
the material for making an image, if it is in other respects entirely con-
sonant with the heavens, once it has received by art a figure similar to
the heavens, both conceives in itself the celestial gift and gives it again to
someone who is in the vicinity or wearing it.73
72 Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy Between Science and Religion (London:
Routledge, 1988), p. 77.
73 ‘Non ignoras concentus per numeros proportionesque suas vim habere mirabilem ad
spiritum et animum et corpus sistendum, movendum, afficiendum. Proportiones autem
ex numeris constitutae quasi figurae quaedam sunt, velut ex punctis lineisque factae,
sed in motu. Similiter motu suo se habent ad agendum figurae coelestes. Hae namque
harmonicis tum radiis, tum motibus suis omnia penetranibus spiritum indies ita clam
afficiunt, ut musica praepotens palam afficere consuevit…. Ergo ne dubites, dicent, quin
materia quaedam imaginis faciendae, alioquin valde congrua, coelo, per figuram coelo
similem arte datam coeleste munus tum in se ipsa concipiat, tum reddat in proximum
aliquem vel gestantem’. Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, ed. and trans. Carol V. Kaske
and John R. Clark (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1989),
pp. 331 and 333 for the translation and pp. 330 and 332 for the Latin text.

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Later on Ficino states that ‘musical songs and sounds’ include ‘gestures of the
body, dancing and ritual movements’.74 Therefore, as far as Ficino was con-
cerned, the magical symbols that contain a hidden power included ‘figures’
of the dance. Ficino’s writings were very popular in France in the sixteenth
century, not only De vita, but also his Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on
Love, which influenced many poets including Ronsard and Baïf,75 both of
whom were involved in the danced spectacles at the French court.76 Thus geo-
metrically patterned choreographies were one way in which cosmic influences
could be magically (that is, in a hidden or occult manner) transported to earth
and, once there, could induce the same cosmic harmony to operate on earth.
The aim of the dance master when choreographing dances for a danced spec-
tacle was to communicate messages to their educated audiences through the
presentation of symbols and images, be they geometric figures, alchemical im-
ages or mystical symbols.
Alchemical images and language had ceased to be an esoteric or secret art
by the end of the sixteenth century, and by the beginning of the seventeenth
century alchemical books circulated widely among the literate members of the
population, so much so that images and metaphors of alchemy became intrin-
sic to seventeenth-century thought.77 Furthermore, the end of the sixteenth
century and the beginning of the seventeenth century was a time when em-
blem books were very popular. The ‘alchemists enthusiastically participated in
this tradition, frequently choosing to represent the stages of the opus in a series
of emblems which were intended both for meditation and for “decoding” like
hieroglyphs’.78 What were the figures found in many of the Grand Ballets of
the early seventeenth century if not a series of emblems? At this period, circa
1600, the language of alchemy was available to anyone who cared to pursue
it, through the medium of printed books. For the professional wordsmiths of
the time, the playwrights, poets, and pamphlet writers, alchemical imagery
was a rich source of inspiration.79 If professional writers exploited alchemical
74 ‘per cantus musicos atque sonos, ad quorum ordinem vimque referri gestus corporis
saltusque et tripudia volumus’. Ficino, Three Books on Life, p. 363 for the translation and
p. 362 for the Latin text.
75 Sears Reynolds Jayne, Introduction to Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, by
Marsilio Ficino, trans. Sears Reynolds Jayne, 2nd rev. ed. (Dallas: Spring Publications,
1985), p. 21.
76 For the 1581 Balet comique de la royne both Ronsard and Baïf contributed ‘ideas, verses,
time and money’. See Margaret M. McGowan, Introduction to Le Balet comique de la
royne, by Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx, facsimile ed., McGowan, ed., p. 13.
77 Lyndy Abraham, Marvell and Alchemy (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1990), p. 26.
78 Abraham, Marvell, p. 24.
79 Charles Nicholl, The Chemical Theatre (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 97.

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96 chapter 3
imagery, then why did not professional pattern or figure makers (that is, chore-
ographers) also use this imagery? Both the texts of the masques and the French
fêtes were written by the leading poets of the time, none of whom would have
been ignorant of alchemical ideas and images.80 The geometric figures record-
ed in the dance master’s notebook had close associations with the supposed
nature of the cosmos and divine truth: for example, the figure of a cross could
represent the Christian tradition and imagery. Other named figures found in
the notebook, such as the ‘tortoise’ or ‘salamander’ figures, represented com-
mon alchemical images. Many alchemical images had different meanings
often depending on the position in the opus in which they were used, but the
common alchemical meanings of the named figures are given in Table 6.
It is clear from the inclusion of named shapes that had alchemical mean-
ings in his canon of dance figures that the anonymous dance master had
an interest in alchemy. This interest may have been one factor for his deci-
sion to include instructions for fireworks in his notebook. By the end of the
sixteenth century gunners, or artificers, who produced fireworks not only used
the processes of alchemy to manufacture new fireworks, they also adopted the
language of alchemy in their treatises where they recorded recipes for different
sorts of fireworks and methods by which these fireworks were manufactured.81
These works were full of alchemical language; for example, ‘gunpowder was
understood to operate by the mixing of contraries…. Saltpeter was a cold and
dry principle, like mercury, and, once it was brought into contact and ignited
with the hot and dry principle of sulphur, the antagonism of the two materials
would lead to an explosion’.82 Just as a choreographer could use alchemical
shapes in his choreography, so too did the artificers create the same images in
their fireworks. For example, both ‘serpents’ and ‘stars’ were a type of firework
that were packed ‘into the head of a rocket, and, when the rocket exploded,
[the serpent] streamed into the air in erratic trajectories, reminiscent of the
movements of a snake’.83 The salamander was another alchemical symbol that
appeared in fireworks displays as an automaton that belched forth fire.84
In the Renaissance there were, of course, many different types of fireworks
employed in spectacles, and it is worth noting exactly which type of fireworks
were recorded in the dance master’s notebook. One of these is a recipe for
‘stars’ (f. 36r) that were packed into a rocket and then exploded from the
80 Abraham, Marvell, p. 27.

81 Simon Werrett, Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 27.
83 Werrett, Fireworks, p. 31.

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table 6 The alchemical meanings of the named figures
Image Meaning
circle The symbol of perfection, the perfect, eternal, spiritual realm.

It is also a symbol for the completed alchemical opus.
circle with a dot in At a macrocosmic level it symbolises the Creator, in the centre
the centre and at the microcosmic level it symbolises gold.
cross In alchemy a cross was used to symbolise the fixation of the
volatile spirit. The physical characteristics of a cross; that is,
four lines meeting at a central point meant that it was used to
represent the four elements, which in the alchemical process
form a union that produces the magical fifth element.
dart The dart of Cupid represented the secret fire that destroys the
old metal, or the old spiritual state.
luna The moon symbolised silver, as well as representing the female
principle of the opus.
salamander A symbol of the masculine seed of the metals, the hot, dry, active
principle of the alchemical opus.
serpent The matter with which the alchemist begins his work. Mercury
at the first stage of the opus.
sol The sun was one of the major alchemical symbols. It represented
gold, the masculine principle of the opus, and also philosophical
gold, which is gold created by the art of alchemy.
square A symbol of the earth, of the four elements, the four seasons.
square and circle One of the key images in alchemy. An image which represents
the alchemical opus itself. The transformation of the square into
a circle symbolises the transformation of the four elements into
the fifth element.
six-pointed star The transforming medium, Mercury, that has the power to
resolve and unite opposites, and to create harmony and balance.
tortoise The alchemical basin, a perfectly proportioned house.
illustration 6 Drawing of a rocket on f. 36r (detail) in S 253

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98 chapter 3
rocket, falling through the air like meteorites or falling stars. Such recipes were
first recorded in the late sixteenth century, and soon were common in books
on fireworks.85 Two recipes for rockets were also recorded in the notebook
(ff. 35v–36r), along with a drawing of a rocket (see Illustration 6) that is very
similar to those found in books on fireworks, such as the Traicté des feux
artificielz de joye & de recreation.86 Rockets were used to launch stars, serpents,
fountains and other sorts of fireworks, and thus were a very important com-
ponent of a gunner’s repertoire. Gunners were very proud of their expertise
in inventing and making rockets, and in being able to vary the trajectory and
height of a rocket, and the timing of the explosions.87 Another major cate
gory of fireworks were those designed for use in and on water. These fireworks
moved along the surface of the water, as well as diving below the surface and
moving through the water as if they were swimming, before they exploded or
shot up into the air.88 A recipe for this type of firework appears on f. 34v of the
dance master’s notebook under the rubric Pour faire grenades qui bruslent en
lenu. Fireworks were also employed in mock battles and sieges, with a castle
under attack emitting fireworks from its towers, and often with the attackers or
defenders brandishing ‘fiery’ weapons, such as ‘lances of fire’ or ‘maces of fire’.89
This type of firework is represented in the dance master’s notebook by the in-
structions on how to make asperges that are used to attack one’s enemy or as a
means of defence (ff. 35r–35v) and the instructions on how to make grenades
that are coated so that one can throw them from one’s hand (ff. 37r–37v). The
decision to include the instructions for these particular fireworks in his note-
book may have been made by the dance master because he had seen examples
of their use and their effects remained etched in his memory. On the other
hand, he may have also wished to include examples of the common but im-
portant types of fireworks in his notebook for possible use, as by the early sev-
enteenth century fireworks had become an essential part of court spectacles,
including the ballets de cour.

86 The treatise is from Paris, c. 1649. For a reproduction of an illustration from this treatise of
an artificer lighting a rocket, see Plate 4 in Werrett, Fireworks.
89 For a description and contemporary account of one such complicated allegorical battle
and firework display held in London in 1613 for the marriage of Elizabeth the daughter
of James I and Frederick V, see Paulette Choné, ‘Firework Displays in Paris, London and
Heidelberg (1612–1615)’, in Dynastic Marriages 1612/1615. A Celebration of the Habsburg
and Bourbon Unions, ed. Margaret M. McGowan (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 204–8 and
212–4.

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11 Fireworks and the Art of Dance
Dance performances and firework displays were both a frequent part of court
spectacles, yet the similarities between the two practices extend much further
than this. Both were visual arts, and both practices were performed to the ac-
companiment of music, or to the sounds of musket fire and other exploding
ordinance, along with trumpets and drums. Firework displays and theatrical
dance performances also functioned not only as entertainment: the watching
crowds responded with awe, amazement and delight to the effects of sound
and light, and to the demonstration of control over the forces of fire that il-
luminated the night sky. There was also the ever-present frisson of fear at
the potential of danger from the explosions. Such displays also formed a spe-
cific language in which messages of power, allegorical stories and imitations
of nature and the heavens were represented. The same reaction of awe was
also part of the experience of watching a dance performance. On many occa-
sions the virtuosic performances of highly skilled dancers evoked a feeling of
amazement in those watching, as in 1546 when Piero Strozzi (one of the best
dancers of his age), and other French courtiers stunned those watching with
their incredible performance of virtuosic steps and leaps.90
As discussed earlier, the manipulation of colour and light was a concern for
choreographers and producers as well as for the costume designers and other
technical staff of danced spectacles. In 1581 Beaujoyeulx comments on how the
splendour of the hundred plus candles of white wax ‘converted the darkness
of the night into a great joyous light’ (conuertissoit l’obscurité de la nuict en vne
ioyeuse & grande clairté),91 while Samuel Daniel in 1610 laments the fact
that even though he very much wanted to have the pages in Tethys Festival
introduced with torches in order to create additional splendour, he felt that
the smoke ‘would have pestered the room, which the season would not well
permit’.92
Both dance masters and artificers were involved in creating a similar set
of images, symbols and letters, one with the moving bodies of the dancers,
the other with the different types of fireworks. In 1612 the twelve-year old
Michel de Marolles witnessed the fireworks held at the Place Royale. He wrote
90 Margaret M. McGowan, La Danse à la Renaissance. Sources livresques et albums d’images

(Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 2012), p. 61.
91 Beaujoyeulx, Le Balet comique, trans. Carol and Lander MacClintock, p. 49. Facsimile ed.,
McGowan, ed., p. 17r.
92 Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque, p. 164. Ravelhofer is quoting from Stephen Orgel and
Roy Strong, eds., Inigo Jones: The Theatre of the Stuart Court, vol. 1. (London: Southeby
Parke Bernet, 1973), p. 196.

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100 chapter 3
an account of what he had seen over the three days of the festivities in his
Memoirs published in Paris in 1656–57.
I remember so well, that the impression is still fresh, and the images are
present in my mind. Nothing more joyful or agreeable was ever seen …
[There were] immense fireworks in the Palace of Felicity, where figured
characters written in fire could be seen, the monograms of their Magesties
[sic] and the Spanish Infanta blazed forth to the noise of rockets, drums,
trumpets and musket fire.93
Having the dancers spell out the names or initials of the newly married cou-
ple occurred frequently in theatrical spectacles celebrating a noble marriage.
The final masque dance in Ben Jonson’s Hymenaei (1606), to give just one ex-
ample, is described as ‘a most neat and curious measure, full of subtlety and
device … The strains were all notably different, some of them formed into let-
ters very signifying to the name of the bridegroom’.94
From the fifteenth century onwards dance masters were concerned to raise
the status of the dance practice they taught from a craft to that of a liberal
art through its connection with music. In his ode in praise of the quattrocento
Italian dance master Guglielmo Ebreo, Mario Filelfo favorably compares
Guglielmo with heroes like Hector, and asserts that Guglielmo is so gifted
in the art of dance that his skills are divinely inspired.95 Filelfo claimed that
Guglielmo’s dancing skill came from a source other than that of human tal-
ent, which could be learnt through the passing on of skills from a master to
an apprentice. Guglielmo possessed ingenio, a creative power that was inborn
(given by God) and through which the artist had the vision and intellectual
capacity to conceive of the work, as opposed to just carrying it out. Ingenio was
closely associated with the inventiveness, as opposed to the skill or workman-
ship (ars), of an artist or work of art. By crediting Guglielmo with the gift of
ingenio, Filelfo was admitting him into an intellectual circle, and claiming that
the practice of the art of dance was a way of expressing one’s intellectual quali-
ties. The social standing of gunners followed a similar path to that of the dance
master in early modern Europe. Around 1400 gunners were seen as ‘lowly,
93 Choné, ‘Firework Displays’, p. 202.

94 Stephen Orgel, ed., Ben Jonson: The Complete Masques (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1969), p. 86, ll. 279–85.
95 Filelfo’s poem appears at the end of Guglielmo’s treatise on dance, written in 1463 as a
presentation copy for Galeazzo Maria Sforza.

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anonymous craftsmen’, yet by the early seventeenth century their reputation

had risen dramatically.96 They created a body of literature to document their
techniques, and dedicated such books and manuscripts to noble patrons. Like
the dance masters’ choreographies, the creations of the gunners were seen as
ingenious and full of art. Likewise from 1400 to 1600 these artificers ‘exploited
the credit of the liberal arts, using the idioms of mathematics, Aristotelian
physics, and courtly rhetoric to articulate their skills’.97


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chapter 4
Dance Teaching, Schools and Pupils
1 Dance Teaching in Renaissance Europe
Until the fifteenth century dance instruction had presumably been an oral
and embodied practice, with courtiers learning new dances directly from
those most skilled in the art. Certainly before the fifteenth century teachers
of dance seem to have been uninterested in committing their choreogra-
phies to paper, whether to produce instruction manuals outlining the basic
steps and principles of the dance style or to produce treatises on dance as a gift
to their patrons. However, it was in the 1440s in Italy that the literature of dance
began to emerge with the appearance first of Domenico da Piacenza’s treatise
De arte saltandj & choreas ducendj De la arte di ballare et danzare: this was fol-
lowed within the next two decades by the appearance of treatises by Antonio
Cornazano and Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro.1 These men were responsible for
teaching the children of the leading families of Italy, and performing alongside
them in state spectacles. Dance teaching in Italy during the fifteenth century
was not confined solely to the authors of the dance treatises, as evidence has
survived of other dance teachers, who worked both at the courts and in the
cities, teaching the children of the middle-ranking merchant classes. Lorenzo
Lavagnolo was one maestro di ballo who taught the children of the Gonzaga,
Sforza and d’Este families,2 while Giuseppe Ebreo, the brother of Guglielmo,
not only ran a dancing school in Florence but also was associated with Lorenzo
de’ Medici.3 Children of the elite and the wealthy middle class usually were
taught to dance in their own homes, but dance teachers also rented space in
1 One version of Guglielmo’s treatise De pratica seu arte tripudii is dated 1463, while the first
version of Cornazano’s treatise Il libro dell’arte del danzare (now lost) was written in 1455, and
the second version was written in 1465. In other parts of Europe – Spain, France, England,
Germany and Burgundy – we have to wait until the sixteenth century before the names of
men who taught, choreographed and performed dances are known.
2 For more details on Lavagnolo’s career, see Katherine Tucker McGinnis, ‘Moving in High
Circles: Courts, Dance, and Dancing Masters in Italy in the Long Fifteenth Century’. Ph.D.
dissertation, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2001), pp. 250–2.
3 For more details on Guiseppe’s activities, see Timothy J. McGee, ‘Dancing Masters and the
Medici Court in the 15th Century’, Studi musicali 17, no. 2 (1988): 201–24, and Alessandra
Veronese, ‘Una societas ebraico-cristiano in docendo tripudiare sonare ac cantare nella
Firenze del quattrocento’, in Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro e la danza nelle corti italiane del xv
secolo, ed. Maurizio Padovan (Pisa: Pacini, 1990), pp. 51–7.

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Dance Teaching, Schools and Pupils 103
which to run dance classes, as did Mariotto di Bastiano di Francesco in 1446

in Florence.4
In the sixteenth century the number of dance masters increased, both those
who produced treatises and those who just taught and performed.5 Unlike
their fifteenth-century colleagues, these Italian dance masters travelled and
worked outside of Italy at the courts of France, Spain, Germany and England.
In addition to the dance teachers who worked at the courts teaching the chil-
dren of the leading families, and in major cities teaching the offspring of the
merchants in the latter’s own houses, dance was also taught at schools which
frequently taught both dance and music. From fifteenth-century Italy there
are surviving legal documents regarding dance schools in Florence in 1467 run
by Giuseppe the brother of Guglielmo Ebreo, and Francesco, a Christian mu-
sician and dancer, and in Siena from the 1470s onwards. In the school run by
Giuseppe and Francesco instruction was given in dancing, singing and playing
a musical instrument. These documents are mostly concerned with regulating
the duties and payments between the teachers. In Giuseppe and Francesco’s
case, for example, they had agreed to divide equally their expenses and earn-
ings, and that this agreement would last for one year. Their expenses were the
cost of renting a house at which they would teach music and dance; while the
contract stipulated that both male and female students would be taught at
their school, it does not give any indication as to who these students might
have been.6 The fact that Guglielmo’s brother was also a dancer and, for some
years at least, ran a dance school in Florence, raises the question of whether
Guglielmo’s treatise was used in the dance lessons he gave at his school, or
even in the promotion of his school to potential pupils. Unfortunately, the
legal documents do not give any clue as to how the lessons were conducted, or
what else was taught, apart from a general insistence on good behaviour from
the students. For example, at the school in Siena in the 1490s blasphemy was
forbidden and pupils were fined if they committed this offence.7 One reason
for this insistence on orderly behaviour was that dancing had always had its
critics, and dance masters, therefore, were always concerned to defend their
art and the schools in which they taught from accusations of disorderly or im-
moral behaviour. When the Spaniard Juan de Esquivel Navarro wrote about the
4 Frank A. D’Accone, ‘Lorenzo the Magnificent and Music’, in Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo
mondo, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Olschki, 1994), p. 263 n. 8.
5 McGinnis has identified 134 dance masters who worked c. 1500 to 1600. See McGinnis,
‘Moving in High Circles’, pp. 400–8.
6 Veronese, ‘Una societas ebraico-cristiano’, pp. 52–3.
7 Frank A. D’Accone, The Civic Muse. Music and Musicians in Siena during the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 653.

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104 chapter 4
dance schools and teaching in Madrid in the 1630s, he stressed the appropri-
ate behaviour expected of both students and dance masters.8 Esquivel Navarro
praises his dance teacher Antonio de Almenda, who was dance master to the
king Philip IV from 1639 until 1654, as a man who is ‘wise, gentle, strict, clean,
neat, elegant, well mannered, and above all, very courteous’.9
The contracts for the establishment of dance schools in Siena in the six-
teenth century reveal that dance masters who set up such schools also taught
in private homes. The contract of 1 January 1537, for example, between Maestro
Lorenzo and Maestro Marcantonio di Maestro Francesco Fineschi, which sets
out the framework for a dance school that the two men were to jointly operate
for four years, includes the provision that since ‘both agreed to teach in the
school and outside it, as might be necessary and “as was the custom of dili-
gent masters” ’.10 A further clause in the contract also referred to the practice
of teaching women in the students’ own home, where it states that all stu-
dents would be considered as pupils of both men, including any women they
taught in private homes.11 Thus it appears that in sixteenth-century Siena at
least, women were taught privately in their own homes, rather than attending
lessons at a school. The practice of teaching women privately rather than in a
school was also followed in Spain. The public dancing schools in Madrid in the
first half of the seventeenth century taught only men, with ladies being given
instruction in their own homes by dance masters whose reputation, behaviour
and manners were of a high enough standard that no fears would be held for
the safety and reputation of their female students.12
Dance masters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were often engaged
to teach a specific dance for a particular occasion, or a few dances that were
8 See, in particular chapters 3, 5 and 6 of his 1642 treatise Discursos sobre el arte del danzado
in Lynn Matluck Brooks, The Art of Dancing in Seventeenth-Century Spain: Juan de Esquivel
Navarro and His World. Including a Translation of the Discursos sobre el arte del danza-
do by Juan de Esquivel Navarro (Seville, 1642) and Commentary on the Text. (Lewisburg/
London: Bucknell University Press/Associated University Presses, 2003), pp. 233–6 and
238–44 for the Spanish text, and pp. 285–8 and 291–7 for Brooks’ translation into English.
9 ‘Es pues mi Maestro Antonio de Almenda, entendido, apacible, severo, limpio, aseado,
galán, de buenos respetos, y sobre todo muy cortés’. See Brooks, The Art of Dancing in
Seventeenth-Century Spain, p. 242 for the Spanish text, and pp. 295–6 for her translation.
10 D’Accone, The Civic Muse, p. 654. The original text of the contract is given on p. 663:
‘In prima, che ciascuno deli sopradetti maestri debbi, in scuola et fuor di scuola, dove sarà
necessario, essercitare et durar la debita fadiga in lo insegnare, come ali diligenti maestri
si costuma’.
11 D’Accone, The Civic Muse, p. 655. The original text of the contract is given on p. 663: ‘Item,
che tutti li scolari dell’uno et del’altro, cominciati o non cominciati, habino a esser co-
muni, et il medesino le spose et le case dove qualsivogli di loro insegnassero’.
12 Brooks, The Art of Dancing in Seventeenth-Century Spain, p. 159.

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currently in fashion. For example, in February 1533 in Siena a Maestro Lorenzo

di Fuccio (whom one assumes is the same person who set up a dance school in
1537) was employed by four members of the Congrega dei Rozzi, Siena’s leading
theatrical academy, to teach them un assato di moresca co’ le spade (a moresca
battle with swords)13 presumably for an upcoming theatrical performance by
the academy. In 1473 a young middle-class Englishman George Cely recorded
his personal expenses during a business trip to Calais. These expenses included
payments for music and dance lessons given to him by Thomas Rede, a harpist
who resided in Calais. Cely was not only taught how to play twenty-six dances
on the harp and fourteen on the lute, he also received dance tuition: ‘Item the
xiiij day of Jovne yt cost meto the sayd Thomas ffor to lerne to davnsse … vj s.
viij d’.14 The next item in Cley’s list of expenses was four pennies for his ‘byll
of fotyng’, while some months later Cely again recorded a payment to Thomas
Rede for ‘my byll of ffottyng off baç davnssys’.15 In other words, Cely was paying
not only for practical lessons in dancing but also for a list or lists of the steps of
the basse danses he had learnt from Thomas Rede as a memory aid.16
Just as George Cley returned for lessons from Thomas Rede over a period of
some months, so too did Eleanor Slingsby take dancing lessons at York from
Mr Hearne for four months in 1613. Eleanor’s two brothers Henry and Thomas
also received private dance tuition, as well as attending a dance school.17
When Thomas was at Cambridge he had the opportunity to exhibit his danc-
ing skills as one of the performers in a production put on at the university.
When Margaret Spencer was in London on one of her periodic trips to the
capital (circa 1610–1613) she paid for dance lessons for a period of six weeks
from Thomas Adson.18 In early modern Europe dance lessons as part of travel
13 D’Accone, The Civic Muse, p. 644.

14 Alison Hanham, ‘The Musical Studies of a Fifteenth-Century Wool Merchant’, The Review
of English Studies n. s. 8, no. 31 (1957): 271.
15 Hanham, ‘The Musical Studies’, p. 272.
16 The French basse danse was a genre of dances that had a limited number of steps: four
(or five if you count the reverence which began each dance as a step). Each dance was a
different arrangement of these steps to form a new choreographic sequence that had to
agree with the number of breves in the music for each dance. Therefore, the difficulty in
dancing a basse danse lay in remembering which particular sequence of steps one had to
be dancing, rather than in how to perform a large number of different steps. For a discus-
sion of the basse danse and a transcription and translation of all seventeen sources for
this genre, see David Wilson, The Basse Dance Handbook: Text and Context (Hillsdale, NY:
Pendragon Press, 2012).
17 Barbara D. Palmer, ‘Court and Country: The Masque as Sociopolitical Subtext’, Medieval
and Renaissance Drama in England 7 (1995): 341.
18 Linda Levy Peck, Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in Seventeenth-Century England
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 69–70.

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106 chapter 4
(both domestic and international) were taken by members of ruling families,

as well as the middle classes. In 1623, for example, the heir to the English
throne Prince Charles visited Spain in a mission to persuade the Infanta to
agree to marry him. While he was in Madrid he took lessons from the Queen
and the Infanta’s dance master Manuel de Frías, as did his fellow member of
the English delegation, the Marquess of Buckingham.19 The practice of under-
taking dance instruction while on an international journey was even remarked
upon in contemporary travel literature, as in Robert Dallington’s A Method for
Travell, published in London in 1605. ‘There is another exercise to be learned
in France, because there are better teachers, and the French fashion is in most
request with us, that is, of dancing’.20 In the early seventeenth century France
was regarded by the English as the place to learn to dance well, but a generation
before, Italy had held this position. In 1584, for example, Nicolas de Villeroy,
Secretary of State to the French king, sent his son to Italy in order to both learn
to dance and to handle weapons. His son, Charles de Neufville, recorded that
he started his dance lessons on ‘le premier jour de l’an’ when he was in Padua.
He also recorded that the re-commenced dance instruction later that year on
3 June 1584.21 Thus here we see exactly the same pattern of pupils re-starting
dance lessons as we do in the records from the dance master’s notebook.22
Thus from the documentary evidence for dance teaching in schools and in
private homes in early modern Europe, we can see that the process of tuition
was usually not a one-off, short event, but that lessons usually continued for
a period of weeks or months, or even years in the case of dance masters em-
ployed to teach the children of a ruling family. For example, Jasper Gaffoyne,
an Italian was appointed dance master to Henry VIII’s court from 1542 onwards
and continued in the position well into Elizabeth’s reign.23 When children
were taught to dance at home as part of their formal education their lessons
were a significant part of the curriculum. In the educational programme set
out by Lord Burghley in 1562 for the twelve year old Edward, Earl of Oxford,
dance practise and lessons occurred every day between 7 and 7.30am before
19 Barbara Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), p. 33 and ftn. 25.
20 Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque, p. 35 and ftn. 33. Ravelhofer is quoting from the origi-
nal publication on sig. [B4]v.
21 Margaret M. McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 13. McGowan is quoting from the manuscript
held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Fr. 14660.
22 See below for discussion on these records from the dance master’s notebook.
23 Andrew Ashbee and David Lasocki, A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians
1485–1714, 2 vols. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), I: 452.

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breakfast.24 Fifty years later in 1610 the son of Sir John Puckering was study-
ing in Paris. There his studies included daily lessons in dancing from 2 to 3pm
every afternoon.25
There were exceptions, however, as some pupils did not last long. This is il-
lustrated by Albrecht Dürer’s visit to Venice in 1506, where, wishing to improve
his social standing, Dürer enrolled in a dance class. Two lessons were all he
could cope with as his letter reveals.
I set to work to learn dancing and twice went to the school. There I had
to pay the master a ducat. Nobody could make me go there again. I would
have to pay out all that I have earned, and at the end I still wouldn’t know
how to dance!26
For many men and women dance lessons were a long-term commitment, one
to which they returned throughout their life. Ingrid Brainard has observed
that in sixteenth-century England ‘the literature, official documents and pri-
vate correspondences are full of references to long daytime hours spent under
the tutelage of professional dancing masters’.27 From ordinances passed to reg-
ulate dance schools, we know that they existed in London prior to 1533,28 and
the attempts to regulate them continued throughout the sixteenth century. In
the 1570s the number of dance schools in London increased, some of which
were set up ‘in undesirable neighbourhoods and manned by equally undesir-
able people’.29 This proliferation may have been the reason that in 1574 three
dance masters, Richard Frythe and Robert and William Warren, were given a
monopoly for twenty-one years to be ‘the only teachers of dancing within the
City of London and suburbs; the teaching to be conducted within their dwelling
houses; other persons forbidden to teach under pain, for every day’s teaching
of 10 days of imprisonment and forfeiture of 40s’.30 Exactly how many dance
24 Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965),
pp. 679–80.
25 Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, p. 695.
26 Francis Ames-Lewis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (New Haven: Yale
27 Ingrid Brainard, ‘Sir John Davies’ Orchestra as a Dance Historical Source’, in Songs of the
Dove and the Nightingale: Sacred and Secular Music c. 900–c.1600, ed. Greta Mary Hair and
Robyn E. Smith (Sydney: Currency Press, 1994), p. 177.
28 Brainard, ‘Sir John Davies’ Orchestra’, p. 199 n. 2.
29 Mary Pennino-Baskerville, ‘Terpsichore Reviled: Antidance Tracts in Elizabethan
England’, Sixteenth Century Journal 22, no. 3 (1991): 479.
30 Skiles Howard, The Politics of Courtly Dancing in Early Modern England (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), p. 5 and n. 18. Howard is quoting from Calendar

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108 chapter 4
schools existed in London at any one time is not known,31 but a figure is avail-
able for Paris in the early seventeenth century, courtesy of Michael Praetorius’s
introduction to his collection of French dance music entitled Terpsichore and
published in 1612, where he states that there are three hundred dance masters
working in Paris.32
So far we have seen that dance instruction was a one-to-one process in the
private homes of the students, as well as in the room(s) or house hired by the
dance teacher. In the latter case the instruction was either closer to the indi-
vidual tuition in private homes, or was part of an institution that offered both
dance and music lessons. There was also another way in which young boys and
adolescents could learn to dance; that is, as part of the curriculum in schools
and colleges. In early fifteenth-century Italy one of the most renowned human-
ist schools was that of Vittorino da Feltre at Mantua where the pupils received
instruction from dancing masters (saltatores), as well as music teachers.33 At
Guarino Guarini’s school at Ferrara dancing was also considered one of the
acceptable forms of physical activity, along with ball games, hunting, walking
and riding.34 The influence of the educational writings of the fifteenth-century
Italian humanists spread outside of Italy, including their belief that dancing
was an integral part of the educational process. In Thomas Elyot’s treatise
The Boke Named the Governour, which he wrote for the education of young
boys destined for careers in English administrative positions, Elyot argued
that through the study and practice of the basse danse children could learn
the important moral truths that were essential for those engaged in public af-
fairs and in the government of the country.35 Similarly, in sixteenth-century
France a number of colleges were set up in Paris and other major centres such
as Bordeaux and Toulouse, all of which taught the educational programme
first advocated in the humanist schools of quattrocento Italy.36 In 1594 Antoine
of Patent Rolls, Elizabeth I Vol. 6, 1572–75 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1973),
p. 258.
31 Barbara Ravelhofer in her very detailed and thorough study of the early Stuart masques
concludes that ‘early modern London boasted a respectable range’ of dancing schools.
Ravelhofer, The Early Stuart Masque, p. 21.
32 Bruce R. Carvell, ‘A Translation of the Preface to Terpsichore of Michael Praetorius’, Journal
of the Viola da Gamba Society of America 20 (1983): 51.
33 Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the
Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350–1450 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 129.
34 Barbara Sparti, Introduction to Guglielmo Ebreo of Pesaro, p. 57.
35 See the section ‘Dance, virtue and ethical behaviour’ in chapter 2 for further details on
Elyot’s views on dance as part of a humanist education.
36 Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 37.

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de Pluvinel’s academy for noblemen’s sons opened in Paris, under the auspices
of the king, Henri IV. While riding, horsemanship and dressage lay at the heart
of his academy, much more was taught, including dancing. A contemporary,
Alexandre de Pontaymery described Pluvinel’s academy as a place that
not only instruct[s] the Gentlemen in the profession of riding, but in

the practice of good morals – without which all sciences are only van-
ity…. If one has exerted himself at riding you have gymnastics, fencing,
and dance, all under people who the aforesaid Monsieur happily knew
to choose, and who are without argument the foremost in their art. You
also have Mathematics, painting, and the lute under the most excellent
masters one could desire.37
In England the sons of the landed gentry and the younger sons of the nobility
increasingly turned to the education, both legal and social, provided by the
Inns of Court in London. Just as in Pluvinel’s academy in Paris, dance classes
formed part of the educational curriculum at the Inns of Court, though these
classes were delivered by the dancing schools in the capital rather than by
the Inns of Court themselves.38 Dance lessons at the London dancing schools
were not cheap, and the fees charged ‘could equal those paid for belonging to
an academic institution’.39 For example, in 1594 a student at Gray’s Inn paid
20s a month for his dance lessons, but only half that amount to learn singing.40
The fact that the families of the young men enrolled at the Inns of Court were
prepared to pay well for their sons’ dance lessons, indicates the importance
they attached to the ability to dance, and to dance well. They knew that acquir-
ing expertise in dancing meant acquiring a bodily agility, elegance in posture
37 Quoted in Van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms, p. 43 from f. 3r of Pontaymery’s
L’academie ou Institution de la Noblesse Françoise (Paris: Jean Richer, 1599). For further dis-
cussion of Pluvinel’s academy see Van Orden, pages 40–5, and for information on Pluvinel
himself and his importance to three French kings, see Patrice Franchet d’Espèrey, ‘The
Ballet d’Antoine de Pluvinel and the Maneige Royal’, in Dynastic Marriages 1612/1615. A
Celebration of the Habsburg and Bourbon Unions, ed. Margaret M. McGowan (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2013), pp. 115–9.
38 Barbara Ravelhofer, ‘Choreography as Commonplace’, in Commonplace Culture in Western
Europe in the Early Modern Period: Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Revolt, ed. David
J. Cowling and Mette B. Bruun (Leuven: Peters, 2011), I: 214.
39 Barbara Ravelhofer, ‘Dancing at the Court of Queen Elizabeth I’, in Queen Elizabeth I: Past
and Present, ed. Christa Jansohn (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004), p. 102.
40 Barbara Ravelhofer, ‘Middleton and Dance’, in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton,
ed. Gary Taylor and Trish Thomas Henley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 132
n. 3.

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110 chapter 4
and manners, and the correct presence and address, all of which would fa-
cilitate their sons’ careers. For example, Christopher Hatton (c. 1540–1591) was
one gentleman who was seen by contemporaries as having advanced at court
through his skill in dancing. Sir Robert Naunton commented that Hatton ‘came
to the court … by the galliard, for he came thither as a private gentleman of the
Inns of Court in a masque, and for his activity and person (which was tall and
proportional) taken into the Queen’s favour’.41
2 Nicolas Vallet’s Dance School in Amsterdam
Perhaps the most closely related body of evidence for the activities of our
anonymous dance master in Brussels is provided by the activities of Nicolas
Vallet: musician, composer, teacher and musical entrepreneur. Vallet was a
Frenchman, born into a family of musicians at Corbény on the Ile-de-France,
sometime after 1580 when his father was married.42 Until 1614 his activities
are unknown,43 but from 1615 to 1620 a number of his musical compositions
were published, mostly for lute and voice. By this time Vallet was living and
working in Amsterdam, where he had a reputation as a composer, instrumen-
tal performer and master musician who was able to take apprentices. In 1616,
for example, the ten year old Jérémias Gibbsons was apprenticed to Vallet
for six years in order to learn to play the lute and other instruments.44 Vallet
also attracted other musicians to work with him. In 1621 an English lutenist
Richard Swift is recorded as being in the service of Vallet, while a contract
dated 10 January 1626 was for the employment of Anthony Grelle for two years.
The contract stated that Grelle had to assist Vallet on every occasion that his
master required, and meanwhile to work diligently in Vallet’s dance school.45
Grelle was to be paid four guineas every time he played at a banquet or at
a ball, but only three guineas when the performance was not to accompany
41 Bella Mirabella, ‘ “In the sight of all”: Queen Elizabeth and the Dance of Diplomacy’,
Early Theatre 15, no. 1 (2012): 65. Mirabella is quoting from Robert Naunton, Fragmenta
Regalia or Observations on Queen Elizabeth: Her Times and Her Favourites (1630), ed. John
S. Cerovski (Washington D.C./London: Folger Shakespeare Library/Associated University
Presses, 1985), p. 67. Hatton’s masque performance at the Inner Temple was in 1561.
42 The details of Vallet’s career are given in the introductory essay by Monique Rollin to a
modern edition and transcription of Le Secret des Muses. See Rollin, ‘Etude biographique’,
in Oeuvres de Nicolas Vallet pour luth seul: Le Secret des Muses, ed. and transcription André
Souris (Paris: Éditions du Centre de la Recherche Scientifique, 1970), pp. xi–xiv.
43 Rollin, ‘Etude biographique’, p. xi.
44 Rollin, ‘Etude biographique’, p. xiii.
45 Rollin, ‘Etude biographique’, p. xiii.

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dancing, with a minimum of four guineas a week. It is interesting to note that

musicians were paid more when required to accompany dancers than when
no dancing was involved. It is not ever stated why playing at balls was more
remunerative for musicians. Perhaps the number of hours they were required
to play was longer, or the number of musical pieces they had to commit to
memory was more than for a purely instrumental concert; or perhaps it was
an indication of the large demand for instrumentalists to play for balls and
dances combined with the number of wealthy merchants in Amsterdam who
could afford to pay such fees.46 Certainly the fact that Vallet was able to employ
another musician to help him provide music for such events is an indication of
how often balls were held in Amsterdam.
Unfortunately there is no further information on Vallet’s dance school when
he employed Grelle in January 1626. Just less than a year later, however, on 12
November 1626 Vallet and the English musician Edward Hancock entered into
a contract to set up and operate a dance school for six years.47 This agreement
reveals a little more about how the school operated. The school was to be es-
tablished in Vallet’s home, and he would receive two-thirds of the income from
the students’ fees, with Hancock one-third. The hours that the two men were
to teach at the school was also set out in the contract: one hour in the morn-
ings from 10.30 to 11.30 and three hours in the afternoons from 4 to 7pm. On
Sunday afternoons it appears that perhaps a dance was held at the school, as
the contract stipulates that Vallet, Hancock and the two other musicians who
were also contractually bound to play together with Vallet and Hancock in all
engagements such as weddings or banquets, had to be present at the school
on Sunday afternoons. These two musicians were Robert Tindel and Richard
Swift, both of whom were English.48 For these Sunday afternoon engagements
Vallet was to have received one-third of the fees paid by the students who at-
tended, while the other three men shared equally in the remaining two-thirds.
The fact that extra musical resources were required for Sunday afternoons
points to the conclusion that even if a formal ball was not held at the school,
then at least it was an opportunity for the students to perform group dances
46 This practice was not unique to early seventeenth-century Amsterdam. Larger fees
for playing at dances can also be found in the contracts for musicians’ guilds from the
thirteenth century onwards, and where only the most skilled musicians were permit-
ted to play for dances. See Kay Brainerd Slocum, ‘Confrérie, Bruderschaft and Guild: The
Formation of Musicians’ Fraternal Organisations in Thirteenth-and Fourteenth-Century
Europe’, Early Music History 14 (1995): 257–74.
47 Rollin, ‘Etude biographique’, p. xiv.
48 Swift was the same person whom Vallet had engaged previously for two years in 1621.
Rollin, ‘Etude biographique’, pp. xiii–xiv.

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112 chapter 4
to the appropriate musical accompaniment. At the teaching times during the

rest of the week when Vallet and Hancock had to be present one might reason-
ably conclude that these sessions were devoted to the teaching and practice of
individual steps, the mastery of passages from a choreography, and instruction
in bodily comportment.
The first thing that strikes one about the operation of the dance school run
by Vallet and Hancock is that the mandated hours of teaching were not ex-
tensive; that is, only four hours a day. This suggests that during these teaching
hours Vallet and Hancock were teaching groups of students rather than only
teaching one pupil at a time, otherwise their income would not be sufficient. It
also raises the question of what else Vallet and Hancock were doing with their
time in the hours that they were not teaching at the school. Four hours a day
does not seem like full-time employment. One has to assume that Vallet and
Hancock did not fill their mornings and early afternoons with private dance
lessons in the student’s own home, because there is no mention of private pu-
pils in the contract, and no stated mechanism for sharing any income from
such pupils.
The second important point to note about the school in Amsterdam is that
Vallet was the entrepreneur and that the association of musicians he had as-
sembled in Amsterdam was an international one. The dancing school oper-
ated from Vallet’s house, and Vallet received a greater share of the income from
it than did any of the others. The fact that this school in Amsterdam in the
1620s was a group activity, might provide a reason for the number of different
hands in our anonymous dance master’s notebook. If this notebook was kept
at the premises of a dance school in Brussels which was run along the lines of
Vallet and Hancock’s dance school in Amsterdam, then there would have been
a number of dance masters and musicians involved in teaching and perform-
ing at the school, all with access to the notebook.
3 Teaching Records in the Dance Master’s Notebook
The type of information provided in the notebook concerning dance teach-

ing is invaluable and quite rare, since, as we have seen, most of the surviving
documents from dance schools across Western Europe in the early modern
period are legal contracts which detail how the lesson fees are to shared among
the partners in the school, and the other contractual obligations of the part-
ners towards each other. While the information recorded in the dance master’s
notebook is not contractual – it is obviously not a legal document – it does
provide a wider social context for the practice of dance teaching at this time.

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What is found in the notebook are the signatures as well as general descrip-
tions of his dance pupils. The starting date of the lessons is recorded alongside
each signature or general description, and this information is contained in ad-
jacent folios, rather than being scattered throughout the manuscript. These
folios provide us with information on the gender of the pupils taught by the
anonymous dance master, their social level, and their country or region of ori-
gin. The dates also provide us with evidence as to the times of the year when
teaching occurred.
One obvious lacuna in the dance master’s notebook is any information con-
cerning payment for dance lessons: we do not know what he charged for his
teaching. Most of the signatures of his dance pupils are on separate pages that
were pasted into the notebook from another source. I hypothesize that these
pages could have come from a separate account book in which all the pay-
ments he received from teaching were recorded. The only entry that mentions
a payment is on f. 71v, and there is no indication in this entry of the reason for
the payment. It could have been for dance lessons, but it could just have easily
been for some other non-dance activity. We do know that Esquivel Navarro
in his discussion of how a dance school should operate recommended that a
separate book be used to record the name of each dance student, along with
the date.
The manner that one must have in order to teach students is that when
anyone comes to be a student, you agree as far as possible on terms. This
done, register his name in a book which the Master has for this purpose,
putting down the day, month, and year. One asks for a month’s payment
in advance, and if it is not brought by the third or fourth lesson, do not
continue with him until he brings it in, unless he is such a good friend
that one ought not to behave in this way with him.49
Later on Esquivel Navarro states that the students should pay the required fee
to the dance master at the end of every lesson.50
The general descriptions of about seventy dance pupils reads like a list that
a teacher might make in order to remember the students in his or her class.
49 ‘El estilo que se ha de tener para enseñar a los discípulo[s], es, que en viniendo cualquiera
a serlo, concertarse en lo que se pudiere; y estándolo, asentarle en un libro, que para esto
tiene el Maestro, poniendo el día, mes, y año. Pídese el mes adelantado, y no trayéndole
a la tercera o cuarta lección, no proseguir con él hasta que le traiga, salvo si es tan amigo,
que no se deba tener con él este estilo’. See Brooks, The Art of Dancing in Seventeenth-
Century Spain, p. 234 for the Spanish text, and p. 286 for her translation.
50 Brooks, The Art of Dancing in Seventeenth-Century Spain, p. 290.

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114 chapter 4
Sometimes a student is identified by size, as in le petie getiliome (f. 65v ‘the

small gentleman’) or le grand bourgoie (f. 65v ‘the large bourgoise’), often by
rank, as in monsieur le barront (f. 66r ‘Monsieur the baron’) or le uiconte aucq
sont companons (f. 66r ‘the vicomte with his companions’), and sometimes by
the country or town from which they came, as in les quatre iiii barront allemant
(f. 65v ‘the four German barons’), lenglois (f. 65v ‘the Englishman’), les deus gen-
tiliome dennemart (f. 76r ‘the two Danish gentlemen’) or la velle de sinct catrine
ie ientilome (f. 74v ‘the gentleman from the town of Saint Catherine’). While
the majority of the dance students described in this manner are male, female
students are mentioned, for example, la demoiselle (ff. 74v, 76r ‘the young lady’)
or les damme (f. 76r ‘the ladies’). From these general descriptions it is clear that
our anonymous dance master taught both men and women.
The next piece of information we can glean from these general descriptions
is that often pupils began their studies in a small group, presumably either
with friends or with other family members. On f. 70v, for example, five gentle-
men start together (les cincq gentiliome), while at other times it was four ladies
(f. 76r les quatre damme) or the two cousins (f. 76r les deu cousint), or a gentle-
man with his sister (f. 74v la velle de sinct catrine ie ientilome a commancer aucq
sa seurre). Not all entries, however, are clear about the relationship, if any, be-
tween the pupils referred to. For example, after the gentleman with his sister
from Saint Catherine, there is an entry that just states ‘the gentleman with the
young lady’ (le gentiliome aucq la demioselle), so it is impossible to know if the
gentleman was escorting a female relative to the dance school so they could
both have lessons, or if the two persons listed just happened to start dance
classes on the same day. Sometimes the small groups of pupils who started
lessons together were related socially rather than familiarly, for example ‘the
baron with his two gentlemen’ (f. 66r monsieur le barront aucq ces deu gentili-
ome), or ‘the viscount with his companions’ (f. 66r le uiconte aucq sont compa-
nons). There are two other interesting entries in this category; that is, when the
gentleman in charge of a nobleman’s household is recorded as starting dance
lessons. On one occasion it is the maître d’hotel of the baron (f. 66r le mest-
re dotelle du barront), while on the second occasion it is the maître d’hotel of
the prince of Lorraine (Monsieur le mestre dotelle de monsigneur e prince de
lorrins).51
Just as the musicians employed by Vallet at his school in Amsterdam
were international, so too were the pupils who attended the dance school in
Brussels, with German, French, English and Danish pupils being recorded. The
signatures appear to be mostly German or Flemish, with a few French names,
51 This entry is on the original f. 71r that has a smaller sheet pasted on top of it.

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and three that could well be Swedish.52 Some pupils when signing recorded
the city in which they lived, such as Mattheú Boÿd from Cologne (f. 71r), or the
two men from Louvain who started on the 23 January 1617 (f. 68r). The general
descriptions also mention smaller towns from regional areas of France, such as
Coulon in Poitou (f. 75r le coulonois a commacer). There are also what appear
to be references to other regional areas of France; that is, Le Saint in Brittany
(which is spelt Ar Sent in Breton), Le Galon d’Or in Poitou and Bélon in north-
western France.53 There is also a much less specific reference to the origin of a
pupil on f. 74v where the entry records two Frenchmen from the countryside
as starting on January 21 (des ⌈deu⌉ francois ⌈du pas⌉ hont commanceir le + + i
nieme de iehanuier). Given the wide geographic area from which his students
came, it is worth noting that none of the signatures found in the notebook are
Spanish names. The lack of any Spanish gentlemen or ladies among his pupils
appears to indicate that the anonymous dance master was not closely tied to
the court of Albert and Isabella, and that members of their court who wished
to take dance lessons did so under the tutelage of another dance master who
was employed by the court. One cannot state conclusively, however, that the
anonymous dance master had no Spanish students, as it is possible that such
pupils were among the gentlemen or ladies listed in the general descriptions
of his students.54
The practice of recording the names of one’s dance students was not con-
fined to the anonymous owner of the notebook. In the second half of the seven-
teenth century, the dance master Adam-Pierre de La Grené, who also lived and
worked in Brussels, wrote down the appointments and names of his high-rank-
ing pupils, among whom were courtiers from the Low Countries, English and
Irish gentlemen, Palatine princesses, and members of the Brussels’ bourgeois.
The manuscript is believed to have been written between 1642 and 1687, and is
now held in the Archives générales du Royaume, MD 2663.55 Adam-Pierre de
La Grené belonged to a family of musicians and dance teachers who were ac-
tive in Brussels from the 1630s onwards. The question of whether Adam-Pierre
or other members of his family were aware of the activities of our anonymous
52 The three names that could be Swedish are Petrus Muller Livo (f. 70v), Georg Friedrich
Thott (f. 76r) and Christian Sigmundt von Schask (f. 76r).
53 See the entries on f. 74v, ‘a commenset le bretant en la ville de sent’ and f. 75r, ‘les deu
⌈le galon dor⌉ gentiliome hont commacer’ and ‘le gentiliome belon a commancer’.
54 There is, however, a reference to a Spanish noblewoman in the notebook. On f. 29v, under
the music for a ballet entrée, is the text ‘ballet de madame la marquis le baez’.
55 Jean-Philippe van Aelbroeck, Dictionnaire des danseurs à Bruxelles de 1600 à 1830 (Liège:
Mardaga, 1994), p. 45. According to Van Aelbroeck the manuscript does not contain any
choreographic material.

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116 chapter 4
dance master, or if they knew of his personal notebook with its listing of dance
students, cannot be answered at present.
4 Social Level of Pupils and Teaching Dates
From his general descriptions of the dance pupils it is possible to obtain a good
picture of the social level of those who were taught by our anonymous dance
master. The majority of these pupils were from the middle to upper levels of
society. ‘Gentlemen’, ‘ladies’, and ‘young ladies’ were common, as were the low-
est levels of nobility: knights and barons. Occasionally the dance master had
pupils from the highest social level, as on the 28 February 1617 when the princes
de la sau started lessons (f. 68r). Another entry extends the social level of the
dance students in the opposite direction, when the dance master describes
a student as le grand bourgoie (f. 65v). On other occasions the dance master
describes the student by his occupation, as, for example, where a student
who started on 23 January is described as le tresorie, that is, a person in the
bureaucracy with the position of chancellor or treasurer (f. 74v ‘le ++ iii siemes
de iehanuier le tresorie a commanceir’). From these general descriptions of
the dance pupils it is also clear that the men and women who came to the
school for lessons were not just adolescents. There were young ladies among
the pupils, but the men who held responsible administrative positions in the
bureaucracy, or who were in charge of a nobleman’s household, would have
been much older.
A further piece of information revealed by the general descriptions of the
dance pupils and by their signatures, is that students sometimes returned
for additional lessons some months after they were first recorded as starting
classes. For example, on ff. 65v–66r the English gentleman who started on 15
February is then recorded as resuming on 15 April, the same day as the baron
and two of his gentlemen recommenced dance classes (the baron first started
on 23 February). The signature of Otto à Langen appears on f. 72r next to the
date 21 January, probably in 1615. Then ten months later (at least, since the year
is not given in the second appearance) he signs again on 23 October (f. 73r).
The records of about 120 dance pupils recorded either by a general descrip-
tion or by their signature, give us a good indication of the rhythm of our anony-
mous dance master’s year. He teaches throughout the year, and even though
some months are busier than others, there is no month in which he does not
have at least one pupil. January and May are the busiest months, followed by
February and July. August, the height of summer, and the winter months of
November and December were the least popular times to take dance classes.

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The popularity of January is most likely accounted for by the lead-up to the an-
nual Carnival festivities, which always included balls, masquerades, and other
dramatic productions with dancing.
From the signatures and general descriptions of his dance students that are
recorded in the notebook, it is clear that the anonymous dance master was
operating a school, a serious teaching establishment. He was not just em-
ployed to teach dancing to the children from a small number of middle-class
or elite households. The notebook reveals that he had a large number of stu-
dents from a range of social backgrounds, both male and female, and of vary-
ing ages. His school had an international cohort of students, with pupils from
adjacent countries, as well as those from more distant states, such as Denmark
and England. The presence of students from such a wide geographic area rein-
forces dance teaching records from other places in England and the Continent
which demonstrate that people often took dance lessons as part of their travel
activities.

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chapter 5
Danced Combat and the Pike Exhibition
Towards the end of the dance master’s notebook (ff. 94r–99v), hidden behind
a hand unique to this manuscript and of almost impenetrable illegibility, is
a sequence of instructions for manoeuvres with a pike.1 At first glance one
might assume these instructions constitute a dance since they begin and end
with a reverence. After having read a little further, one finds the phrases ‘pike
on the shoulder’ and ‘pike pointing to the ground’, commands that appear
in the pike drill section of the military training manual first published in 1607
by Jacob de Gheyn.2 This could lead one to assume that these folios perhaps
record a pike drill. In fact, what is recorded in the dance master’s notebook lies
somewhere between these two extremes: the sequence of movements is not
a choreographed dance, nor is it a drill for a squadron of pikemen. The move-
ments record a virtuoso exhibition for one man of manoeuvres with a pike
that exhibit some characteristics of a choreographed dance, as well as sharing
common elements with the military pike drill. As far as I am aware these in-
structions are unique. If any similar documents did exist among the primary
sources for the dance practices of the period, or in the records associated with
the practice of combat and handling of staff weapons (the category in which
the pike belongs), then they have not survived, or have not yet been unearthed.
In fact the virtuosity of the pike exhibition recorded in the dance master’s note-
book is closer to the almost balletic display documented in Antonio Vezzani’s
L’esercizio accademico di picca published in Parma in 1688, about seventy years
after the compilation of the notebook, than to any contemporary document.3
Renaissance martial arts treatises were uneven in their treatment of the
combat techniques with staff weapons, and these weapons were almost ig-
nored in French treatises until the early seventeenth century when the first
1 See Appendix 2 for a transcription and English translation of these folios, whose facsimile
images are also provided.
2 The manual was originally published in several languages. I have used the 1608 French and
English publications; that is, Jacob de Gheyn, Maniement d’armes, d’arquebuses, mousquetz,
et piques en conformité de l’ordre de Monseigneur le Prince Maurice, 2nd ed. (The Hague, 1608),
and The Exercise of Armes for Calivres, Muskettes, and Pikes after the Ordre of his Excellence
Maurits Prince of Orange (The Hague, 1608).
3 See Sydney Anglo, The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2000), pp. 169–70, and figure 21 on page 170 for an illustration from Vezzani of a few of his pike
manoeuvres.

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Danced Combat and the Pike Exhibition 119
military pike-drill manuals were published.4 Even when the masters-of-arms

did discuss the use of staff weapons they did so in the context of one-to-one
combat: ‘it was left to the military specialists of the early seventeenth cen-
tury to evolve the rigorous systematization of handling pikes en masse and
synchronously which is recorded and illustrated in their manuals’.5 In his
treatise published in 1570 Giacomo di Grassi does discuss the pike.6 He notes
that the pike is the ‘most honourable and most noble’ of the staff weapons,
and that it is held in great regard by ‘renowned knights and great lords’.7 The
fact that the pike was used both by men from the upper levels of society in
personal combat, as well as by foot-soldiers who were from a lower level of
society than di Grassi’s knights and great lords, could be one reason why the
weapon was suitable for a virtuosic demonstration at a state celebration or
spectacle. Many men watching such an exhibition would have been familiar
with the techniques of handling a pike, and so would have been able to ap-
preciate the skill they saw displayed before them, just as they were also able to
do with a dance performance. Members of the elite were accustomed to both
watching and participating in tournaments as part of a series of festivities held
to celebrate an important state event, and personal combat with a pike did
form part of such tournaments. For example, the eight days of festivities at
Binche in August 1549 included a challenge by Philip (heir to the Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V) to those knights present to personal combat with a pike
and sword. The marquis de Berghes accepted the prince’s challenge, and, after
a bout at which Philip acquitted himself ‘with “great effort and dexterity” ’, he
joined Charles V and the royal women on the stage to watch further combats
and dances which continued until midnight. At this hour prizes were awarded
to those participants who had excelled in ‘valour, dexterity and deportment’.8
A further reason a dance master who lived and worked in Brussels might wish
to include a pike exhibition in a spectacle is the presence of the militia guilds
in that city, the membership of which was drawn from the middle to upper
4 See Anglo, Martial Arts, pp. 149–50 for a concise summary of which treatises discussed these
weapons and when they were published.
5 Anglo, Martial Arts, p. 150.
6 Giacomo di Grassi, Ragione di adoprar sicuramente l’arme (Venice: G. Ziletti, 1570). Di Grassi’s
treatise was translated into English and published in 1594 under the title Giacomo di Grassi,
his true Arte of defence (Anglo, Martial Arts, p. 165).
8 The information on this tournament is from Teofilo F. Ruiz, A King Travels. Festive Traditions
in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012),
pp. 235–6.

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120 chapter 5
levels of Brussels’ society.9 They were elite units and they played an impor-
tant role in the Joyous Entry processions and the ommegang processions,
where they represented the ‘ancient bonds between citizens and princes’.10
The pike was among the weapons carried by these militia guilds, as illustrated
in the series of paintings by Denis van Alsloot made for the Infanta Isabella
Clara Eugenia that depicted the 1615 ommegang procession. Four of the origi-
nal eight paintings have survived, one of which depicts the militia guilds of
Brussels, with the lines of pikemen clearly visible carrying their pikes balanced
on their right shoulders.11 Thus a pike exhibition would appeal to both courtly
and civic audiences.
As mentioned above the pike exhibition is not written in the hand of the
anonymous dance master, and the hand does not appear anywhere else in the
notebook. My hypothesis is that the owner of the notebook requested that an
expert in staff weapons, perhaps a master-of-arms whom he knew, write out
the sequence of instructions for a virtuosic pike display into his notebook.
There is no direct evidence for this hypothesis apart from the language that
points to an expert in handling a pike as the author of these instructions; that
is, the specialized nature of the vocabulary used in the record of the pike ex-
hibition, and also (because of the physical constraints of moving with a pike)
the amount of specialized knowledge that would be required to write such a
sequence of instructions.12 The series of instructions is long and complicat-
ed, and contains more detail than the ballet plots that were also copied into
the notebook. From the detailed written description of the pike exhibition it
would be possible for a third person to re-create the ‘choreography’, something
that would not be possible from the limited information recorded for each of
the ballet plots. These instructions may have been a record of what had been
performed; or, on the other hand, they may have been prepared for a future
performance. In any case they were obviously of interest to the dance master
in order for him to ask someone to copy it into his notebook. By the early sev-
enteenth century various forms of danced combat had been choreographed
by dance masters for almost two hundred years as part of the theatrical spec-
tacles organized to celebrate important state events. These same spectacles
also included tournaments, jousting, or personal combat by male courtiers
9 Margit Thøfner, A Common Art: Urban Ceremonial in Antwerp and Brussels during and
after the Dutch Revolt (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2007), p. 47.
11 See Margit Thøfner, ‘The Court in the City, the City in the Court: Denis van Alsloot’s
Depictions of the 1615 Brussels’ “ommegang” ’, Netherlands Yearbook for the History of Art
49, no. 1 (1998): 185–207.
12 I will discuss these points in more detail later.

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both on foot and on horseback. Often the dancing and displays of combat
were closely associated both thematically and temporally, with the dancing
occurring either just before or just after a joust or tournament, as happened
in Florence in 1419 and 1421, where the dancing immediately preceded the dis-
plays of combat.13 Thus, just as fireworks were a common part of spectacles
and fêtes, so too were militaristic displays. As I have argued throughout this
book, the dance master’s notebook contains a collection of material which
would be of interest, and indeed of direct use, to a dance master when he had
to organize (or collaborate in organizing) a theatrical spectacle. It would be an
advantage to a dance master when putting forward ideas for a spectacle to be
able to have examples of the different components of such displays that he
could show to potential patrons, including examples of different types of ballet
plots, and martial arts exhibitions.
1 The Pike Exhibition and the Military Drill Manuals
Even though the pike exhibition from the dance master’s notebook goes far
beyond the manoeuvres recorded in the early seventeenth-century military
manuals for a squadron of men, there are enough elements in common to
suggest that these military manuals are of great use in interpreting what was
recorded in the solo exhibition from the notebook. Jacob de Gheyn’s manual,
for example, has thirty-two illustrations that accompany the text, which rep-
resent both the standard positions of the pike, and the intermediate positions
through which a pikeman must move in order to change from one standard
position to the next. From this manual one can clearly see many details of the
position of the body: the feet, legs, arms and hands. For each position one can
see the placement of the feet, whether the knees are bent or straight, which
leg is stationary and which leg or foot moves forwards and backwards. One can
see where the pikeman’s weight is centred, and the weight changes that are
required in moving from one position to the next. One can also see the exact
position of the hands and fingers around the pike when grasping it, both in the
standard and intermediate positions. All of this information can be used in
decoding the written instructions in the dance master’s notebook.
One of the standard positions in de Gheyn’s drill manual, for example, is
‘pike on the shoulder’, a position that also occurs regularly throughout the pike
13 Bartolommeo di Michele del Corazza, ‘Diario Fiorentino anni di Bartolommeo di Michele
del Corazza, 1405–1438’, Archivio Storico Italiano, ed. Giuseppe Odoardo Corazzino, 5th
ser., 14 (1894): 254–6, 276–7.

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122 chapter 5
exhibition. From the military manual it is clear that ‘pike on the shoulder’ is
short-hand for the pike resting on the right shoulder, held by the pikeman’s
right hand just in front of his chin, with the tip of the pike facing to the rear.
This is shown in engraving 10 (see Illustration 7). When the single line ‘pike
on the shoulder’ occurs in the pike exhibition it represents a series of move-
ments with changes of handholds, changes of weight, as well as changes in the
angle and positioning of the pike itself, that are required to achieve ‘pike on
the shoulder’. For example, de Gheyn’s manual shows how to move the pike
from the ‘Advance’ position (engraving 7) by way of two more intermediate
positions as shown in engravings 8 and 9 to return to ‘pike on the shoulder’ as
shown in engraving 10 (see Illustration 7). A similar procedure must be carried
out to move the pike from resting on the right shoulder with the tip facing the
rear, to being held level with the right shoulder with the tip facing forwards,
and the right hand supporting the end of the pike and the left hand holding it
in front of the body so that the weapon is ready for a forwards thrust or ‘charge’.
This sequence of movements is shown in engravings 12 to 14 (see Illustration 8).
Thus when one reads a series of instructions in the pike exhibition from the
dance master’s notebook such as lines 6 to 9 on f. 94v ‘Pike on the shoulder.
Again two thrusts. The Great Assault. Pike on the shoulder’, de Gheyn’s man-
ual makes it clear that these short instructions involve a series of standard
movements and pike positions. The pike exhibition also contains half turns, a
movement which it is possible to perform in a small number of different ways.
Insight into how such a turn is performed is provided by de Gheyn’s military
drill manual, where the pikeman makes a 180 degree turn in the process of
moving from ‘pike on the shoulder’ (engraving 26) to ‘charge your pike to the
rear’ (engravings 27 to 29). These four engravings are shown in Illustration 9.
In this instance the pikeman turns to the left-hand side, and in order to do so
he first moves his left foot from out to the side to a pace behind his right foot.
He then passes the pike over his head so that it is held above his left shoulder
with his left hand and with his weight on his left foot (engraving 28). He then
turns to the left by pivoting on the balls of both feet. This method of turning 180
degrees not only ensures that the pike does not have to move, but is also a very
fast method turning one’s own body. Once the half turn has been completed
the pike ends up over his right shoulder again.
The clarification provided by the military drill manuals as to the method of
performing turns with a pike is important, because of the limitations on the
pikeman’s movements when holding and manipulating a very long and heavy
pike. Pikes were frequently eighteen feet long, and their length could vary

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illustration 7 Engravings 7–10 showing how to move the pike from the ‘advance’
position to ‘pike on the shoulder’. In Jacob de Gheyn, Maniement
d’armes (1608).

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124 chapter 5
illustration 8 Engravings 11–14 showing how to ‘charge’ the pike ready for a forwards
thrust. In Jacob de Gheyn, Maniement d’armes (1608).

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illustration 9 Engravings 26–29 showing how to turn 180 degrees when holding a pike.
In Jacob de Gheyn, Maniement d’armes (1608).

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126 chapter 5
from between sixteen to twenty-two feet (4.88m–6.70m).14 Thus when held at

one end a very small movement at that end would cause a large movement
at the other end. Furthermore, the balance of the pike itself affects the bal-
ance of the person holding it, so that when held in a stationary position the
pike would have to be centred over the pikeman’s own centre of gravity. It is
one thing to turn 180 degrees in the course of a series of movements when
the furthest extension from one’s body is no more than the length of an out-
stretched arm or leg. It is quite another matter to try to turn 180 degrees while
at the same time swinging around a pole that extends out eight to ten feet on
either side of one’s body. The trajectory that the tip of such a pole would have
to travel is so much longer than the movement travelled at the centre, that it
severely limits the speed at which such a turn could be made. Hence the adop-
tion of the method of turning as described in the military training manuals.
2 Structure of the Pike Exhibition
The series of pike manoeuvres recorded in the dance master’s notebook is a

mixture of standard pike positions, manoeuvres not found in the drill manu-
als and therefore described in more detail in the notebook, and sequences of
movements which are also not found in the military manuals, but still only
appear in the notebook as a short-hand title. The latter category of movements
appear under titles like ‘The Great Assault’, and ‘Play from Above’, then ‘Display
of Boasting’ (La Rodomontade). From the surrounding text on f. 98r it appears
that these titles do not refer to what follows. One can only speculate as to the
reason these sequences of movements were not described in detail, but only
recorded as a brief title. Are these short-hand titles an indication that exhibi-
tions with a pike were more common than the single piece of evidence we pos-
sess would indicate? One must assume that the person responsible for creating
the pike exhibition knew perfectly well what was required when he used such
titles, and it appears that he was using each title in a similar manner to the way
a dance master would use the names of each step when providing a written
description of a newly-created choreography. One wonders, therefore, if these
titles point to an organized, non-military categorization of pike movements
that was widely known in the Low Countries in the early seventeenth century,
or, if they were merely a one-off, idiosyncratic method of reducing the amount
of description required when recording a sequence of pike manoeuvres for a
performance.

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3 Similarities with Choreographed Dances
The fact that the pike exhibition begins and ends with a reverence is only the
first and most obvious similarity with contemporary choreographed dances:
there are also a number of other common characteristics. For example, both
practices (that is, dances and the pike exhibition) follow the same pattern of
starting slowly and gradually increasing the tempo and technical virtuosity re-
quired. The pike exhibition starts with less complicated movements, and has
more resting places; that is, positions where the performer can pause for a mo-
ment or two, as in ‘pike on the shoulder’, and ‘pike on the ground’. There is also
a second reverence soon after the one at the beginning which also provides
another opportunity for a pause in the sequence of movements. By the end
of the exhibition the pikeman is required to perform technically demanding
and virtuosic actions such as numerous turns in the air, and throwing the pike
into the air. The dances recorded in the treatises of Fabritio Caroso and Cesare
Negri often begin with a reverence, followed by a sequence of slower and sim-
pler steps, such as two continenze, passi gravi, or seguiti ordinari. Then the
steps become faster and/or each step contains more individual movements.
This applies particularly to dances like the Passo e mezzo, the Pavaniglia or the
Tordiglione, which are all built around sequences of mutanze, or variations,
often performed first by the man and then by the woman. For example, in the
man’s third mutanza in Tordiglione nuovo Negri has choreographed twenty-
nine different steps to perform in eight semibreves of music. By comparison,
the opening section of this dance has only three steps (a riverenza grave and
two continenze) in eight semibreves, then seven steps in eight semibreves (four
seguiti finti, two trabuchetti presti and a riverenza), then two more repetitions
of eight semibreves during which time only five steps are performed in each
of the eight semibreves.15 In a similar manner Caroso has choreographed
three capriole for the man’s sixth mutanza near the end of the Passo e mezzo.16
A capriola was a technically demanding step that involved a leap into the air
while at the same time the dancer moved his feet rapidly backwards and for-
wards. There were a number of different variants of the capriola that involved
turning in the air while leaping, jumping off both feet or off one foot, and mov-
ing the legs and feet sideways in a scissor-like motion while in the air.17
15 Cesare Negri, Le gratie d’amore (1602; facsimile ed., New York: Broude Brothers, 1969),
pp. 193–6.
16 Fabritio Caroso, Il ballarino (1581; facsimile ed., New York: Broude Brothers, 1967),
pp. 46r–49r.
17 See Negri’s description of all of these movements in Le gratie, pp. 81–9.

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128 chapter 5
A second common characteristic is the repetition of the same sequence of

movements but starting on the other foot in the dances, or with the other hand
in the case of the pike exhibition. On lines 11 and 17 of f. 97r, for example, there
is the instruction ‘repeat the movement from the other side’. I have taken this
to indicate a repetition of the sequence of movements from ‘a half turn to the
left’ (line 4) to ‘move forward and slide’ (line 10), then a repetition of the move-
ments described in lines 12 to 16. The repetition of a sequence of steps start-
ing first with one foot and then with the other was a very common feature of
Renaissance dances throughout Europe. Part of Caroso’s alterations in Nobiltà
di dame (1600) to choreographies that he had previously published nineteen
years earlier in Il ballarino, was to introduce more repeated step sequences
into his dances, and to make these step sequences longer. These changes are
very clear in dances such as the Gagliarda di Spagna and the Passo e mezzo
where the step sequences in the mutanze are substantially altered from their
earlier, idiosyncratic forms.18 Alta Regina is another dance found in both of
Caroso’s treatises. In the later publication Caroso has substantially altered the
step sequences in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth tempi, with new sequences
repeated first on the left and then on the right.19 Repetitions of step sequences
are also found in the later sixteenth-century French dance practice, as exem-
plified by dances in Arbeau’s treatise, such as the almain and the pavane. It is
also found in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth-century manuscript com-
pilation, Instruction pour dancer, near the beginning of the bourrée: ‘et vous
ferez encores le mesme passage du coste droict comme auez faict du com-
mencement du coste gauche’.20
Ever since the first dance treatises appeared in the fifteenth century, the
pause, or a short cessation of movement, had been part of the recorded cho-
reographies and, somewhat paradoxically, part of the dance masters’ concern
with eloquent movements of the human body. The fifteenth-century Italian
dance masters Domenico da Piacenza and Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro devel-
oped a specialized technical vocabulary in order to be able to describe these
18 Caroso, Il ballarino, pp. 22v–24r and 46r–49r: Nobiltà di dame (1600; facsimile ed., Bologna:
Forni, 1980), pp. 156–9 and 130–6.
19 Caroso, Il ballarino, pp. 8r–9r: Nobiltà di dame, 98–100. For further discussion on repeated
step sequences in Caroso’s dances, see Jennifer Nevile, ‘“Rules for Design”: Beauty and
Grace in Caroso’s Choreographies’, Dance Research 25, no. 2 (2007): 107–18.
20 See page 53 lines 14–6 of the facsimile edition and transcription of this manuscript,
Instruction pour dancer. An Anonymous Manuscript, ed. Angene Feves, Ann Lizbeth
Langston, Uwe W. Schlottermüller and Eugenia Roucher (Freiburg: fa-gisis Musik- und
Tanzedition, 2000). This manuscript contains sixteen dances and was probably compiled
in France.

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elegant movements, one term of which – fantasmata – referred specifically

to a cessation of movement. Fantasmata was one of the essential qualities of
their dance style, and was concerned with the way in which each step was
phrased, especially when these steps were danced in bassadanza misura. At
the end of every step the dancer must freeze briefly for a fraction of a sec-
ond, just as if he or she had seen the head of the Medusa, before moving on
to the next step with so little effort it is like a falcon taking wing.21 Given that
the fifteenth-century dance masters were not as verbose in their treatises as
their sixteenth-century counterparts, the inclusion of fantasmata among the
essential qualities of the dance practice indicated how important the cessa-
tion of movement was to the dance masters. The pause continued to be part
of western European dance practices in the ensuing centuries, as illustrated
by its appearance in a gavotte from Instruction pour dancer ‘et apres retour du
pied droict en arriere faisant une pose’.22 The same principle of a cessation
of movement is also found in the pike exhibition and is another of its shared
characteristics with contemporary dances. Every now and then throughout the
sequence of manoeuvres is an instruction for a pause in the continuous pat-
terned movements of the pike and the pikeman’s body. For example, on f. 96v
lines 3 to 6 one finds the words ‘take it up again in the same hand bringing it
back and letting it rest above the elbow, under the arm. Keep it there and stay
awhile’ (my emphasis), while on f. 99v lines 3 to 9 the instructions read ‘Take
the pike by the point and throw it into the air in front of you to catch it again
by the end, wait a little while’ (my emphasis).
The final similarity between the pike manoeuvres and Renaissance dance
practices is the use in the former of named steps that are part of the step vo-
cabulary; that is, half turns, full turns, and glissades, as well as the opening
and closing reverence. Glissades (as well as glisses) occur in the branles, the
gavotte and the bourrée of the manuscript collection Instruction pour dancer,
where the step(s) are made to the left or to the right. Exactly what these steps
involved, apart from a sliding or gliding motion of the foot, has not yet been
resolved by modern dance historians due to the small number of French dance
sources from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and the lack of
any systematic and meticulous step descriptions in the French primary sources
21 ‘facendo requia a cadauno tempo che pari haver veduto lo capo di meduxa como dice
el poeta cioè che facto el motto sij tutto di piedra in quello instante et in instante mitti
ale como falcone’. Domenio da Piacenza. De arte saltandj & choreas ducendj De la arte di
ballare et danzare. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fonds it. 972, f. 2r.
22 Feves et al., Instruction pour dancer, p. 53 lines 2–3.

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130 chapter 5
that have survived.23 In the pike exhibition glissades occur several times, with
the instructions ‘perform a glissade’ or ‘advance and perform a glissade’. Thus
it is clear from the text that glissades were always performed moving forwards,
rather than sideways as in the branles found in Instruction pour dancer.24 On
two other occasions the instructions read ‘move forward and slide’ (f. 97r line
10) and ‘Advance a pace and glide forward’ (f. 97r line 16). Both of these in-
structions indicate a forwards sliding movement, but it is not clear if these
two occasions represent a different movement from a glissade, or the same
movement.25 Whatever the exact forward movements were in the perfor-
mance of a glissade, it had to be able to be performed with the pike resting on
the shoulder, with the pike extended in front of the pikeman, just after the pike
had been passed above the head of the pikeman, and when the pikeman held
the pike by its point with his right hand after having slipped the pike above his
shoulder. In other words, a glissade was performed with the pike in a number
of different positions which implies that the forward movement or step would
have to have been relatively simple.
One similarity which one would expect to see between choreographed
dances and a martial arts display is the presence of music. Danced battles
were always performed to music, and observers frequently commented upon
the precision and order of the performers’ movements, and how these move-
ments were always performed in time to the music. For example, in 1502 the
marriage celebrations of Lucrezia Borgia included two danced battles where
the contestants always fought ‘in time to the music’ and skillfully coordinated
their ‘blows to the rhythm of the music’.26 Even theatrical displays of combat
such as the barriers27 were always performed in time with the accompanying
23 For further discussion of what is and is not known about French dance style of this period,
see pages 25–42 of Barbara Ravelhofer’s introduction to her edition of B. de Montagut’s
Louange de la Dance (Cambridge: RTM Publications, 2000). For a detailed discussion of
the steps and choreographies in Instruction pour dancer and various possibilities for re-
constructing these dances, see the essays in Hubert Hazebroucq and Jean-Noël Laurenti,
eds. La danse française entre Renaissance et baroque. Le manuscript Instruction pour
dancer (vers 1610) (Tours: Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, 2017) http://
umr6576.cesr.univ-tours.fr/publications/instruction (accessed 31/1/2018).
24 The one exception to this statement is the occurrence on f. 97v line 7 where the instruc-
tions do not mention moving forward, stating only that the pikeman must ‘perform a
glissade’.
25 This is analogous to the situation in the contemporary choreographies where both
glissades and glisses appear.
26 Margaret M. McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 125.
27 The barriers was one specific form of mock combat in which knights on foot fought each
other with swords or staff weapons while separated by a wooden barrier such as a bar or

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music, as is made clear in a contemporary treatise on the duties of organizing

a spectacle: ‘the barriers, because they are performed in time to the music and
with measured blows, must be very well studied and rehearsed beforehand’.28
Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that the pike exhibition would also
be performed in a measured way, with some form of musical accompaniment,
even if only drum beats, to regulate the rhythm and the tempo. But there is no
mention of any sort of musical accompaniment to the pike exhibition in the
dance master’s notebook, nor any reference to the timing of the movements.
One possible explanation for this omission is that it was the dance master (as
opposed to the master-of-arms who wrote down the pike manoeuvres) who
was responsible for providing any musical accompaniment to such an exhibi-
tion when it was performed. Since providing a musical accompaniment was
within the competency of a dance master, perhaps the owner of the notebook
did not feel any urgent necessity to record such an accompaniment in his note-
book next to the description of movements for the pike.
4 Danced Combat
The presence of an exhibition of expertise in the handling of a staff weapon in

a notebook mostly devoted to dance-related matters may at first seem a little
incongruous. But in the Renaissance dancing and combat were much more
closely connected than is the case today.29 Throughout the period and across
all of the countries from which dance records have survived, combat and bat-
tles were constant and frequent themes in the choreographic record, occurring
in both theatrical spectacles and in social dances created for the ballroom. In
the sixteenth century dance masters and those in charge of organizing state
festivities were interested in re-creating the ancient pyrrhic dances in their
choreographed dance combats.30 Dance masters themselves drew attention
to the link between dancing and warfare in the titles that they gave to their
a wall. For a summary of the evolution of the barriers and its relationship to early modern
court dance, see Sydney Anglo, ‘The Barriers: From Combat to Dance (Almost)’, Dance
Research 25, no. 2 (2007): 91–106.
28 ‘Le barriere, perché si fanno con tempi e colpi misurati, dovranno essere molto bene
studiate e provate innanzi’. Il corago, o vero alcune osservazioni per metter bene in scena
le composizioni drammatiche, ed. Paolo Fabbri and Angelo Pompilio (Florence: Olschki,
1983), p. 104.
29 For an extensive discussion of these connections, see Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline,
and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
30 See Van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms, pp. 186–234, and Margaret M. McGowan,
‘A Renaissance War Dance: The Pyrrhic’, Dance Research 3, no. 1 (1984): 29–38.

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132 chapter 5
choreographies (for example, Torneo Amoroso or La Battaglia), and in their de-

scriptions of the choreography. For example, in Le Balet comique de la royne,
when describing the Grand Ballet, Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx likens the dancing
of the court ladies to a battle.
At the middle of the Ballet a chain was formed, composed of four inter-
lacings, each different from the others, so that to watch them one would
say that it was in battle array, so well was order kept, and so cleverly did
everybody keep his place and his cadence.31
In this case the performers of the Grand Ballet were all women, but their or-
dered, controlled and disciplined dancing, and the geometrical figures of the
ballet meant that the ballet was seen as akin to warfare. This viewpoint is
made very clear in the humanist Jean Dorat’s poem Chorea Nympharum, where
he describes the dancing of the sixteen ladies who represent the sixteen prov-
inces of France in the 1573 Ballet des Polonais. In this poem Dorat continually
emphasizes the military nature of their performance.
They repeat a thousand short advances and a thousand returns; they

combine a thousand flights, a thousand pauses of the feet. […] Now some
cleave to others in oblique knots, like a hedge made of artfully entangled
brambles. Now they form variously this figure, now that, on the dance
floor; […] You would have thought this to be the game in which Trojan
Julus delighted, as he imitated real battles with pretended manoeuvrers.
In such a way they form their lines head on, now to the side; now they
rush forward, now they flee back lightly. But already they are approaching
with their formation restored like troops after combat as they pass before
the faces of kings.32
31 Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx, Le Balet comique de la royne, 1581, trans. Carol and Lander
MacClintock (np: American Institute of Musicology, 1971), p. 91. ‘A la moitié de ce Balet
se feit vne chaine, composee de quatre entrelacemens differents l’vn de l’autre, tellement
qu’à les voir on eust dit que c’estoit vne bataille rangee, si bien l’ordre y estoit gardé, & si
dextreme[n]t chacun s’estudioit à obseruer son rang & cadence’. Facsimile ed., Margaret
M. McGowan, ed. (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies,
1982), p. 56r.
32 Ewa Kociszewska, ‘War and Seduction in Cybele’s Garden: Contextualizing the Ballet des
Polonais’, Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2012): 818–20. Kociszewska is using the transla-
tion by Thomas M. Greene, ‘Labyrinth Dances in the French and English Renaissance’,
Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 4.2 (2001), pp. 1405–6.

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In the social dances choreographed for men and women the combat is usu-
ally between the two sexes. For example, the fifteenth-century Italian ballo
Verçeppe is described by Antonio Cornazano in his dance treatise as ‘like a skir-
mish’ (Verçeppe e ballo quasi simile ad una scaramuccia),33 and many of the
floor patterns of this dance constitute a choreographed engagement between
the two opposing camps: two women on one side and three men on the other.
Verçeppe is danced in single file, with the men and women alternating one be-
hind the other. Often two of the men circle the two women who are standing
in front of them (an exercise in harrying the enemy troops), with the women
repeating the exercise.34 The idea of danced combat was even more popular
in sixteenth-century Italy, with half a dozen or so dances bearing titles such as
Barriera or La Battaglia, all of which were choreographed for men and women
on opposing sides. Their music was often full of battle calls, and their choreo
graphy full of martial patterns: advances and retreats, dancers moving past one
another like two knights in a joust, and confrontations with symbolic hand-
slapping in place of swords or lances striking shields.35 For the 1572 carnival
season the French court was entertained by the performance of a danced joust.
In this case Marguerite de Valois and ten of her ladies-in-waiting were cos-
tumed as men, while male courtiers dressed as women were their opponents.36
Danced combat was just as popular in theatrical spectacles. Here the pro-
tagonists varied: sometimes between an animal and a wild man, sometimes
between mythological figures, sometimes between two groups of knights, or
knights and wild men, sometimes between Christians and Moors, and some-
times between the forces of Cupid and the nymphs of Diana. In 1475, for ex-
ample, the wedding in Pesaro of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla d’Aragona was
celebrated with three days of festivities. The second day of spectacles opened
with a series of pantomimic dances and moresche. To begin these dances a
mountain entered the hall from which ‘a proud and nimble imitation lion
jumped out and leapt over every large table in no way different from a real
33 Antonio Cornazano, Libro dell’arte del danzare. Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
Codex Capponiano, 203, f. 17r.
34 For a reconstruction of the choreography, floor patterns and music of Verçeppe, see
Jennifer Nevile, The Eloquent Body: Dance and Humanist Culture in Fifteenth-Century Italy
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 182–8.
35 See Barriera (pp. 77v–79v), Barriera Nuova (pp. 171v–172v) and Torneo Amoroso (pp. 159v–
161r) in Caroso’s Il ballarino: Barriera (pp. 139–48), and Barriera Nuova (pp. 190–3) in
Caroso’s Nobiltà di dame: La Barriera (pp. 122–4), La Battaglia (pp. 257–63) and Il Torneo
Amoroso (pp. 140–3) in Negri’s Le gratie d’amore, and the manuscript dance, La Battaglia,
from Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Magl. XIX 31 ff. 1r–7r.
36 Margaret M. McGowan, ‘Marguerite de Valois, Reine de Navarre (1553–1615): Patroness
and Performer’, Early Music History 34 (2015): 196.

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134 chapter 5
lion. To the amazement of everyone, it performed incredible feats that seemed

impossible for a man dressed in a lion’s skin. And behind him came forth a
horrible and hairy wild man carrying a club encircled by a serpent, who tried
to capture the lion’.37 Two years earlier in Rome at a banquet in honour of
Eleonora d’Aragona a danced combat occurred between sixteen mythological
characters led by Hercules and a group of dancing centaurs, the latter of whom
were eventually defeated after una bella scaramuzza.38
In both these cases where one–half of the combatants were men disguised
as real or mythological animals, it is a moot point as to how closely the cho-
reographed movements of the performers corresponded to actual combat
manoeuvres. At Pesaro the wild man was armed with a club, while in Rome
the centaurs each held a small shield (una targhetta) and a mace or club (una
mazza). At the fêtes held in Binche in 1549 the danced combat was between
two groups of knights and then between the eight knights and eight wild men.
In this case the roles of the knights and wild men were all danced by courtiers,
all of whom would have had training in the use of weapons. For this danced
battle their combat was carefully organized as revealed by an illustration of the
dance which shows the combatants carefully arranged in two lines facing each
other, and armed with swords.39 On other occasions the danced battles were
fought with each participant carrying a number of weapons. In 1502 the wed-
ding festivities of Lucrezia Borgia and Alfonso d’Este held in Ferrara included
a danced battle between ten men each of whom was armed with a dagger, a
knife, a mace and a two-handed sword.40 In his entry into Lyon in 1548 Henri II
was entertained by a danced combat between twelve men, this time armed
with two-handed swords, spears, daggers and long, oval shields.41 At the end of
the sixteenth century the Italian dance master Cesare Negri participated in a
danced combat with eight of his students. These nine men made ‘one thousand
37 Jane Bridgeman, ed. and trans., A Renaissance Wedding. The Celebrations at Pesaro for
the Marriage of Costanzo Sforza & Camilla Marzano d’Aragona 26–30 May 1475 (London:
Harvey Miller Publishers, 2013), p. 97.
38 ‘quivi si fece una bella scaramuzza fra Erole e i detti centauri. Finalmente Ercole gli superò
e caccioli dal tribunale’. Bernardino Corio’s account is published in Fabrizio Cruciani,
Teatro nel Rinascimento Roma 1450–1550 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1983), p. 164.
39 Daniel Heartz, ‘Un divertissement de palais pour Charles Quint à Binche’, Les fêtes de la
Renaissance, 3 vols., ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, 1960), II: 331–3.
41 McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance, p. 125, and McGowan, ‘A Renaissance War Dance’,
p. 30.

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beautiful fantastical representations, and among these a combat with long ra-
piers and daggers, and another [combat] with lances’.42
Unfortunately, Negri did not provide any more information in his treatise on
these danced combats: he does not elaborate on which dance steps were em-
ployed by the nine performers, nor does he give any description of the combat
itself, or how the combat manoeuvres were integrated into the dance. Negri’s
reticence in this regard is the norm for Renaissance dance treatises. In spite of
the popularity and frequent performance of danced combats, we do not have
much detailed and specific evidence of what actually happened.43 The notable
exception is Thoinot Arbeau, who describes a choreographed dance for four
men each armed with a sword and a shield called the Buffons.44 The step vo-
cabulary for this dance is limited to only grèves and pieds en l’air 45 alternating
left then right in the rhythm 𝄀 𝅗𝅥𝅙 𝅘𝅥𝅘𝅥 𝄀 𝅗𝅥𝅙 𝅘𝅥𝅘𝅥 𝄀 𝅗𝅥𝅙 with the grèves occurring on the min-
ims and with each pied en l’air taking only one crotchet to perform. Thus the
longer grèves punctuate the succession of small leaps from the left to the right
foot and back again, and the repetition of these very simple steps allows the
dancer both to move rapidly around the square formed by the four men when
required, and to concentrate on the passages of sword blows. In the Buffons
Arbeau uses standard fencing positions: feincte, taille haulte, revers hault, taille
42 ‘i quali fecero mille belle bizzarrie, e frà l’altre un combattimento con le spade lunghe, &
pugnali, & un’altro con le haste’. Negri, Le gratie, p. 13.
43 Sydney Anglo makes a similar point with regard to narrative accounts of physical combat,
and how it is not possible to reconstruct combat techniques from such accounts (see
Anglo, Martial Arts, pp. 18–21). As Anglo concludes ‘most narratives are not by eyewit-
nesses or experts, and that they are frequently not even by contemporaries of the events
described…. They are often informative about attitudes towards personal violence. They
may say something about the conditions within which such violence occurred; and they
are frequently evocative of mood. What they rarely provide is a reliable account of what
actually happened. And they never explain how’. Anglo, Martial Arts, p. 21.
44 For a discussion on Arbeau’s links with militant Catholicism in Dijon, his position as cap-
tain of his parish militia, and his association with the establishment of a Jesuit college in
Dijon, ‘where dancing was sanctioned and where [his treatise’s] all-male pyrrhic would
have been particularly appreciated’, see Van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms, pages
222–4. (The quotation is from p. 224).
45 Arbeau describes these two steps as follows. ‘[The] grève [is] when the dancer throws his
weight upon one foot to support his body and raises the other into the air in front of him
as if he were about to kick someone…. Sometimes the foot is only raised slightly off the
ground and moved little, if at all, forward, and this is called pied en l’air droit if the right
foot is lifted or pied en l’air gauche if it be the left.’ He emphasizes that the pieds en l’air are
to be performed very close to the ground, while for a grève the ‘foot must be raised very
high and the movement made with vigour’. Thoinot Arbeau, Orchesography (1589), trans.
Mary Steward Evans, 1948. Reprint with an introduction and notes by Julia Sutton (New
York: Dover Publications, 1967), p. 86.

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136 chapter 5
basse, revers bas and estocade.46 For the passages of sword play, the four com-
batants are arranged in a square with each dancer engaging with the man di-
rectly opposite him and also with the man to his right. The passages of sword
play are interleaved with a procession of the four dancers circling around the
hall while still dancing the grèves and pieds en l’air, and ‘brandishing his sword
in time to the music’.47 The dance contains six different passages of sword cuts
that increase in number and speed of the sword blows as the dance progresses,
culminating with the furious pace of the sixth passage where a sword cut (taille
haulte) lasting one minim alternates with the dancers changing places around
the square in a hay,48 also in the time of only one minim. Once facing a new
opponent the four perform a revers bas, and then change positions again. And
so the passage continues. Thus Arbeau provides one example of how an early
modern dance master could integrate dance practice and martial arts tech-
niques to produce a danced combat.
Even if the danced combats that featured so frequently in court spectacles
were not between two groups of armed men, the dancing was still described
in military terms, even when the combatants were not carrying real weap-
ons such as swords, daggers, pikes or shields et cetera, and when the contest
was allegorical in character. The masquerade written and organized by Pierre
de Brach in 1575 and performed in honour of Diane de Foix at the house of
a wealthy Bordeaux lawyer is a very good example of the martial character
of much of Renaissance dance. De Brach’s masquerade is centred around the
struggle between Love and Chastity – Cupid and Diana – and their followers.
Diana’s nymphs are each armed with a dart, while the other side is only armed
with Cupid’s bow and arrows. Yet the danced battle is still described by de
Brach in militaristic language. For example, Diana is likened to ‘a brave cap-
tain’ (vn braue capitaine), while the four pilgrims are described as a ‘squadron’
46 It is worth noting that in his 1642 treatise Juan de Esquivel Navarro uses terms from a
1625 Spanish treatise on fencing to describe the five basic movements in dancing that are
combined to form more complicated steps. See Lynn Matluck Brooks, The Art of Dancing
in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Lewisburg/London: Bucknell University Press/Associated
University Presses, 2003), p. 271 and Maurice Esses, Dance and Instrumental Diferencias in
Spain during the 17th and early 18th Centuries (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1992), I,
pp. 523–4.
47 Arbeau, Orchesography, trans. Evans, p. 185.
48 A hay was an extremely common pattern in Renaissance dance practices, and it involved
dancers changing positions with the person facing them while passing right shoulders,
then left shoulders with the next change. A hay could be performed in a straight line, a
circle, or a square.

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(escadron);49 one of the love-sick pilgrims is sent to ‘reconnoitre the enemy

troop’ (reconnoistre la trouppe ennemie);50 at one stage the nymphs surround
Cupid and his four pilgrim followers ‘as if to besiege them’,51 while an earlier
stage of the struggle is described as ‘a mêlée’.52 The battle is carefully orches-
trated with successive waves of attacks by the nymphs that build in intensity
and ferocity,53 as would occur in an actual battle, so that eventually the nymphs
are forced to retire and call a truce in order to regroup.
These eight contestants fought for a long time, striking here then there,
right and left, without it being possible to discover who would win, the
struggle was so evenly poised, shifting this way and that, to the extent
that – completely out of breath – they were obliged to seek a truce and
retire from the fray.54
Of the six ballet plots found in the dance master’s notebook, two of them
include danced battles: the Ballet des mineúrs des Paÿs and L’assaút furieux
des dames contre les plús courageux des combas victorieux. In the latter ballet
plot a danced battle between the ladies and the courageous warriors forms
the concluding Grand Ballet, and no more information is given other than the
sentence that states that the assault occurs in the Grand Ballet. So we do not
know what weapons the combatants used – if any. We are told that each lady
carried a pennant in the shape of a heart, and each of the warriors held a small
lance with taffeta pennants in the colour of his lady on which is the image of
a sun weeping tears, but we are given no information as to how the assault
was carried out. The Ballet des mineúrs des Paÿs contains two danced battles,
49 Both these examples occur on page 192v of Pierre de Brach, Les Poèmes (Bordeaux: Simon
Millanges, 1576).
50 de Brach, Les Poèmes, p. 192r.
51 ‘Aussi Diane … tenant son dard furieusement eslevé en l’ær, vint attaquer les Pelerins
amoureux, & auec ses Nymphes les entourna, com[m]e pour les assieger’, de Brach, Les
Poèmes, p. 192r.
52 ‘Lors les vns & les autres se trouuans au milieu de la salle, it fut aisé a juger qu’il y auroit
de la meslée’, de Brach, Les Poèmes, p. 192r.
53 ‘La premiere attaque des Nymphes sur les Pelerins, fut seuleme[n]t d’vne menace de la
pointe de leur dard … Mais la quatriesme charge fut de sept ou huit coups de dard, donnés
si rudement & si furieusement’, de Brach, Les Poèmes, p. 192r.
54 ‘ces huit combatans se maintindrent longuement, frapans qui çà, qui là, a dextre & a
senextre, sans qu’on eust peu juger a qui demeureroit l’honneur de la victoire, tant elle
balançoit douteusement, ores d’un costé, ores de l’autre, de façon qu’estans hors d’alaine
il furent contraints se retirer vn peu arriere, & prendre comme vne petite tréue’, de Brach,
Les Poèmes, pp. 192r–v. Translation by Margaret M. McGowan, ‘Recollections of Dancing
Forms from Sixteenth-Century France,’ Dance Research 21, no. 1 (2003): 20.

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138 chapter 5
the first a rout of the miners by the dwarfs who each carry a cutlass, and who
chase the miners from the hall, and later on a danced combat between the
six dwarfs and a group of storks. Once again the information about the two
danced battles is minimal, but for each dance the ballet plot emphasizes that
the charging, fighting and chasing is to be all carried out in time with the music
and in danced figures.
At the end of the ballet, as they [the dwarfs] turn their backs to the door,
a ballet of storks will make its entrance, and, as the dwarfs turn around,
they suddenly see the storks coming to attack and to make war upon
them. They will come together and charge one another dancing the fig-
ures of the Ballet of the Dwarfs and Storks, at the end of which the dwarfs
will chase the storks from the hall, continuing to fight in figures.55
While it is difficult to make definite statements as to the choreography of

these danced battles given the lack of detail in the ballet plots, the battles
with the dwarfs, in my opinion, were probably closer to the fight between the
nymphs and the love-sick pilgrims in de Brach’s masquerade, than any of the
danced combats with swords, daggers, et cetera such as at Binche in 1549. The
epic battle in de Brach’s masquerade is pantomimic, and so too are the dwarfs’
combats. In fact, the Ballet des mineúrs des Paÿs contains a great deal of pan-
tomimic dancing in addition to the emphasis on dancing in figures. It is clear
that the dance master only gives the general idea of danced combat in his bal-
let plots. Yet if they were to be performed, much more concrete detail would
have needed to be added. One wonders whether our dance master ever dis-
cussed combat possibilities with the master-of-arms who wrote down the pike
exhibition for him.
The series of instructions for a pike exhibition is a precious document that
is not found elsewhere in the historical record. Because of the level of detail
recorded in the dance master’s notebook, and because of the pike exhibition’s
overlap with the military pike-drill manuals, there is far more concrete infor-
mation on how one might actually perform the movements than is normally
available for the contemporary French dance practice. In this regard the pike
exhibition is much closer to the written choreographic descriptions of the mid
to late sixteenth-century Italian dance practice, choreographic descriptions
55 S 253, f. 4v. ‘Et comme les neins se retourneront al’ Improuiste voyant ces cygoignes les
venir attacquer et faire la gúerre viendront a se Ioindre et ses cherger l’un l’aultre en dan-
sant les figures dú ballet des Neins et des cÿgoignes et a la fin les neins chasseront les
cygoignes hors dela salle e toutioúrs en se battant en figúres’.

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that are supported by detailed explanations of how to perform the large

number of steps recorded in the treatises of the Italian dance masters such
as Caroso, Negri, Lutio Compasso,56 Prospero Lutij,57 Livio Lupi58 and Ercole
Santucci.59 The pike exhibition enhances our understanding of the relation-
ship between the art of dance and the martial arts during the Renaissance,
and increases our knowledge of how aspects of one art could be used in the
practice of the other.
56 Lutio Compasso, Ballo della Gagliarda (Florence, 1560; facsimile ed., Freiburg: fa-gisis
Musik- und Tanzedition, 1995).
57 Prospero Lutij, Opera bellissima nella quale si contengono molte partite, et passeggi de
gagliarda (Perugia: Pietropaolo Orlando, 1587).
58 Livio Lupi, Mutanze di gagliarda, tordiglione, passo e mezzo, canari, e passeggi (Palermo:
Carrara, 1600), ed. Dario De Cicco, Modelli educativi dell’esperienza coreutica: Livio Lupi da
Caravaggio (Padua: Armelin Musica, 2010).
59 Ercole Santucci, Mastro da Ballo (1614). Facsimile ed. with introduction by Barbara Sparti
(Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2004).

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chapter 6
Dance Music, Dance Songs and Airs de Cour
The music that is recorded in the dance master’s notebook is an intriguing

mixture of formats, genres, modes of notation and attribution. The musical
pieces occur throughout the manuscript, but they occur in rough sections de-
pending on the genre and method of notation. The largest category of music
recorded is pieces associated in some way with dancing. There are dance
pieces such as courantes, voltes, allemandes, which are all representative of
the dances that were fashionable in the early seventeenth century. There are
entrées for ballets, both titled and unnamed, as well as airs de cour from the
ballets de cour performed at the French court in 1613 and 1615, and composed
by Pierre Guédron, one of the leading composers of the day who worked at
the French court. The second largest category of music recorded in the note-
book is airs de cour by composers associated with the French court, as well as
anonymous airs that were published in Paris by Pierre Ballard but without any
attribution. The musical pieces are recorded in mensural notation, lute tabla-
ture, mandore tablature and two pages of violin tablature. Sometimes only one
part was recorded, for other pieces two, three or four parts were copied into the
notebook. The purpose of this chapter is first to identify the musical material
where possible and to discuss the relationship between pieces recorded in the
notebook. The second aim of the chapter is to examine what the music can tell
us about the compilation of the manuscript and the choreographic and teach-
ing activities of its anonymous owner.
The dance music recorded in the notebook is typical of collections pub-
lished during the same period, in that it contains examples of the current,
fashionable dances: courantes, voltes, allemandes, ballets, a passamezzo and
a sarabande. The majority of these dances are courantes, twenty-one in all;
there are only three allemandes, five voltes and four ballets. Courantes, and
to a lesser extent voltes, also feature strongly in contemporary collections of
dance music, such as those by Robert Ballard whose two books were published
in 1611 and 1614, Nicolas Vallet’s two volume collection Le Secret des Muses pub-
lished in 1615 and 1616, and Michael Praetorius’s Terpsichore, published in 1612.1
What is also found in these collections, but is missing from the dance master’s
1 Robert Ballard, Premier livre de luth (Paris: P. Ballard, 1611) and Diverses pièces mises sur le luth
(Paris: P. Ballard, 1614); Nicolas Vallet, Le Secret des Muses, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1615 and 1616);
Michael Praetorius, Terpsichore (Wolfenbüttel, 1612).

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Dance Music, Dance Songs and airs de cour 141
notebook, are examples of galliards and branles, the latter of which are espe-
cially prominent in Terpsichore. In other collections branles form the over-
whelming majority of recorded pieces, as is illustrated by the 1615 publication
for solo voice Le Recueil des plus belles chansons de danse de ce temps, where
forty-two of the fifty-seven pieces are branles.2 Looking at the dance master’s
notebook from another perspective, the collection of dance music is atypical
in that some pieces are recorded in mensural notation, while others are in lute
tablature. Contemporary collections did not usually mix different formats in
the same publication, preferring to direct their effort towards either lutenists,
or small instrumental ensembles, or to a solo voice and lute.3 In fact the pub-
lications printed by Pierre Ballard in the first two decades of the seventeenth
century are a good example of this separation of formats. Pieces were often
published twice, once for a solo voice with lute accompaniment, and again
in a separate publication arranged for four or five parts.4 Airs from the ballets
performed at the French court, along with airs de cour is another substantial
section of the music in the notebook. The final category of music found in the
notebook is ballet entrées.
It is not surprising that music in lute tablature was recorded in the dance
master’s notebook, as some skill on the lute was considered part of a gentle-
man’s or noble’s education at this time. In the academies that taught such stu-
dents the music teachers were most likely to be professional lutenists.5 Lute
playing was then seen as an ideal vehicle for display by gentlemen, and the
fact that the instrument was also very popular with ladies did not detract from
this ideal.6 Thus dances in lute tablature would have been ideal material for a
2 Le Recueil des plus belles chansons de danse de ce temps (Caen: Jacques Mangeant, 1615).
3 Multi-format volumes were published, as illustrated by the three books published between
1582 and 1600 by the celebrated lutenist and teacher Emanuel Adriaenssen who ran a music
school for lutenists in Antwerp. Adriaenssen’s collections include arrangements of dances
and vocal music for the lute and his own fantasias, as well as two or more vocal parts in men-
sural notation for each chanson or madrigal in lute tablature so that the vocal music could be
performed as an instrumental piece, as a vocal piece or as a combination of voices and lute.
See Kristine K. Forney, ‘The Netherlands, 1520–1640’, in European Music 1520–1640, ed. James
Haar (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006), p. 270, and Godelieve Spiessens, ‘Adriaenssen,
Emanuel’, in Grove Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed 1/10/2016).
4 See Table 7 for examples of such pieces and the publications in which they appeared.
5 Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005), p. 45.
6 Van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms, p. 46. As Van Orden points out the lute was an easier
instrument for beginners to learn than many others, and lute tablature, a graphic represen-
tation of where a player had to place his or her fingers on the neck of the instrument, also
facilitated the process of learning to read the music. ‘[B]eginners could produce an accept-
able tone on it in just a few weeks without a developed touch, and if the frets were correctly

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142 chapter 6
teacher running a dance and music school. Given the popularity of arrange-
ments of airs de cour for solo voice and lute, it is slightly surprising that the airs
de cour in the dance master’s notebook are all for one, two or four parts: there
is none for a solo voice and lute accompaniment.
1 Airs de Cour
The first decade of the seventeenth century saw a rapid increase in the popu-
larity and publication of various arrangements of airs de cour.7 Airs from the
latest ballets de cour helped to fuel this popularity, as those outside French
court circles were always very eager to know what was going on at court, and
the ballets de cour performed there were regarded as the most important cul-
tural events of the year.8 Thus airs de cour and dance music featured heav-
ily in publications for solo lute, for lute and voice, and in four and five part
arrangements. For example, Robert Ballard’s 1611 and 1614 publications for
solo lute contain more than sixty airs and dances from over twenty different
ballets.9 Airs from the ballets often appeared in printed collections not long
after they were first heard in a court ballet performance. The speed at which
these airs were published is illustrated by the extremely popular song Est-ce
Mars le grand dieu by Guédron from the 1613 Ballet pour Madame, which was
subsequently arranged into two different versions, both published in 1613. One
of these versions was in the composer’s own collection of airs de cour in four
and five parts, while the other arrangement was for voice and lute by Gabriel
Bataille.10 The number of airs de cour that the dance master recorded in his
placed (and the strings properly tuned) they allowed the student a good deal of latitude
with finger placement on the left hand without marring the harmonies’. Van Orden,
Music, Discipline, and Arms, p. 45.
7 Van Orden, Music, Discipline, p. 46.
8 Van Orden, Music, Discipline, p. 48.
9 Ballard’s first book from 1611 included music from sixteen ballets, including the Ballet des
Dieux Marins (1608), the Ballet de M. le Daufin (1610), the Ballet des Contre-Faits d’Amour
(1610), the Ballet des Esclaves (c. 1611) and the Ballet des Insencez (c. 1611). Ballard’s second
book from 1614 included ballets performed in 1607, 1610 and 1613. See Ballard, Premier
livre du luth, ed. and transcription André Souris and Sylvie Spycket (Paris: Éditions du
Centre de la Recherche Scientifique, 1963) and Diverses pièces mises sur le luth, ed. and
transcription André Souris, Sylvie Spycket and Jacques Veyrier (Paris: Éditions du Centre
de la Recherche Scientifique, 1964).
10 Pierre Guédron, Second livre d’airs de cour à 4 et 5 parties (Paris: P. Ballard, 1613), pp. 8v–9r;
Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents autheurs, mis en tablature de luth, quatrièsme livre (Paris:
P. Ballard, 1613), pp. 6v–7r.

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table 7 Identified airs from S 253 and their printed concordances
Title of Air de Cour Composer Printed editions
Adieu volage Gabriel Bataille (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
empire heurs, mis en tablature de luth, cinquième
livre (Paris: P. Ballard, 1614)
(2) Airs de cour et de différents autheurs
(Paris: P. Ballard, 1615) Book 1 for solo
voice
Adorable Pierre Guédron (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
Princesse, il est heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
temps (Paris: P. Ballard, 1615)
voice
(3) Pierre Guédron, Troisième livre d’airs de
cour à 4 et 5 parties (Paris: P. Ballard, 1617)
Ces Nimfes dont Pierre Guédron (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
les regards heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
(Paris: P. Ballard, 1615)
voice
C’est trop courir Pierre Guédron (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
les eaux heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
voice
Cette Anne si belle Pierre Guédron (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
voice

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144 chapter 6
table 7 Identified airs from S 253 and their printed concordances (cont.)

Donc pour aymer Pierre Guédron (1) Pierre Guédron, Second livre d’airs de
d’un amour trop cour, à 4 et 5 parties (Paris: P. Ballard, 1612)
fidelle (2) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
heurs, mis en tablature de luth, quatrième
Enchanté de vos Signac Signac, Airs à 4 parties (Paris: P. Ballard,
doux appas 1618)
Fuyés, Amants, Pierre Guédron (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
loin de ces lieux heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
voice
Je ne veux plus Pierre Guédron (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
aller de jour/nuit heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
voice
Je pensois qu’ Anon (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
Amour fut malade heurs, mis en tablature de luth, cinquième
Je voudrois bien, Antoine de Boësset (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
ô Cloris que j’adore heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
voice
(3) Antoine de Boësset, Airs de cour à 4 et 5
parties (Paris: P. Ballard, 1617)

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Lab fuiza tu tousion Pierre Guédron (1) Airs de cour et de différents autheurs
(is most likely the (Paris: P. Ballard, 1615) Book 1 for solo
air Las! fuiras-tu voice
toujours) (2) Pierre Guédron, Troisième livre d’airs de
Lors que je suis Antoine de Boësset (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
aupres de vous heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
voice
Ne dois-je donc Antoine de Boësset (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents
plus esperer autheurs, mis en tablature de luth [premiere
livre] (Paris: P. Ballard, 1608)
(2) Pierre Ballard, Second livre d’airs à
quatre de différents auteurs, recueillis et
mis ensemble par Pierre Ballard (Paris:
P. Ballard, 1610)
O! grands dieux Pierre Guédron (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
que de charmes heurs, mis en tablature de luth, cinquième
voice
Que de douleurs Anon (1) Pierre Ballard, Second livre d’airs à
pour une absence quatre de différents auteurs, recueillis et
mis ensemble par Pierre Ballard (Paris:
P. Ballard, 1610)

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146 chapter 6
(2) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents

autheurs, mis en tablature de luth, troisième
(3) Le Recueil des plus belles chansons
de danse de ce temps (Caen: Jacques
Mangeant, 1615)
Qu’ont servi tant Antoine de Boësset (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
de pleurs heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
voice
Sous la fraicheur Gabriel Bataille (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
d’un verd boccage heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
voice
Voicy mes cheres Pierre Guédron (1) Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents aut-
sœurs heurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
voice
notebook reflects this popularity, as just under a third are from French court
ballets. The presence of these pieces in the dance master’s notebook showed
his students that their teacher was fully abreast of what was fashionable in
Paris and able to pass onto them the latest ‘hit tunes’ from the cultural and so-
cial centre of the French court. The enthusiasm in Brussels for such pieces can
also be seen in the music played on the city’s carillon, which in 1616 had twenty

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bells.11 A manuscript by the Brussels’ clockmaker Hendrick Claes from around

1616 records pieces that could ‘be set on the automatic playing mechanism’ of
the carillon.12 Two-thirds of the pieces recorded by Claes in his manuscript
were dance music and French airs de cour.
There are thirty-four airs de cour in the dance master’s notebook of which
I have been able to identify twenty. Of these twenty all except one appear in
publications from the French royal publisher Pierre Ballard. Table 7 lists the
names of each of these twenty airs, their composer, and the printed editions in
which they also appear. As can be seen from Table 7, three out of the four com-
posers of the identified airs de cour were associated with the French court and
involved in the court ballets. Half are by Pierre Guédron, a composer, lutenist
and singer who enjoyed a spectacular ascent through French court musical
circles from 1590 until his death c. 1619–1620. In 1613 Guédron was appointed
to the position of surintendant des musiques de la chambre du roi, the highest
honour possible in the court musical establishment. Guédron’s participation
as a composer of vocal music for twelve ballets de cour started earlier in his
career under Henri IV,13 and from 1612 onwards, his airs increasingly appeared
in print. Even after his death Guédron’s airs continued to be popular, especially
in musical collections published outside of France. Given the prominent place
Guédron enjoyed in French musical circles, it is perhaps not surprising that
he is so well represented in the dance master’s notebook, both in the number
of airs, and by the fact that all six of the airs from court ballets that are found
in the notebook are by Guédron.14 Guédron’s son-in-law Antoine de Boësset is
the next most popular composer in this genre, with the dance master record-
ing five of his airs de cour. De Boësset attained the position of surintendant
des musiques de la chambre du roi in 1623, ten years after his father-in-law was
appointed to the position, and likewise he composed music for around twenty-
two ballets de cour from 1615 to 1642, the year before his death.15 Gabriel
11 The information on the carillon in the church of Saint Nicolas in Brussels is taken from Piet
Stryckers, ‘Music and Music Production in Seventeenth-Century Brussels’, in Embracing
Brussels. Art and Culture in the Court City, 1600–1800, ed. Katlijne van der Stighelen, Leen
Kelchtermans and Koenraad Brosens (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), p. 74.
12 Stryckers, ‘Music and Music Production’, p. 74.
13 Georgie Durosoir, Les Ballets de la cour de France au xviie siècle ou Les fantaisies et les splen-
deurs du Baroque (Geneva: Editions Papillon, 2004), p. 35.
14 For a discussion of Guédron’s airs that he wrote for the ballets de cour, see Georgie
Durosoir, L’air de cour en France 1571–1655 (Liège: Mardaga, 1991), pp. 83–101, and Durosoir,
Les ballets de la cour de France, pp. 35–42.
15 Georgie Durosoir, ‘Les compositeurs du ballet de La Délivrance de Renaud: L’art musical
confronté aux exigences du ballet de cour’, in La Délivrance de Renaud: Ballet dansé par
Louis XIII en 1617. Ballet danced by Louis XIII in 1617, ed. Greer Garden (Turnhout: Brepols,

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148 chapter 6
Bataille, two of whose airs are found in the notebook, was also a member of
the French court musical establishment, attaining the position of maître de la
musique de la reine in 1617: like Guédron and de Boësset, he also composed
music for court ballets. The twenty identified airs are all from collections pub-
lished in the ten years from 1608 to 1618, with the majority of the songs from
collections published from 1615 to 1617.16 This narrow timeframe gives addi-
tional support to the dating of the compilation of the notebook to c. 1614–1619.
Apart from Bataille’s Adieu volage empire, the first few words of which were
copied into the notebook, most of the other airs de cour in the dance master’s
notebook were recorded with both words and music.17 The music of the airs is
recorded in mensural notation, either in a single part, or in four parts, with two
airs having two parts. Apart from the idiosyncratic and highly variable spell-
ing that is found throughout the manuscript, the texts of the poems are al-
most the same as that found in their printed editions. Sometimes not all verses
were copied into the notebook, as is the case for Ne dois-je donc (ff. 48v–49r)
which has one verse only in the manuscript, but five verses in Bataille’s 1608
collection,18 and C’est trop courir les eaux and Fuyés amants (ff. 50v–51r), two
airs from the Ballet de Madame, where the final verse in the printed edition
is missing from the notebook.19 In O! grands dieux (ff. 61v–62r) from the 1613
Ballet de la Sérénade, the last two verses were also not copied into the note-
book.20 Conversely, in de Boësset’s air Je voudrois bien (ff. 64v–65r) the version
in the dance master’s notebook has an extra verse that is not found in the 1615
publication.21 Furthermore, verses for airs in the notebook are not always cop-
ied in the order as given in the printed editions, as, for example, in Je ne veux
(ff. 60v–61r) where the verses were copied in the order 1, 2, 4, then 3.22
2010), p. 59, and Durosoir, ‘Boësset, Antoine’, Grove Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusi-
conline.com (accessed 9/3/2015).
16 These three publications are Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents autheurs, mis en tablature
de luth, sixième livre (Paris: P. Ballard, 1615), facsimile ed. (Geneva: Minkoff, 1980); Airs de
cour et de différents autheurs, vol. 1 for solo voice (Paris: P. Ballard, 1615), and Antoine de
Boësset, Airs de cour à 4 et 5 parties, premier livre (Paris: P. Ballard, 1617).
17 One exception is the poem Voici des homme saüuages on f. 48r of the manuscript, which,
despite the instructions that it is to be sung by an amour in the ballet of eight savages,
does not have any music recorded for it.
18 Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents autheurs, mis en tablature de luth (Paris: P. Ballard, 1608),
pp. 38v–39r, facsimile ed. (Geneva: Minkoff, 1980).
19 Bataille, Airs de différents autheurs, sixième livre, p. 4v.
20 Gabriel Bataille, Airs de différents autheurs, mis en tablature de luth, cinquième livre (Paris:
P. Ballard, 1614), pp. 7v–8r, facsimile ed. (Geneva: Minkoff, 1980), and Pierre Guédron,
Troisième livre d’airs de cour à 4 et 5 parties (Paris: P. Ballard, 1617), pp. 15v–16r.
21 Bataille, Airs de différents autheurs, sixième livre, pp. 12v–13r.

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Occasionally textual variants point to a copying error. This is the case in

verse 1 of Ne dois-je donc where lines 3 and 4 are missing from dance master’s
notebook. But these two lines are sung to the same music as the first two lines,
and in Ballard all four lines are written underneath the vocal line, with lines 3
and 4 underneath lines 1 and 2. It seem reasonable to assume that inattention
by a copyist caused him to overlook the third and fourth lines. Another expla-
nation for the missing lines is that as only verse 1 is written transcribed under-
neath the top part in the notebook, after having written lines 1 and 2 whoever
was copying the air found that there was no more room between the top two
staves for him to write any more text, and so lines 3 and 4 were left out.
On other occasions, however, variations between the dance master’s note-
book and the printed version of an air could only be the result of deliberate
action on the part of a copyist, when he has altered the text as he copied it
into the notebook. For example, the end of the first line of Je ne veux has been
changed in the notebook from ‘jour’ to ‘nuict’. Such an obvious and radical
change from ‘day’ to ‘night’ could only be deliberate. Similarly, in Qu’ont servi
the first line of verse 4 has been altered in the notebook (f. 56r–v) by the addi-
tion of the interjection ‘holas’ and the alteration of ‘vous’ to ‘me’.23 Then there
is the spontaneous human touch that appears in the dance master’s notebook
where, in the last verse of Donc pour aymer, the copyist has drawn a heart to
replace the word ‘coeur’ (f. 33r). These deliberate changes are interesting as
they appear to indicate that at least some of the pieces copied into the note-
book were a record of a specific performance. For example, the substitution
of ‘night’ for ‘day’ could have been made because the air was performed in the
evening, and the change from ‘you’ to ‘me’ could have been made to personal-
ize the song.
The music for these airs also exhibit minor differences between their pub-
lished versions and how they appear in the dance master’s notebook. Small
rhythmic changes are common, as are differences in ornaments, especially at
cadences, and often passing notes and divisions are missing from the music
recorded in the notebook. On the whole the music in the dance master’s note-
book is simpler than in the published arrangements. The most notable exam-
ple is Je voudrois bien where all the numerous passing notes and ornamental
notes found in the 1615 Ballard publication are absent from the piece as record-
ed in the notebook. The rhythm has also been simplified, with the anonymous
dance master using only minims, crotchets and occasionally quavers, as well
as omitting the changes in metre, and the initial time signature. These differ-
ences can clearly be seen in musical examples 1a and 1b. The simplification

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150 chapter 6
Musical Example 1a Melody of Je voudrois bien by Antoine de Boësset from Bataille,

Airs de différents autheurs, mis en tablature de luth, sixième livre
(1615), pp. 12v–13r
Musical Example 1b Je voudrois bien from S 253 f. 64v

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of the music for these airs seems to indicate that they were copied into the
notebook for the students to sing, rather than being just as an archival copy
of the currently fashionable songs. If the latter reason was the primary objec-
tive for their inclusion in the notebook, then one would also reasonably ex-
pect that the same order would be maintained from the printed edition to the
notebook, but this is not the case. Bataille’s sixth book of airs for voice and lute
contains eleven of the airs de cour found in the dance master’s notebook, in-
cluding airs numbers 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 and 18. In the notebook, however, these six
airs were copied in a different sequence; that is, numbers 14, 13, 11, 16, 18 and 12.
One has to conclude that the airs were copied as required by the demands of
the students.
2 Dance Music
Charles de Lespine (?1580s–after 1627), a French lutenist and composer, and

author of written works including verses for ballets, is named as the composer
of sixteen pieces copied into the dance master’s notebook.24 All but one of
these pieces are in French lute tablature,25 the remaining piece, a courante,
appears at the end of the manuscript in mensural notation.26 The lute pieces
are mostly dances: six courantes, four ballets, two voltes, as well as two pre-
ludes and a bergamasque.27 Six of the pieces are found elsewhere, mostly in
manuscript collections, but the piece entitled L’Espagnole (f. 114v) also appears
in Nicolas Vallet’s 1615 publication for solo lute,28 and in the second book of
24 As is usually the case in this manuscript the spelling Lespine’s name is variable, even
though the attributions are all in the same hand. His name appears as ‘Lespine’ with an
upper and lower case ‘L’, ‘Lespin’ with both upper and lower case, ‘Lespins’, ‘Lepine’ and
‘Monsieur lepine’. It is assumed that Lespine was born in Paris in the 1580s, as he identi-
fies himself as a Parisian. See Frederick Lachèvre, Charles de Lespine, Parisien, et sa breve
description de plusieurs royaumes … suivie de ses vers de ballet, … (Paris: L. Giraud-Badin,
1935), p. 2.
25 The fifteen pieces in lute tablature are found on ff. 103r–105r, 106v–116r.
26 Only one part is recorded for this piece on f. 119r of S 253. This courante is not the same
piece as any other of Lespine’s courantes that are notated in lute tablature. I would like to
thank Tommie Andersson for confirming this for me.
27 A modern edition of Lespine’s lute pieces which includes the pieces in the dance master’s
notebook can be found online, edited by John H. Robinson in 2013 (http://www.tabula
tura.com/LespineV4jhr.pdf, accessed 1/10/2016).
28 Nicolas Vallet, Oeuvres de Nicolas Vallet pour luth seul: Le Secret des Muses, ed. and tran-
scription André Souris (Paris: Éditions du Centre de la Recherche Scientifique, 1970),
p. 172.

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152 chapter 6
Robert Ballard’s 1614 publication.29 One ballet (f. 110v–111v) has eleven
concordances, the courante on ff. 112v–113r has six,30 L’Espagnole has five,
the volte on ff. 115v–116r has three, while the volte nouvelle on ff. 111v–112r and
the courante on f. 112v have only one concordance each. These concordances
are mostly found in sources dating from the 1620s to the 1640s, but some of the
concordances are from the first two decades of the seventeenth century, that
is, either before or during the same decade as the dance master’s notebook is
believed to have been compiled. The remaining ten pieces are unique to the
dance master’s notebook. Among these pieces are three of the four ballets
recorded in the notebook.31 Given that music from ballets de cour appeared
in contemporary collections like Praetorius’s Terpsichore under the rubric of
‘Ballets’, one can only speculate as to whether these three musical ‘ballets’ from
the dance master’s notebook were ever written by Lespine for a danced theatri-
cal spectacle.
A question remains, therefore: how did our anonymous dance master ob-
tain copies of Lespine’s music to reproduce in his notebook, especially the ten
pieces that are not found elsewhere? One possible answer is through personal
contact. In 1610 Lespine left his employment with the court of Lorraine to trav-
el to England via the Southern and Northern Low Countries, and one of the
cities he visited was Brussels, which at that time had a thriving musical culture.
Was it possible that while in Brussels Lespine met with our dance master and
left some of his music with the latter, who then a few years later copied it into
his notebook? Certainly the hand of the words on all of Lespine’s music is H1 –
the hand I maintain is that of the owner of the notebook, the dance master
himself. Furthermore, the pieces are copied together in a single section, rather
than scattered throughout the entire 122 folios, and with a new piece starting
immediately after the end of the previous piece. Their close physical location
points to the likelihood that the dance master had already had these pieces in
his possession before he started copying them into the notebook. Two further
considerations favour the hypothesis of a personal meeting between the two
musicians while Lespine was in Brussels: first, the number of pieces by Lespine
copied into the notebook – that is, sixteen – is more than those by any other
composer. Second, Lespine’s pieces all carry his name, whereas many of the
other musical pieces remain without attribution. The lack of identification in
29 Ballard, Diverses pièces, ed. and transcription Souris et al., p. 28, ‘L’Espagnolle Huitiesme
(courante)’.
30 In his edition of Lespine’s lute pieces Robinson notes that when this courante appears
in the dance master’s notebook it has a ‘different second strain to all other versions’
(http://www.tabulatura.com/LespineV4jhr.pdf, page 3).
31 The others are two preludes, a bergamasque, and three courantes.

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the dance master’s notebook of the composers of dance music and airs de cour
even applies to well-known pieces by leading composers of the French court,
which had been recently published by Pierre Ballard. If our dance master did
not bother to include the names of such celebrated composers, why did he
do so with Lespine? Was it a personal meeting between these two men that
caused him to include Lespine’s name? While lute playing seems to have been
one common interest between Lespine and our dance master, dance and bal-
lets appear to have been a second. Lespine published verses for three ballets
in his Les Oeuvres de Lespine that was published in Turin in 1627: the Ballet des
Moscovites, the Ballet des Fous, and the Ballet des Mores.32 In this work Lespine
did not state when these ballets were performed,33 but whatever the date –
either before his 1610 visit to Brussels, or later in the early 1620s after his return
to France and the court of Lorraine34 – their presence in his published works
indicate an interest in ballet de cour that is also shared by the owner of the
notebook. A second possibility is that Lespine’s music was passed onto our
dance master through a fellow musician who knew Lespine, or at least had
access to his compositions. At least one piece by Lespine that appears in the
dance master’s notebook was circulating in manuscript from before 1610, as
evidenced by one of its concordances that is dated to 1603.35
On ff. 100v–101r of the notebook there are two anonymous pieces Robinette
and Vive louis recorded in mandore tablature in the hand of the copyist H1. The
former piece has the same name as the music from the Ballet de Robinette found
in the Philidor Collection.36 When the music in the notebook is compared with
32 Lachèvre, Charles de Lespine, Parisien, pp. 125–8.

33 Margaret M. McGowan in her list of ballets from 1581 to 1643 gives c. 1623 as the date for
all three of Lespine’s ballets. See McGowan, L’art du ballet de cour en France, 1581–1643
(Paris: Éditions du Centre de la Recherche Scientifique, 1963), p. 288. David Ledbetter in
his short article on Lespine in Grove Music Online says that the Ballet des Mores was per-
formed in 1609 (Ledbetter, ‘Lespine, Charles de’, Grove Music Online, http://www.oxford
musiconline.com (accessed 23/10/2013), while Frederick Lachèvre dates all three ballets
before 1610 (Lachèvre, Charles de Lespine, Parisien, p. 125). Certainly there was a ballet
entitled Boutades des Mores esclaves d’amour délivrés par Bacchus performed in 1609, and
in the same year a Ballet des Fous armés was ‘dansé par 12 galants de la cour pour etrenner
la salle nevue de l’Arsenal’ (McGowan, L’art du ballet de cour en France, pp. 269–70). But it
is not clear whether these two ballets are the same as those for which Lespine wrote some
verses, or if they just share a similarity in titles.
34 Ledbetter states that Lespine returned to France in 1621. Ledbetter, ‘Lespine, Charles de’,
Grove Music Online.
35 See Robinson’s edition, page 2 no. 7a–k.
36 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Res. F. 496 ff. 107–108. I am indebted to Tommie Andersson
for providing me with a transcription in staff notation of Robinette from S 253.

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154 chapter 6
that in Philidor, however, it is clear that there is no similarity between the two
sources.
Unlike Lespine, Nicolas Vallet’s name appears on only three pieces in the
dance master’s notebook: ‘la vallets courant nouuelle’ on f. 91v; a few bars enti-
tled ‘courant la vallette’ on f. 77r; and four bars of violin tablature (f. 76v) which
has beneath it the text ‘la vallet lon conmanes au premeir er deu fois’. The first
of these pieces – ‘la vallets courant nouuelle’ – is not among the courantes pub-
lished in Vallet’s Le Secret des Muses, but the second of these is the same piece
as ‘La Vallette’ published in Vallet’s second book of solo lute pieces.37 However,
a few more pieces published by Vallet in Le Secret des Muses also appear in the
notebook, but without any attribution or indication of their source. For ex-
ample, the piece La dauphine from Book I appears in the notebook on f. 92v in
staff notation with the title la dofine, and a few bars at the bottom of f. 77r with
the title courant la daufine. The latter title is the same wording as another ver-
sion of this piece that this found in the Philidor Collection of ballet music: the
Courante la Daufinne.38 Four bars of violin tablature on f. 76v of the notebook
also carry a similar title given in the text underneath the tablature: ‘la dofeine
lon conmens au de du premeir er ang fois’. The same page of tablature also has
the opening bars of another piece with a similar title to that found in Vallet’s
publication; that is, ‘la morresse ce commansse au premeir du cecont er deu
fois’, while on f. 77r there is an entire piece in violin tablature with the title ‘la
picarde courant hont connenes au premeir er ang fois’.39
The final piece that appears in both Vallet’s publication and in the dance
master’s notebook is the courante La vignonne.40 As Alis Dickinson has es-
tablished, this tune first appeared in the opening decade of the seventeenth
century.41 In 1614 Robert Ballard published the piece in his Diverses pieces mises
sur le luth, while Vallet’s version was published a year later. Whereas Ballard’s
elegant version reflects the style favoured at the French court where he worked
as a lutenist, Vallet’s version is more straightforward: Dickinson see this version
37 Vallet, Le Secret des Muses, ed. and transcription Souris, p. 226. The piece is also found
among other concordances in Ballard’s second book from 1614 where it is called ‘La
Valette cinquiesme (courante)’. Ballard, Diverses pièces, ed. and transcription Souris et al.,
p. 22.
38 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Res. F. 494, f. xi.
39 Vallet, Le Secret des Muses, ed. and transcription Souris, p. 230 for La Piccarde, pp. 178–9 for
La Moresque and p. 179 for La Dauphine.
40 Vallet, Le Secret des Muses, ed. and transcription Souris, pp. 171–2 and S 253 f. 89r then
f. 90r.
41 Alis Dickinson, ‘The Courante “La Vignonne”: In the Steps of a Popular dance’, Early Music
10, no. 1 (1982): 56.

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as an example of what Vallet taught to his pupils in Amsterdam.42 When the

dance master recorded this piece in his notebook on f. 98r and f. 90r, he did so
not as a solo lute piece but as a two-part (cantus and bassus) courante.43 The
piece recorded in his notebook is a simple piece much closer to that which
appears in Vallet’s publication than in Ballard’s collection. But it is not a direct
copy of what Vallet published either. In the notebook the key is different, and
in the second section of the piece the melody in the notebook diverges from
that in Vallet until the last ten notes, where the two sources again agree. A
Courante D’avignone also appears in the Philidor collection.44 When one com-
pares this arrangement of the popular tune with what is recorded in the dance
master’s notebook the top parts from both sources are almost identical,45 so
much so that one can only conclude that our dance master must have had a
copy of the music that later came to be copied into what is now known as the
Philidor collection.46 The only major difference is that the first eighteen notes
of the piece are a third higher in the notebook than in Philidor. But from this
point onwards the pitches of the melody in the notebook are identical to those
in Philidor, as after eighteen notes the cantus part in the notebook goes down
a tone from A to G, rather than up a semitone from F# to G as in Philidor. In
fact, the difference in the pitch of the first eighteen notes of this piece may
well be the result of a mistake on the part of the dance master. The presence
of the accidentals in the first eighteen notes of the courante la vignonne seems
to suggest that the dance master started writing this piece as if it was in the
treble clef (G on the second line of the stave) rather than in the French violin
clef (G on the first line of the stave) that appears at the start of the cantus part,
and is the clef used for this piece in Philidor. After eighteen notes the dance
master realized his mistake and continued writing the melody in the French
violin clef.
This popular tune is not the only piece found in both the dance master’s
notebook and the Philidor collection. On f. 77r of the notebook there are
five short courantes: la prinssese, la daufine, la vallette, la baumieme and la
42 Dickinson, ‘The Courante “La Vignonne”’, p. 56.

43 The music is in H1, the hand I have hypothesized as the hand of the anonymous dance
master.
44 Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Res. F. 494, f. viii.
45 The two bass parts are nowhere near as similar.
46 At the end of the seventeenth century Louis XIV’s music librarian André Danican Philidor
directed a group of copyists to compile this substantial anthology of music from court
spectacles, which was subsequently dispersed and partly destroyed. See Iain Fenlon,
‘Competition and Emulation: Music and Dance for the Celebrations in Paris, 1612–1615’,
in Dynastic Marriages 1612/1615. A Celebration of the Habsburgs and Bourbon Unions, ed.
Margaret M. McGowan (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 145.

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156 chapter 6
moullinette. The first piece does not appear to be the same piece as one with
the same name in Philidor, but la moullinette and la daufine are the same as the
first sections of the two pieces with the same name in Philidor.47 The eleven
notes of la baumieme are similar to the opening of Courante la Boesmienne
from Philidor,48 while the second section of this piece appears on f. 93r of the
notebook under the title la boimiere, albeit with a different key and time signa-
ture. One wonders how these tunes arrived in Brussels. Did the dance master
have contacts within the musical circles of Paris who sent him copies of these
tunes? Or, is their presence in the dance master’s notebook an indication that
before moving to Brussels the dance master lived and worked in Paris, and so
acquired copies of these dance tunes himself while he was there?
Another possible piece of supporting evidence for the hypothesis that the
dance master had worked in Paris, or had strong connections to the French
court musical establishment, is the appearance of the name ‘Belleville’ in the
middle of one of the two pages of violin tablature. Jacques de Montmorency,
or Belleville as he was more commonly known, was a dancer, choreographer,
and composer of music for French court ballets. He was also a violinist and
leader of the violons du cabinet, a position that meant he was responsible for
composing the string parts of the dance music for the ballets de cour.49 The
seven pieces of music on f. 76r only notate the beginning of each piece, and
underneath each piece there are a few words about starting the first entrée and
how many times the entrée is to be repeated, all of which implies music for bal-
let performances. Did the dance master know Belleville, and did the latter give
the dance master a copy of some of the dance tunes he had composed? Or was
our dance master acquainted with a violinist in the violons du cabinet, who had
played these dance pieces under the direction of Belleville, and who passed
the music onto his colleague in Brussels? From the comments Praetorius made
in the dedicatory letter to Terpsichore, we know that dance melodies from the
ballets de cour did circulate in manuscripts among dance masters and mu-
sicians at this time. Praetorius states that at the Duke of Braunschweig and
Lüneberg’s command, his dance master Antoine Emeraud supplied Praetorius
with dance melodies from France,50 which he then arranged in four or five
47 Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Res. F. 494, ff. ix and xi.

48 Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Res. F. 494, f. xi.
49 Georgie Durosoir, ‘Les compositeurs du ballet’, p. 60.
50 As Peter Holman has observed, court dance music commonly circulated in only two parts
(cantus and bass) not only in France but also in England. Peter Holman, ‘Terpsichore at
400: Michael Praetorius as a Collector of Dance Music’, Viola da Gamba Society Journal 6
(2012): 43–4.

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parts for their inclusion in Terpsichore.51 Praetorius also states that the dance
melodies he received were ‘composed by French dancers who were at the same
time for the most part good violinists … or lutenists, and arranged according
to their steps in dances, courants, ballets, and processions’.52 He mentions the
names of six dance masters and violinists who were responsible for compos-
ing a number of the dances that he received. Four of these men held royal ap-
pointments: ‘Pierre La Grénée (d. 1610), Jean Delamotte (d. 1631), Claude Nyon
alias De Lafont (d. 1614), and Pierre Beauchamp ( fl 1597–1626)’.53 The other
two dance masters – Richehomme and Le Bret – although they worked in Paris
were not in royal employment.
3 Music for Ballet Entrées
The final category of music found in the dance master’s notebook is music
for ballet entrées. Some entrées have titles, others just the appellation entre de
ballet, but all of these pieces appear in only one part – the melody – and most
have no composer named. The exceptions to this anonymity are the entrées
for two ballets by Destourmelle. The melodies are almost all notated in the
soprano clef 54 and are unbarred, with the only lines those that indicate the
end of a section. The melodies also mostly lack time signatures. The tunes
are very similar to the ballet entrées found in the Philidor collection: they are
quite short and have either one, two or three sections. For some ballets only
one entrée has been recorded, while others have two, three or four entrées
and two ballets have music for five entrées. The titles of the ballet entrées are
given in Table 8. From Table 8 one can see that two of the named entrées have
titles that are similar to ballets performed at the French court: the entrée on
f. 29r could be referring to the 1608 Ballet de Trois Âges, and the five entrées
on f. 31v–32r called ballet de griemas could be referring to the 1598 Ballet des
Grimasseurs. But when the melodies from the dance master’s notebook are
51 ‘At your gracious command, Your Grace’s humbly obedient dancing-master Antoine
Emeraud has brought these assorted melodies from France, as well as some descant
parts for the same, all of which had been given over to me to be arranged for four or five
parts, as I see fit’. Bruce R. Carvell, ‘A Translation of the Preface to Terpsichore of Michael
Praetorius’, Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America 20 (1983): 42.
52 Carvell, ‘A Translation of the Preface to Terpsichore’, p. 51.
53 Holman, ‘Terpsichore at 400’, p. 41.
54 The second entrée on f. 82v has a treble clef, as do the ballet entrées on ff. 90v–91r. In the
case of the latter the position of the B flat in the key signature indicates that the G clef was
a mistake, and should have been the soprano clef.

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158 chapter 6
table 8 Ballet entrées with a title in S 253
Folio number Title of the ballet entrées
f. 29r l’entres du ballet de tri ages le merquere

f. 29v ballet de madame la marquis de baez
f. 30r de lentre du balle de venus et cupitet
f. 30v–31r ballet du justisa / fortitutoç / prudenssia / tenperrancia /fides / es
jes / charitas / pacienscia
f. 31v–32r ballet de griemas/grimas
f. 90v–91r entre de ballet des le faus
compared to the music of these two ballets found in the Philidor collection we
find no similarity.55
It is possible that these entrées, or some of these entrées, were from pro-
ductions in which the anonymous dance master was involved. The ballet de
griemas/grimas, for example, has the same name as one of the dance students,
a demoiselle grimas, who started lessons on the 23 October (f. 75v).56 Did the
dance master choreograph dances for a ballet or masquerade and also provide
the music for these dances at which his pupil, the demoiselle grimas, was the
main performer, and which also involved sticks or bats at some point (pos-
sibly another danced combat), as indicated by three entrées from the ballet de
griemas that have the words aucq le batoie added under the music? Another
link between the entrées and other non-musical materials in the notebook is
the music for four ballet entrées on ff. 30v–31r that has the title of the seven
virtues: justice, fortitude, prudence, temperance, faith, charity and patience.57
On f. 45r of the notebook is a plot for the Ballet de sept Vertus – the Ballet of
Seven Virtues. In the plot dancers representing the Seven Virtues enter seated
in a triumphal chariot, but the virtues are not listed or named individually,
only as a group. Once the triumphal chariot drawn along by seven unicorns
with its retinue of torch-bearers, singers and instrumentalists, makes its circuit
of the hall and withdraws, the Seven Virtues re-enter the hall in order to dance
their entrée. There are two more entrées mentioned in the plot: the ballet of the
seven unicorns and then the ballet of the seven Persian slaves. The ballet ends
with a Grand Ballet, making a total of four danced set pieces. It is impossible
55 Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Res. F. 496 ff. 74–75 and 76.
56 On ff. 31v–32r the name of the ballet is first spelt ‘griemas’ then ‘grimas’.
57 In this instance ‘patience’ has replaced ‘hope’.

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to say definitely that these four entrées are the music for the ballet plot, just as
it is also impossible to state categorically that they are not. But on the balance
of probability, I think that for this ballet – the Ballet de sept Vertus – the dance
master has recorded in his notebook both the outline of the ballet’s subject,
and the music for its dance numbers.
On f. 30r there is music that appears to be an entrée for a ballet of Venus and
Cupid. As these two characters do appear in the ballet plots, it is tempting to
think that this music is also for one of the ballet plots in the notebook. While
the goddess Venus appears in two of the ballet plots, and Cupid appears in a
third, the two do not appear together. Nor do any of the ballet plots bear the
title ‘Venus and Cupid’.
As mentioned above, the otherwise unknown name Destourmelle58 ap-
pears as the composer of two entrées and a new courante. The name also
appears on three more pages as part of the text of these pages (f. 69v, f. 74r and
f. 93r). Destourmelle was obviously a composer of dance music at least, and the
adjective ‘new’ next to his courante and one of his entrées implies that he had
composed a number of other ballet entrées and courantes. But his name is also
associated with a brief defence of social dancing which implies Destourmelle
was also a dancer and/or a dance teacher. The text on f. 93r is directly below
the music ‘la boimiere’, and reads: ‘Dansse nouuelle exellents pour dansser en
bonne et honneste compainie et aussj pour y bien se comportir’.59 Underneath
this sentence is the name ‘destournel’ also surrounded by the characteristic
decorative motif of H3. The sentence says that the splendid new dance is excel-
lent for dancing in an elevated and virtuous milieu, and that the dance allows
the performer to display himself or herself to advantage in terms of courtesy
and good behaviour. Was this sentiment a favourite saying of Destourmelle?
And was Destourmelle associated with the dance school in Brussels and did he
teach students there? One wonders if the new dance referred to is ‘la boimiere’
that appears above the text, given that the hand is the same for the text under
the music and the text about the benefits of dancing. Is it possible to go one
step further and to speculate that H3 is the hand of Destourmelle himself?
The text on f. 74r associated with his name is also in the same hand H3 with
the same decorative markings. It reads: ‘destourmelle le tresseuble seruiteur
58 The name is spelt as ‘destourmelle’, ‘destournielle’, ‘destournel’ and ‘destourmele’.

59 ‘[An] excellent new dance for dancing in good and honest company, and also for conduct-
ing oneself well there.’

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160 chapter 6
de tout les baus etspris et braere caualeire de lonneur etc amateur des noble
etceceis donneur Vostre’.60
Destourmelle, then, seems to have also been a dancer as well as a musi-
cian. The question remains, who was he? I have not been able to find men-
tion of a musician or dancer by this name. However, the name with its variant
spellings in the dance master’s notebook is eerily similar to an old French
family d’Estourmel from Picardy, and one wonders whether the ‘destourmelle’
of the dance master’s notebook was a member of this family? (One has to
keep in mind the extremely variable and erratic spelling in this manuscript,
even by the same hand). The d’Estourmel family divided into three branches
in the sixteenth century, with Jean continuing the oldest branch as Seigneur
d’Estourmel, his brother Antoine founding the branch of the Seigneurs of
Fouilloy and a third brother Louis founding the branch of the Seigneurs of
Frétoy. In between serving the French state in a military capacity, the oldest
brother Jean d’Estourmel was maître d’hotel to the duc de Vendôme, and in
1541 he was appointed maître d’hotel to the French king, François I, and in 1546
he accompanied the Cardinal Du Bellay to England on a diplomatic mission.
Jean died in 1557.61 Michel, Jean’s son, married into the de Créquy family, who
were also courtiers, and by the mid seventeenth century were active partici-
pants in court ballets.62 Louis d’Estourmel, Baron de Surville (Jean’s grandson)
is known to have died in Paris in 1631. The other two branches also had sons.63
One wonders, therefore, if one of Jean, Antoine or Louis’s grandsons was the
person named in the notebook, and that by the early seventeenth century the
military valour and expertise of Jean had transformed itself into an interest
and skill in the arts of music and dance. Such a progression from a belief that
noble virtue was primarily displayed in a military encounter on a battlefield,
to a view of noble virtue as primarily a mixture of civility, grace, ‘education,
60 ‘Destourmelle the very humble servant of all the men of wit and brave knights of honour,
and the admirer of the noble et cetera of honour Yours’. This text is more difficult to in-
terpret. The sentence is most likely to be the closing phrase to a letter. Another possibility
is that it could be a template for an introduction of Destourmelle at an event, where the
names or positions of those of rank who were present could be inserted in the space indi-
cated by ‘et cetera’.
61 Dictionnaire de Biographie Française (Paris: Libraire Letouzey et Ané, 1975), XIII: 118–9.
62 I would like to thank Jennifer Thorp for bringing the matter of the de Créquy family’s
dance expertise to my attention. For example, Charles de Créquy (1624–1687) was one
of the Gentlemen of the Chambre du Roi from 1644 and he danced in ballets from 1651
to 1655. See Jennifer Thorp, ‘Dances and dancers in the Ballet de la Nuit’, in Ballet de la
Nuit Rothschild B1/16/6, ed. Michael Burden and Jennifer Thorp (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon
Press, 2009), p. 25.
63 Dictionnaire de la Noblesse, 3rd ed. (Paris: Schlesinger, 1865), VII: 555.

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connoisseurship, sensibility and sophistication’ was common to many French

noble families in the second half of the sixteenth century and early seven-
teenth century.64 In the early seventeenth century members of aristocratic
families did compose dance music for the ballet de cour,65 and certainly all
would have leant to dance from an early age as part of their education. In my
opinion, however, if the Destourmelle named in the notebook was a member
of the aristocratic d’Estourmel family, it was unlikely that he was the owner of
the notebook. Composing dance music for theatrical spectacles was one thing,
but earning one’s living by teaching dance was an entirely different state-of-
affairs, one that would not have been pursued by a member of an ancient fam-
ily closely associated with the French court. An alternative explanation is that
the person in the notebook was a valued servant of the d’Estourmel family who
had taken the family name, and who was also a musician and dancer.
In summary, the notebook contains a fairly typical collection of current,
fashionable dances and airs de cour by leading French composers. The music
reveals the dance master’s knowledge of the work of other musicians and lu-
tenists: those who worked at the French court musical establishment, as well
as those such as such as Vallet, who lived and worked outside of France. Not
all the ballet entrées in the notebook have known concordances, which sug-
gests that the dance master was someone who was actively involved in creating
new danced spectacles, not just recording past performances at other courts
or cities. That the music in the notebook is found in mensural notation, as well
as in lute, violin and mandore tablature, suggests that the anonymous dance
master was competent on at least these three instruments. The changes that
were made to many of the airs de cour and pieces of dance music when they
were copied into the notebook indicate that these pieces were recorded in a
simplified form more suitable for teaching to his students, rather than just as a
collection of pieces the dance master enjoyed playing.
64 For a discussion of this shift in France see Jeanice Brooks, Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-
Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 117–67. The quotation is
from p. 167.
65 Private communication from Margaret M. McGowan.

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Conclusion
Early seventeenth-century Brussels was a city that presented a variety of em-

ployment opportunities for a musician and dance master. The Jesuit college
required the services of a dance teacher and choreographer for their six annual
plays and occasional dramatic productions, as did the Chambers of Rhetoric.
Brussels had a long established and vibrant tradition of urban ceremonial prac-
tices, which included dance. The city was a major commercial centre, wealthy
and well-populated, where there would have been a strong demand for the ser-
vices of a dance teacher, the means to pay for the dance lessons he provided,
and leisure time to attend his classes. The presence in Brussels of Albert and
Isabella and their court also added a further potential source of employment
for a dance master.
The dance master who owned the notebook was an entrepreneur who ran a
school in Brussels at which dance and music was taught to both ladies and gen-
tlemen from a wide geographic area and from a range of social backgrounds.
The notebook was used for his teaching activities, as a repository of vocal and
instrumental music that his students could learn. In the notebook the music
often appears in a simplified form, more suited to the needs of beginners than
to experienced musicians. The pieces in the notebook were selected by the
dance master from current printed collections to cater for the demands of his
students, to whom he taught the latest fashionable dances and airs from the
French court. That the musical pieces were deliberately selected by the dance
master for different occasions, or for a specific purpose, is clear from the fact
that the airs de cour were copied into the notebook in a different order from
which they appeared in the printed collections. The presence in the notebook
of the current ‘hit tunes’ from the French court ballets and court composers
not only indicates the strong ties the dance master had to Paris and the French
court musical establishment, but also that the dance master was well aware of
what he needed to teach to keep attracting students.
The dance master, and possibly his students, were actively involved in per-
formances. The inference that his students were involved in performing in
danced theatrical spectacles is not an unreasonable one, as many of his stu-
dents were from the upper levels of society whose members danced in such
spectacles on a regular basis. The presence of plots for six different ballets, a
list of ballet titles, music for ballet entrées (one of which is specifically con-
nected to a dance pupil) and the comprehensive canon of dance figures, all
point to an active choreographer and performer as the owner of the notebook.
The deliberate alteration in the texts of some of the airs in the notebook to

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Conclusion 163
reflect their performance context also supports the picture of a school that
was actively involved in performance. The dance master used his notebook as a
repository of material that he would, or might, need when organizing a danced
theatrical spectacle, including instructions for making fireworks and instruc-
tions for a virtuoso exhibition with a pike. The six ballet plots also demonstrate
the dance master’s knowledge of the contemporary dance culture as practised
at the French court, and at other courts with close ties to Paris, such as the
court of Lorraine at Nancy. These ballet plots are similar to ballets de cour of
the time, both in their structure, their staging, in the characters who danced,
and in the choreographic resources that were employed, such as geometric
shapes and figures formed by the dancers, the use of pantomimic dancing and
gestures, and the inclusion of danced battles.
The long sequence of instructions for a virtuoso pike exhibition recorded
near the end of the notebook can also be seen as a product of its time and
place. The early seventeenth century saw, for the first time, the publication of
military-drill manuals, as well as increased attention to the use of the pike in
treatises written by masters-of-arms. Brussels itself had militia guilds drawn
from the middle and upper levels of society, and the pike was among the weap-
ons carried by these guilds. The pike exhibition is a unique example of how the
martial arts and the art of dance could be combined to produce a spectacular
demonstration of rhythm, balance, and dance-like control over one’s bodily
movements, combined with the strength and dexterity required to manoeuvre
a large, heavy staff weapon.
The large number of figures recorded in the dance master’s notebook is an-
other indication that he was regularly involved in creating choreographies for
dance performances, since for the dance master to bother writing down over
450 figures means that he must have used the canon on many occasions each
year. If he had only one or two choreographies to compose every year then it
would have been far more likely that he would just have invented the figures
he wanted to use at the time he was creating a choreography. The Jesuit college
in Brussels had a demanding schedule with plays scheduled every one to two
months over the first two-thirds of the year. If the owner of the notebook was
involved with these productions, then he would have had to work to a tight
timetable. Having a document on hand in which many possible figures for five
to sixteen dancers were recorded would have helped him to meet deadlines,
and to complete the composition phase of the production schedule in a short-
er time period, thereby allowing more time for teaching his choreographies to
the students and rehearsing them.
The notebook also provides evidence that the school in Brussels employed
more than one teacher, and that it taught both music and dance, as indeed had

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164 Conclusion
often been the case since the fifteenth century. The number of different hands
in the notebook, indicates that more than one person had access to it, and had
the responsibility of recording the songs and dance tunes that were taught to
the students. The notebook must have been kept at the school (which may
have been in the dance master’s house, as was the case for Vallet’s school in
Amsterdam), in order to allow all the teachers to have access to it. The fact that
more than one person had access to the notebook and that the responsibility
for recording material in it was shared, led to a second copying of the same
air on one occasion. The four verses of de Boësset’s Lors que je suis aupres de
vous was copied onto f. 58v, with the music for this air arranged in four parts
and notated on the subsequent folio 59r. This air, however, appears again in
the notebook on f. 78r. This time only the melody is given and no text, only
the first line is written under the music, with widely variable spelling (that is,
Lozb que ie suib auprer de voub), and in a different textual and musical hand to
that on ff. 58v–59r. Obviously, the copyist of f. 78r was not aware that the song
had already been entered into the notebook in a far more complete format
when he started writing down the melody again in a slightly simplified form.
The number of different hands in the notebook, and the details of what each
hand copied into it, reveals the owner as a busy entrepreneur, who delegated
work to his colleagues. For example, even when the music for the airs de cour
was written by the dance master the text was written by a different person. The
dance master obviously wanted to devote his time and attention to musical
matters, such as providing arrangements of the airs, rather than non-musical
recording of the song texts, which is what he did for the airs Sous la fraicheur
and Adieu volage empire. Here the dance master not only wrote out a slightly
varied version of the melody from that found in the printed editions, but he
also had to compose three lower parts since these two airs were only published
in an arrangement for voice and lute and one for solo voice only (see Table 7).
The picture of the anonymous dance master that emerges from the pages
of his notebook is an appealing one. The range of subject matter of the resets
– medical, cosmetic and agricultural – reveals a man of wide interests, while
the systematic canon of dance figures suggests someone with a logical mind,
who appreciated order and design in his art, and his ironic comment on the
character of the lovers in the title of one of his ballet plots reveals his sense of
humour. He had connections with other musicians and dancers, like Lespine,
Belleville and Destourmelle, as well as with other professionals such as the ex-
pert in the handling of staff weapons and an artificer, men whose expertise
differed from his. Even though we do not know his name, nor his date or place
of birth, the footprints of his activities that do remain add immeasurably to
our knowledge and understanding of the life of a dance master in a large urban
centre in the early seventeenth century.

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Facsimile of Dance-Related Material from S 253
List of Ballet Subjects and Six Ballet Plots – Pages 166 to 177
Canon of Dance Figures and Letters – Pages 178 to 214
Pike Exhibition – Pages 215 to 226
Description of Dance Pupils and Signatures – Pages 227 to 243

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Appendix 1
Transcription and Translation of the Six Ballet Plots
Transcription of Ballet f. 2r–v: Ballet L’enuie de l’honneur de l’Amour fidelle de

passioné
Primier entreront les pages auecq les flambeáuz qui danceront leur ballet.
Puis entrerat vne musicque pour chantér et annoncer le subiect du ballet.
Puis entrerat vn chareau triomphal auecq Orphee dedans qui Iouerat du luth auecq la
Deesse Cÿpris et vne fortune au periot du chariaú
Puis pour la condúicte du chareaú il y aurat vn lion et vne lionne e qui tireront le
chareau et alentour du chareaú seront esclaues de toutes nations qui Io veront des
Instrúments et deuant la teste de chareau seront trois enfans de Cÿpris del’Amour fi-
delle des passioné et celluy de mitan tiendrat vne courone auecq vn laurier a la main
et serat abillé en Deesse auecq les cheúeux y endants auecq vne courone sur la teste
puis les deux aultres acosté tiendront chascun une espee a la main auecq une corone
sur la teste [f. 2v] puis touts ensenble feront trois tour de sale en se retirant puis les
trois enfans del’Amour fidelle des passioné r’entreront poúr danser leur ballet puis se
retireront.
Puis entrerat les passionez amoureux qui danceront leur ballet auecq chascun leur
Nimphe et ala fin se dancerat ce qui serat de plus beaú.
X puis entreront deuant les trois enfans del’Amour fidelle de passioné les esclaues de
toutes sortes de nations qui danceront leur balet. puis les trois enfans regardes la q[u]
aut
[H1] pour le grand balle entera cing pasionzne amourrs puis cing esclaues de nations
et tous de mem̃ e pour le mestre en liberte de leur bailleir leur quon et les damme leur
etserpe1 qui les notecie
Translation of Ballet f. 2r–v: The envy of the honour of faithful, passionate Love
First the pages will enter carrying torches and dance their ballet. Then a band of mu-
sicians will enter to sing and to announce the subject of the ballet. Next a triumphal
chariot will enter carrying Orpheus, who will play his lute, accompanied by the Goddess
1 I have interpreted ‘etserpe’ as an idiomatic spelling of ‘écharpe’.

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Transcription and Translation of the Six Ballet Plots 245
Cypris, and a figure of Fortune au periot2 of the chariot. Next, to pull the chariot there
shall be a lion and a lioness. And all around the chariot will be slaves from every nation
who will play instruments, and in front of the chariot will be three children of Cypris
[the goddess] of faithful and passionate Love. And the one in the centre will carry
in her hand a crown [girt] with laurel leaves and shall be dressed as a Goddess, with
her hair loose and wearing a crown on her head. Then the two other [children] to her
side will each carry a sword in their hand and wear a crown. [f. 2v] Then everyone will
together make three circuits of the hall and retire. Then the three children of faithful
and passionate Love will re-enter in order to dance their ballet, after which they will
leave. Next, the passionate lovers will enter and dance their ballet, each one with their
nymph. At the end the finest [of them] will dance again.
X Next, ahead of the three children of faithful and passionate Love, will enter slaves
of every nation, who will dance their ballet. Then the three children look about
[the text just breaks off here and the hand changes]
[H1] For the grand ballet five passionate lovers will enter, then five slaves of every na-
tion, and for all of the same the master gave them their freedom and that [of] their
ladies [and] their scarf that identifies them
Transcription of Ballet f. 4r–v: Ballet des mineúrs des Paÿs

Premierement entrerat les mineurs dansant leur ballet et ala fin de leúr ballet tour-
nant le dos ala porte entrerat vne montaigne faicte en grotte qui se nomine machine
et comme les mineurs se retourneront feront les estonnez en dansant toutioúrs leurs
figúres, et puis se viendront mettre alentoúr de la machine pour trauailler de leurs
armes et decouurir ce quil y at dedans aussy tot il y sortirat plusieúrs oyseaux et pe-
tites bestes sauúages et puis en sortirat deux satires et deux sauúages ⌈mores⌉ lequelz
espouuenteront les mineurs. ⌈et sortiront de la sale⌉ puis il y sortirat six petits nains
sauuages auecq grandes barbes blanches auecq chascún leur petit courtelas ala main
2 While chariots were a common occurrence in ballets throughout Europe, and the presence
of Fortune on such chariots was also reasonably common, I have not been able to find an-
other occurrence of the phrase ‘vne fortune au periot’. At this stage I cannot give a definite
translation of this phrase. Given the idiosyncratic spelling in the manuscript, my suggestion
is that ‘periot’ is a mis-spelling for the word ‘perron’. One of the meanings for this word given
in Randle Cotgrave’s 1611 dictionary is ‘a square base of stone, or mettall, some five or six foot
high, whereon, in old time, Knights errant placed some discourse, challenge, or proofe, of
an adventure’. (A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues [London: Adam Islip, 1611],
p. 710). My feeling, therefore, is that the phrase in the ballet plot is referring to a plinth of
some sort on which the figure of Fortune was standing in the chariot.

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246 Appendix 1
qui chergeront d’appointement les mineurs et les chasseron ⌈t⌉ touts dehors de la salle
toút cela se ferat auecq cadence, mesúre et figúres en dansant.
Puis r’entrerat les deux sauuages mores et les deux satÿres auecq chascun vn flambeaú
et danceront vn ballet.
Puis r’entreront les nains en Ioye pour leur victoire [f. 4v] dansant vn ballet victorieúx
auecq le coutelas ala main et ala fin de leúr ballet tournant le dos a la porte entrerat
vu ballet des cÿgoignes et comme les neins se retourneront al’Improuiste voyant ces
cygoignes les venir attacquer et faire la gúerre viendront a se Ioindre et ses cherger l’un
l’aultre en dansant les figures dú ballet des Neins et des cÿgoignes et a la fin les neins
chasseront les cygoignes hors dela salle toutioúrs en se battant en figúres puis les neins
retourneront victorieux dansante de Ioÿe tout six de front auancant Iusqu’ au boút
dela salle
Puis se retournant il auiseront six mineúrs Arabes abillez a leur façon auecq chascun
un miróir deuant leur poictrine qui esbluirat les neins et tomberont sur un genoux
tout esperdú remettant leur coutelas puis les arabes mineurs auanceront sur eux et
les feront passer se ⌈re⌉ tournant touts face a face et commenceront a dancer vn grand
ballet touts ensemble et ala fin de leur ballet prendront chascun leur nein sur leurs
espaules et en faisant la reuerence pour se retirer. et puis danceront ce qu’on voudrat.
Translation of Ballet f. 4r–v: Ballet of the miners from the countryside

First, the miners will enter and dance their ballet, at the end of which they will turn
their backs to the doors as the mechanical device representing a mountain in the
shape of a grotto will enter. And as the miners turn around they will act astonished,
still dancing their figures, and will then come and surround the mountain in order to
work with their tools and to discover what is inside [it]. At once a number of birds
and small wild animals will emerge, followed by two satyrs and two wild moors. These
will join together with the miners and leave the hall. Then six small, fierce dwarfs will
emerge, with long white beards and each one carrying a cutlass in their hand. They will
charge at the miners with their cutlasses drawn and pointing forwards, and chase them
out of the hall. All this is to be done in good rhythm [cadence], measure and in danced
figures. Next, the two wild moors and the two satyrs, each carrying a torch, will re-enter
and dance a ballet. Next, the dwarfs will return, overjoyed at their victory, [f. 4v] and
dance a ballet of victory, each carrying a cutlass in their hand. At the end of the ballet,
as they turn their backs to the door, a ballet of storks will make its entrance, and, as the
dwarfs turn around, they suddenly see the storks coming to attack and to make war
upon them. They will come together and charge one another dancing the figures of
the Ballet of the Dwarfs and Storks, at the end of which the dwarfs will chase the storks
from the hall, continuing to fight in figures. Then the dwarfs will return victorious,

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dancing with joy, all six of them abreast, advancing to the end of the hall. Then, as the
[dwarfs] return, they will notice six miners dressed in Arab fashion, each one with a
mirror in front of their chests that will dazzle the dwarfs, and [the dwarfs] will fall on
one knee all overcome and handing back their cutlasses. Then the Arab miners will
advance towards [the dwarfs] and make them pass, all turning to face one another, and
will begin to dance a great ballet all together, at the end of which each miner will take
a dwarf onto his shoulders, bow and retire. Then they will dance whatever they like.
Transcription of Ballet f. 45r: Subiect du Ballet de sept Vertus

Premier Il y entrera vne musicque qui chantera le subiect du balet quon represen-
tera puis entrerat vn chariot de triúmphe auecq vne fortune au periot quel tiendrat
les guidons de sept Vertús et dans le chariot seront les sept Vertús accompaignees de
sept nÿmphes persiennes esclaúes qui seront liez au tour du chariot et serat tiré par
sept lÿcornes accompaignees des deux nymphes qui chanteront le subiect du balet
plusieurs flambeaux et musicques et Instruments puis ayant faict leur tour de sale se
retireront
Puis entreront les sept vertús ⌈cauailliers⌉ dansant leur ballet et a la fin se retireront
dehors la sale. Puis entrerat sept licornes dansant leur ballet et a la fin se retireront
hors dela sale. Puis entrerat les sept persiennes esclaúes qui danceront leúr balet et
ala fin presque de leúr balet tournant le dos ala porte et eux s’àduancant entrerat les
sept Vertúeux caualiers et les persiennes se retournant et auisant les caualiers se pros-
ternent tout sur un genoux les caualiers s’aduancent sur eux et les releuent pour les
mettre en liberté puis commencent a dancer touts ensemble le grand balet Iusqu’ a la
fin. Puis danceront ce qui voudront.
Translation of Ballet f. 45r: Subject of the Ballet of Seven Virtues

First singers will enter and sing the subject of the ballet to be performed. Then a tri-
umphal chariot will enter, bearing a figure of Fortune au periot, which will hold the
pennants of the seven virtues. In the chariot will be the seven virtues accompanied by
seven Persian slave nymphs, who shall be tied all around the chariot and pulled along
by seven unicorns accompanied by two nymphs who will sing the subject of the ballet,
several torch-bearers, singers and musicians. Then, after making a circuit of the hall,
they will withdraw. Then the seven virtuous knights will enter and dance their ballet,
following which they will leave the hall. Then the seven unicorns will enter and dance
their ballet, and at its conclusion they will retire from the hall. Then the seven Persian
slaves will enter and dance their ballet, towards the end of which, they turn their backs
to the door. Advancing towards them [the slaves], the seven virtuous knights will enter,
and, turning around to see them, the Persian slaves will all prostrate themselves on one

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248 Appendix 1
knee. The knights advance towards them, raise them up and grant them their liberty.
Then everyone will begin to dance the grand ballet until the end, after which they will
dance what they like.
Transcription of Ballet f. 105r–v: l’assaút fúrieux des dames contre les plús coura-
geux des combas victorieux
Premier. Saturne serat au haut dú chareau de triomphe et tiendrat un lache et vn cor-
dage oú seront lié les femmes des nations comme esclaúes trois a trois au toúr dú
chareaú ou Proserpine et Minerue seront aússy dedans tenant vn Instrument ala main
et súr la poincte dú deriere du chariot il ÿ aurat vne Venús droite ayant vn carquoÿs et
arc et flesche a la main toutiour preste a decoscher le chariau serat conduit et mené
par trois Deesses abilléz en Venús portant le carquoys et arc et flesches toutiour prestx
a decoscher et deuant les Deesses. il y aurat vn tartare auecq vne grande aisle aú mitan
dú dos monté sur vne lÿcorne accompaigné des plusieurs sortes d’Instruments et flam-
beaux qui marcheront a la teste et feront trois tour de sale en se retirant hors de sale/
Puis les femmes des nations qui seront en liberte r’entreront furieusement en dance-
ront un ballet [f. 105v] furieux de toutes sortes des niches des mains et de bras et de
signals,
Puis le <grand> ballet de pages
Puis le grand ballet entrerat del’assaut furieux des dames contre le plus courageux des
combats Victorieux puis les dames tiendront a la main chascun vn guidon ou estandart
ou il y aurat vn coeur formé accompaigné de plusieurs estoilles et les grands courageux
tiendront a la main chascun vn dard auecq vn tafta des coúleurs des dames en façon de
guidon accompaigné d’un soleil plain delarmes et de ceste sorte danceront leúr ballet
touts ensemble et ala fin se dancerat ce qui voudront. finis
Translation of Ballet f. 105r–v: The wild assault of the ladies on the bravest of the
victorious warriors
First Saturn shall be on the top of the triumphal chariot, holding an axe and a rope to
which shall be tied in threes, as slaves, the women of the nations around the chariot.
Proserpine and Minerva will also be in the chariot, each with an instrument in her
hands, and at the very rear of the chariot there will be a Venus standing upright, hold-
ing in her hands a quiver and bow, and arrows ready to be let fly. The chariot will be
drawn and led by three Goddesses dressed as Venuses, carrying a quiver and bow, and
arrows ready to be fired. In front of the Goddesses will be a Tartar woman with a great
wing attached to the middle of her back, mounted on a unicorn and accompanied by
several kinds of musicians and torchbearers who will walk ahead of her, making three
circuits of the hall before leaving. Then the ladies of the nations, having been set free,
will re-enter wildly and will dance a furious ballet [f. 105v] with all sorts of signs and

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tricks using [the] hands and the arms. Then the ballet of the pages. Then the grand
ballet will enter representing the wild assault of the ladies on the bravest of the vic-
torious warriors. The ladies shall each hold in her hands a pennant [or standard] on
which shall be the shape of a heart surrounded by several stars. The bravest warriors
will each hold in their hands a small lance with taffeta pennants in the colours of their
[respective] ladies with a sun weeping tears. In this way they will all dance their ballet
together, following which they will dance what they like. Finis.
Transcription of ballet ff. 105v–106r : Aultre Ballet. De la fleur d’Amour des Amants
et Amantes passagers pour la grande sympatio fidelite et Affection quilz se portent
de se Iamais separer ny quitter quoy quil arriue
Premier. serat vn chariot triomphal auecq une fortuné au periot portant les guidons
des amants et Amantes et dedans serat Dieu Mars et la [f. 106r] Reÿne Saba accom-
paigné des plusieurs sortes des nations cauilliers et des quatre pantalons abillez de
diuerse couleurs qui Ioúeront des Instruments et respondront ala Voix d’vn Ange qui
serat ala teste du chariot et vn cupidon qui sera deúant l’ Ange accompaignee des plu-
sieurs flambeaux/ Le chariot serat tiré par deux cerf passagiers Puis feront trois tour de
sale et sortiront touts hors de sale/
Puis r’entreront les quatres pantalons auecq francisquine et Isabelle et danseront un
ballet des grimaches auecq figures et ala fin ilz sortiront dela sale tout en figures
Puis les pages entreront dansants leúr ballet
Puis entrerat la fleurs des amants et amantes passagiers trois danceront lentree des
amants […]ú grand ballet et trois ⌈amantes⌉ poúr suiueront vn peú apres, et touts
feront de mesme les amants tiendront un laurier a la main auecq vn tafta en guidon
plain de larmes et estoilles des couleurs des amantes puis les amantes tiendront ala
main vne branche de palme auecq un tafta des couleurs des amants en facon de gui-
don auecq vn soleil et estoilles dedans et entreront tout en figures et pour suiueront Ius
quel a la fin du ballet. […] danseront ce qui voudront finis.
Translation of Ballet ff. 105v–106r: Another Ballet. Of the bloom of love between
fleeting lovers male and female and the great sympathy and faithfulness they de-
clare, and the affection they bear one another, vowing never to be separated nor to
abandon one another, come what may3
First shall come a triumphal chariot with the figure of Fortune au periot carrying the
pennants of the male and female lovers. In the chariot will be the god Mars and [f. 106r]
3 By his use of the word ‘fleeting’ to describe the lovers who promise never to separate, I feel
that the dance master is poking fun at stereotypical plots where pairs of lovers swear eternal
faithfulness to each other.

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250 Appendix 1
the Queen of Sheba, together with knights from various nations and four Pantalones
dressed in diverse colours who will play instruments and respond to the voice of an
angel who shall be at the head of the chariot, and a cupid who will be in front of the
angel, accompanied by several torch-bearers. The chariot will be pulled by two passing
stags, which will make three circuits of the hall and then leave the hall. Then the four
Pantalones will return, with Franchescina and Isabella, and they will dance a ballet of
grimaces with figures, after which, all still in figures, they will leave the hall. Then the
pages will enter and dance their ballet. Then shall enter the fleeting bloom of male
and female lovers, three of whom will dance the entrée of the male lovers in the grand
ballet, and three female lovers will follow a short while after, all acting alike. The male
lovers will hold a laurel in their hands with a taffeta pennant filled with tears and stars
in the colours of their female lovers. Then the female lovers will hold a palm branch in
their hands with a taffeta pennant in the colours of their male lovers, with a sun and
stars on it, and they will all enter in figures, and they continue until the end of the bal-
let, and at the end of the ballet they will dance what they like. Finis.
Transcription of Ballet f. 117r–v: L’esperance des malcontens, esperants

Contentement des lanterniers
Primi: il entrerat quelq[ue] voix pour representer subiec l’entree sont les malcontents
les quelz danceront le ballet toút en differens grimaces tout en figures auecq plusieúrs
signes et façons, les malcontens seront abillez tout d’vue mesme façon d’une toille de
quelle coúleur l’on voúdrat et les habits tout d’vne Venúe auecq vne petite mandille vo-
lante touts les habits seront peincts plains des larmes et leúr boimet serat large comme
vn plat de mesme aux habits auecq bottines toúts. et de la façon danceront leur ballet
a la fin se retireront. Puis pour le second balet entrerat vn satÿre, vn fanthomme, vn
sauúage vn súisse Puis vne moresqúe auecq le suis e vne egÿptienne auec le Satÿre, et
vne Arabe auecq le sauúage et le fanthomme allumerat auecq sa lanterne deriere et
touts tiendront chascun vne lanterne a la main. ⌈et danceront leur ballet et se retire-
ront⌉ Puis entrerat des nÿmphes moresque lesquelz tiendront chascun vn flambeaú
et danceront vn ballet et a la fin se rangeront tant dun coste que d’Aultre dans la sale
[f. 117v] Puis entrerat le grand balet des esperants contentement qui seront cincq et
seront <h> abillez en façon de Mercúre accompaignez chascun d’vne Courtisane qui
seront vne de france, vne d’Espaigne / vne d’Italie vne d’e Hongrie et vne d’Angleterre
et ainsy danceront leur grand balet et a la fin danceront ce quil leur plairat. finis.
Translation of Ballet f. 117r–v: The hope of the malcontents, and the contentment of
the lantern bearers
First a number of singers will enter in order to present the subject. The entrée con-
sists of the malcontents who will dance their ballet, all using different grimaces, all in

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figures and with a number of signs and in a number of [different] ways. The malcon-
tents shall be dressed in a similar fashion, in a cloth of whatever colour they would like,
and all their costumes are that of a Venus with a small, loose cloak. All the costumes
shall be covered with painted tears and their hats [are] like wide dishes, similarly all
the costumes have small boots. In this manner they will dance their ballet, after which
they will retire. Then, for the second ballet, a satyr, a phantom, a wild man and a Swiss
guard will enter. Then a Moorish woman with the Swiss guard and an Egyptian woman
with the satyr, an Arab woman with the wild man [will enter] and the phantom will
provide light with his lantern behind them. Each one of them carrying a lantern in
their hand will dance their ballet, and then they will retire. Then Moorish nymphs will
enter, each holding a torch, and dance their ballet, and at the end [of the ballet] they
will arrange themselves half to one side of the hall, the rest to the other. [f. 117v] Then
the Grand Ballet of those searching for happiness will enter, and there will be five of
them, and all will be dressed like Mercury, and each one will be accompanied by a fe-
male courtier,4 one from France, one from Spain, one from Italy, one from Hungary and
one from England. They shall all dance their Grand Ballet, after which they will dance
whatever they please. Finis
4 The word ‘vne courtisane’ could also refer to a courtesan.

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Appendix 2
The Pike Exhibition (ff. 94r–99v)
1 Transcription
Folio 94r
L1: Fault premierement faire la Reverence.
L2: au bout de la picque et aduancer et
L3: par le long de la dicte picque puis la
L4: prendre de la main droicte par dessoubre
L5: la Jettez et la retiuoir./
L6: Picque sur l’espaule.
L7: Picque à terre
L8: Tournez demy tour
L9: Picque sur l’espaule./
L10: La Reuerence
L12: Mettez la pointe de la picque à terre et
L13: la Jettez en auant, bais[s]és la main droicte
L14: de laquelle retenez la picque et advançant
L15: un pas remettez la sur l’espaule.
L16: Picque a terre.
L17: demy tour.
Folio 94v
L1: Picque sur l’espaule faictes glisser vn
L2: peu la picque et renversant la main
L3: reprendre la pour la faire descendre à la terre
L4: Les deux petits appeaux./
L5: Le grand Appeau.
L6: Picque sur l’espaule
L7: Encor les 2 petits Appeaux
L8: Le grand appeau.
L10: Poussez la picque derriere par dessus l’espaule
L11: et faisant pencher la pointe de la picque
L12: à terre, redressez la en hault toulte droicte

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The Pike Exhibition (ff. 94r–99v) 253
L13: Jettez la en la haussant vu peu en tournant

L14: le bras puis la retienez de la main droicte
L15: laquelle renversez et portez par droicte
L16: laissant tomber en derriere la pointe de la picque
L17: par dessus lespaule. Tenez la pointe en
L18: hault et tirez le bout que vous tenez de
L19: la main droicte par derriere. affin de faire
L20: glisser la picque par dessus l’espaule
L21: renversez la main droicte et prendré la picque
L22: par la pointe./
Folio 95r
L1: Tournez au bout pour faire une glissade
L2: aduancer Avoyer pas et tournér pour faire encore
L3: une glissade.
L4: prendré la picque à contrepoider et la Jettez
L5: en hault la pointe deuant à fin de la reprendre
L6: de la main droicte par le bout auec la main
L7: droicte tirant le pied ⌈droict⌉ en arriere./
L8: Aduancez vne estocade et aduancez le pied
L9: droict tout ensemble
L10: Poussez le bout de la picque en auant et la
L11: faictes vn peu glisser puis la reprendré
L12: de la main droicte en tournant la main
L13: faictes Avoyer pas et tournez
L14: poussez la picque en auant pour la releuer
L15: sur lespaule dessus le bras
L16: Jettez la picque en hault la pointe la
L17: premiere et la retenez de la main droicte
L18: Picque sur lespaule
L19: faictes passer la picque par derriere
L20: le col et la retenez de la main gauche
L21: tournant la main de laquelle faire descendre
L22: la picque la <bo> pointe tombant à terre.
Folio 95v
L1: Jettez la picque en hault auec la main gauche
L2: la pointe en position de sorte que puisse
L3: reprendre le bout de la picque auec la

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254 Appendix 2
L4: main droite et remuer la pointe est presque

L5: toute droicte vu peu toutes faire pointe poussante
L6: en bas fault poussez le bout que tenez de
L7: la main droicte et l’approcher de la main gauche
L8: affin de la glaiue glisser.
L9: Aduancez ung pas et en faire aultant
L10: de l’aultre costé commençant de la main droicte
L11: Jettez la picque des la main gauche la
L12: pointe la premiere et la retenez par le
L13: bout de la main droicte.
L14: Aduancez vne estocade et le pied droict
L15: tout ensemble.
L16: Poussez le bout de la picque en auant
L17: glissant vn peu et la reprend[…] de la main
L18: droicte en la remuersant
L19: faictes Avoyer pas en tournant
L20: Tenez la picq[ue] par le bout et tenez les
L21: deux pieds tout droict vis à vis l’un de
L22: l’aultre prendre vostre. aduançant la pointe
L23: a terre deuant vous affin de tourner la
Folio 96r
L1: picque par dessus la teste la pointe
L2: en auant puis haussez la pointe en hault
L3: et faictes glisser la picque par dessus
L4: le bras gauche lequel haussenez peu à peu
L5: et faictes passer par deuant la haut
L6: teste et la picque par dessus./
L7: Marchez 3 pas et rependant faictes
L8: passer la picque <à contrepoidre> par
L9: derriere vous poussez la à contrepoidre
L10: pour la Jetter en l’air et la retenez
L11: par le bout auec la main droicte de laquelle
L12: l’avoir Jettez et obseruant un temps en
L13: la tenant de la main droicte tournez vn
L14: tour à gauche et faictes tourner la picque
L15: auec vous presentant la pointe deuant
L16: vous
L17: Jettez la picque en l’air et la

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L18: retenez de la main droicte

L19: Mettez la picque sur l’espaule.
L20: faictes descendre la picque et la
L21: mettez à contrepoidre sur le dos de la
Folio 96v
L1: main droicte faictes la passer par
L2: dessus la teste en tournant la main
L3: droicte et la reprendre par dessous de […] la
L4: dicte main la ramenant par dessoubre le
L5: coulde et l’aisselle. obseruez vn temps
L6: et demeurez vn peu la <porter la main>
L7: aduancez la pointe en auant portez
L8: la main droicte vers le bout tournez <demy>
L9: <3 words crossed out> demy tour à droict et aduancez le
L10: pied gauche […] le bout de la pirque
L11: portez y tout d’un temps la main gauche
L12: passant la picque par dessus vostre
L13: teste Aduancez le pied droict vers le
L14: bout tournant vn <one word crossed out> demy tour du
L15: costé gauche et y portez au mesme
L16: temps la main droicte vn passant la
L17: pirgue par dessus la teste Aduancér(e)
L18: la picque deuant vous et portez
L19: la main droicte qui est au bout vers
L20: la pointe en tournant demy tour du
Folio 97r
L1: costé gauche et faisant passer le bout
L2: de la picque par deuant vous puis
L3: mettez la picque sur lespaule.
L4: demy tour à gauche
L5: Aduancez une estocade et glissez
L6: Prenez la picque à contrepoidre auec
L7: la main droicte Jettez la pointe en l’air
L8: et retenez le bout de la main droicte en
L9: retirant le pied droict arriere. poussez
L10: une estocade en auant et glissez
L11: faictes en aultant de l’aultre costé

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256 Appendix 2
L12: Prenez la picque à contrepoidre

L13: Jettez la pointe en l’air, retenez le
L14: bout du rendre de la main droicte et le
L15: faictes passer par dessus la teste
L16: Aduancéz une estocade et glissez
L17: faictes en aultant de l’aultre costé
Folio 97v
L1: Faictes glisser la picque à
L2: terre auec la main droicte la main droicte prendez
L3: la par le bout faultez par dessus
L4: la picque le pied droict deuant prendez
L5: vostre glaive et passez la picque
L6: par dessus vostre teste puis
L7: faictes vne glissade.
L8: Prenez la picque par la pointe
L9: et la Jettez tout droict deuant vous
L10: pour la retenoir auec la main droicte
L11: par le bout aduancer vne estocade
L12: et glissez.
L14: Jettez la tout droict deuant vostre
L15: et la retenez auec la main droicte
L16: par le bout en tournant un tour
L17: entier et conduisant la picque deuant
L18: vous aduancez vne estocade et glissez
Folio 98r
L2: Jettez la tout droict deuant vous
L3: et faictes battement de main
L5: Le Jeu Par
L6: Hault
L7: La Rodemontade.
L8: Releuez le bout de la picque en
L9: hault et le Jettez en l’air pour
L10: le retenoir de la main droicte
L11: poussez une estocade et faictes glisser

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L12: la picque.
L13: Prenez la picque à contrepoidre
L14: mettez le bout à terre, Jettez le bout
L15: en l’air pour le retenoir de la main
L16: droicte.
Folio 98v
L1: Jettez la picque en lair la
L2: pointe deuant faictes tourner un tour
L3: et la retenez de la main droicte.
L4: la faisant tourner par dessus la teste.
L5: Le double Appeau
L7: faictes <tourner> le tour en l’air auec
L8: le costé du pied.
L9: Le double Appeau
L10: Marchez Ayoyer pas turnant la pointe
L11: de la picque à terre puis faictes en
L12: tour en l’air
L14: demy tour a gauche
L15: Jettez la pointe de la picque deuant
L16: vous et la retenez à contrepoidre de’
L17: la main droicte.
Folio 99r
L1: Pirque sur l’espaule
L2: faictes vn tour en l’air ayant la
L3: picque sur l’espaule
L4: le tour par sur la pointe du pied
L5: le double double Appeau
L5b: <demy tour à gauche>
L6: Picque sur lespaule
L7: Mettez le pied de la picque à terre
L8: et faictes vn tour en l’air la picque
L9: estant toutte droicte
L11: Demy tour à gauche <faictes> poussez
L12: vne estocade et glissez.

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258 Appendix 2

L14: et la Jettez en l’air tout droict deuant
L15: vous retenez la par le bout a main
L16: renuersée portez la droicte l’espaule
L17: et faictes vn tour en l’air
Folio 99v
L1: demy tour a gauche Aduancez
L2: vne estocade et glissez.
L3: Prendez la picque par la pointe
L4: et la Jettez tout droict deuant vous
L5: en l’air pour la retenoir par le bout
L6: demeurez vn peu un temps et
L7: haussant la pointe de la picque
L8: toutte droicte en l’air faictes vn
L9: tour et retenez la picque de la main
L10: droicte.
L12: Mettez le pied de la picque à
L13: terre faictes vn tour en l’air et
L14: tirez vostre espeé.
L15: balottez la picque en tournant.
L16: La Reuerence.
2 Translation by Margaret M. McGowan
[f. 94r] First of all make the Bow [Reverence]; with the end of the pike advance the
length of the said pike, then take it in the right hand underneath, throw it and bring
it back again.
Pike on the shoulder.
Pike pointing to the ground.
Make half a turn.
Bow [La Reverence].
Direct the point of the pike towards the ground and throw it forward, lowering the
right hand to take hold of the pike and advance a little to return it to the shoulder.
Pike pointing to the ground.

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Half turn.
[f. 94v] Pike on the shoulder, slide a little forward, the pike turning in the hand; take it
up again to let it slide to the ground.
Perform two thrusts.
The Great assault.
Again two thrusts.
The Great assault.
Push the pike behind above the shoulder, making the point of the pike touch the
ground, and lift it up quite straight.
Throw it raising it a little, then turning the arm in order to hold it with the right hand,
turn it over and carry it in the right hand letting the point of the pike fall behind, above
the shoulder.
Hold the point high and pull the end which you hold in the right hand from behind in
order to slip the pike above the shoulder and turn over with the right hand to take hold
of the pike by its point.
[f. 95r] Turn at the end to perform a glissade, advance again a few paces and turn in
order to perform another glissade.
Take hold of the pike in counterbalance and thrust the point forward in order to grasp
it again with the right hand and hold it by the end in the right hand to take a step back-
wards with the right foot.
Advance again and lead with the right foot all together.
Push the end of the pike forward and make it slide forward, turning the hand in order
to retake it in the right hand, take a few paces and turn, thrust the pike forward to roll
it above the arm.
Throw the pike high so that the point is forward and it rests secure in the right
hand.
Pass the pike behind the neck and grasp it in the left hand turning the hand so that it
drops slowly. The point of the pike towards the ground.
[f. 95v] Throw the pike high with the left hand, the point moving in such a way that it
can be taken by the right hand and as its point is almost straight, a little point so that
the end is pointing down, and thrust the point held in the right hand and bring it near
to the left hand so that the glaive slides forward.
Advance a little, and do the same from the other side beginning with the right hand.
Throw the pike with the left hand the point forward, and take it by the tip with the
right hand.
Advance again and lead with the right foot all together.

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260 Appendix 2
Thrust the point of the pike forward, letting it slide a little and take it again with the
right hand.
Advance a pace as you turn.
Hold the pike by the end, and keep both feet straight one beside the other, hold the
point of the pike towards the ground in front of you in order to turn the pike [f. 96r]
above your head the point forward, then raise the point high so that the pike can be
made to slide above the left arm which will slowly move upwards allowing the pike to
pass in front over your head.
Walk three paces, make the pike pass behind, so that you can effect a counterweight,
allowing it to be thrown into the air; and taking the end with the right hand with which
you have thrown it, observing a pause.
While holding it in the right hand, turn a little to the left side and make the pike turn
with you, presenting the tip in front of you.
Throw the pike into the air and take it with the right hand.
Put the pike on the shoulder, lower the pike so that its weight rests on the back of the
[f. 96v] right hand, pass it above the head turning the right hand and take it up again
in the same hand bringing it back and letting it rest above the elbow, under the arm.
Keep it there and stay awhile.
Then advance the point forward, put the right hand towards the end, turn a half turn to
the right advancing with the left foot, grasp the end of the pike and hold it for a while
in the left hand, pass the pike above your head.
Advance with the right foot, making a half turn to the left and, at the same time, with
the right hand pass the pike above the head.
Advance the pike forward and using the right hand take hold of the end near the point,
performing a half turn [f. 97r] on the left side passing the end of the pike in front to
lodge the pike on the shoulder.
A half turn to the left.
Advance and glide, grasping the pike in counterbalance and with the right hand throw
it point first into the air and seize the [end of the] pike in the right hand keeping the
right foot back.
Move forward and slide.
Repeat the movement from the other side.
Grasp the pike in counterbalance, throw the point in the air, seizing the end of the
stave by the right hand and make it [the pike] pass above the head.
Advance a pace and glide forward.
Repeat the movement from the other side.
[f. 97v] Make the pike slide to the ground with the right hand, push the point down and
pass the right foot over the pike before taking your thrust and passing the pike above
the head, then perform a glissade.

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Take the pike by the point and throw it straight before you, take it up again in the right
hand by the end, advance and perform a glissade.
Take the pike by the point and throw it straight before you; take it up again in the right
hand by the end, making a complete turn, and then trailing the pike in front of you,
advance and perform a glissade.
[f. 98r] Take the pike by its point, throw it directly before you and clap your
hands.
Play from above.
Display of boasting [La Rodomontade].
Raise the end of the pike up high, throw it in the air and catch it with the right
hand.
Advance and make the pike glide.
Take the pike in counterbalance, put the point to the ground, throw the end in the air
and catch it with the right hand.
[f. 98v] Throw the pike into the air, the end pointing forward, make a turn and seize it
with the right hand and pass it over the head.
Double thrust.
Make it turn in the air with the side of the foot.
Double thrust.
Walk a few paces turning the point of the pike to the ground.
Then make a turn in the air.
Half turn to the left.
Throw the point of the pike in front of you and catch it in counterbalance with the
right hand.
[f. 99r] Pike on the shoulder.
Make a turn in the air having the pike on the shoulder with the turn on the ball of the
foot.
Double, double thrust. <A half turn to the left>
Put the foot of the pike to the ground, do a turn in the air, keeping the pike straight.
A half turn to the left and thrust, then advance with a glissade.
Take the pike by the end and throw it into the air straight ahead in front of you, take
it up by the end – hand reversed – and place it on the right shoulder, make a turn in
the air.
[f. 99v] A half turn to the left.

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262 Appendix 2
Advance and perform a glissade.

Take the pike by the point and throw it into the air in front of you to catch it again by
the end, wait a little while and raising the point of the pike completely straight in the
air, perform a turn, and take the pike in the right hand.
Put the foot of the pike to the ground, make a turn in the air, and draw your sword.
Wave the pike as you perform a turn.
Bow [Reverence].

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Index
Adriaenssen, Emanuel 141n3 ballet

Adson, Thomas (dance teacher in Balet comique de la royne (1581) 55, 72,
London) 105 76, 80–81, 82, 95n76, 99, 132
Agarite 45 Balet des onze Anges (1614) 57–59
air de cour 2, 6, 7, 12, 15, 16, 140, 141, 142–151, Balet des Princes Indiens (1634) 64
161, 162, 164 Ballet de la Prosperite des armes de la
Adieu volage empire 148, 164 France (1641) 86
C’est trop courir les eaux 148 Ballet de la reine (1605) 68, 71, 83–84, 85
Donc pour aymer 16, 149 Ballet de la reyne (1619) 68
Est-ce Mars le grand dieu 142 Ballet de la Sérénade (1613) 148
Fuyés amants 148 Ballet de la vieille cour (1635) 85
Je ne veux 148, 149 Ballet de Madame (1615) 68, 73–74,
Je voudrois bien 148, 149–151 76–77, 80, 148
Lors que je suis aupres de vous 164 Ballet de Monseigneur de Vendosme
Ne dois-je donc 16, 148, 149 (1610) 74, 76, 77, 83, 84–85
O! grands dieux 148 Ballet des Fous (verses by Lespine) 153
Que de douleurs 16 Ballet des Grimasseurs (1598 ) 157
Qu’ont servi 149 Ballet des Mores (verses by Lespine) 153
Sous la fraicheur 164 Ballet des Moscovites (verses by
Albert, Archduke 15, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 62, 63, Lespine) 153
81, 84, 86, 162 Ballet des Polonais (1573) 42, 132
alchemical images 95–96, 97 Ballet de Trois Âges (1608) 157
allemande 49, 69, 140 Ballet pour Madame (1613) 142
Almenda, Antonio de (dance master) 104 La Délivrance de Renaud (1617) 67, 73,
Alta Regina 128 75–76, 81, 84, 93
Amsterdam 15, 60n127, 110–111, 112, 114, 155, Les noces de Psyché et de Cupidon
164 (1608) 50–53, 54, 81
Antonio’s Revenge 46 Mascarade des eschecs (1607) 68
Antwerp 59, 60–61, 63, 141n3 ballet à entrées 65
Apollo 51–52 ballet de cour 4, 6, 43, 54, 55, 65, 68, 70, 71,
Aragona 78–79, 86
Camilla d’ 133 vocal airs from 81, 143–146
Eleonora d’ 134 See also individual ballets
Arbeau, Thoinot (Jehan Tabourot, dance ballet entrées 4, 6, 7, 52, 65, 68–69, 70, 72,
master) 34–35, 128, 135–136 74, 75, 77, 78, 85, 140–141, 162
Arena, Antonius 1, 31 Ballo fatto da sei cavalieri 72
Armide 67, 81, 85 Ballo fatto da sei dame 72
ars 100 Barriera 133
artificer 11, 96, 99, 101, 164 barriers 130–131
See also gunner basse danse 34, 35–36, 48, 50, 105, 108
steps of 35–36
Bagnacavallo, Francesco 41 Bataille, Gabriel 142, 148, 151
Baïf, Jean-Antoine de 95 Battaglia, La 132, 133
Ballard, Pierre 140, 141, 147, 153 Beauchamp, Pierre (dance master fl.
Ballard, Robert 64, 140, 142, 152, 154–155 1597–1626) 157

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280 Index
Beaujoyeulx, Balthazar de 72, 81, 82, 99, 132 Charles V 49, 63, 119
Bellange, Jacques 71, 79 Choné, Paulette 79
Belleville. See Montmorency, Jacques de choreographic figures 57–58
bergamasque 151 See also geometric figures
Bergen op Zoom 62 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 37–38
Berghes, marquis de 119 Circe 55
Binche 119, 134, 138 Claes, Hendrick 147
Boësset, Antoine de 15, 82, 147, 148, 164 Cologne 115
Bordeaux 55, 108 combat, danced 6, 65, 74, 75, 78, 85, 120–121,
Borgia, Lucrezia 130, 134 131–139, 158
bourrée 128, 129 commedia dell’arte 44
Boÿd, Mattheú 115 Franchesina 75
Brach, Pierre de 55, 80, 81–82, 136, 138 Isabella 75
Brainard, Ingrid 107 Pantalone 44, 66, 68, 74, 75, 250
branle 31, 52, 69–70, 129, 130, 141 Compasso, Lutio 139
Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeilles, Confesse, Nicolas 54
seigneur 31 continenze 127
Braunschweig and Lüneberg, Duke of 156 Conway, Edward, Secretary of State 83
Brinson, Peter 3, 15 Corbény 110
Brissac, maréchal de 31 Cornazano, Antonio (dance master) 1, 102,
Bristol 60n127 133
Broken Heart, The 47 costumes 71, 79, 83–84
Brussels 4, 5, 6, 12, 15, 16, 47–50, 56–57, 59, Coulon 115
60–61, 63–64, 110, 112, 115, 119–120, 152, courante 2, 6, 69, 140, 151–152, 154, 155–156,
153, 156, 159, 162, 163 159
archducal court in 14, 50, 53, 54, 63–64, La vignonne 154–155
115, 162 couranto 69
carillon 146–147 court ballets 64
Buch, David J. 3–4 participation of sovereign 55–56
Buffons 135–136 See also elite, dance of; ballet de cour
Burensköld-Broman family 9 court balls 41, 69–70
See also elite, dance of
Calais 105 courtiers
Cambridge 105 as dance performers 49, 49n94, 49n95,
candles 71–73 50, 51–52, 64, 86, 160
capriole 77, 92, 127 Créquy, family 160
carnival 31, 40–41, 49–50, 93, 117, 133 Crispus (play by Bernardino Stefonio)
Caroso, Fabritio (dance master) 31, 39, 76, 37
92, 127, 128, 139 Cupid 49–50, 51–52, 54, 55, 68, 80, 81, 82, 97,
Carr, Robert, Earl of Somerset 42 133, 136–137, 159, 250
Cecil, William, Lord Burghley 106 Cynthia’s Revels (1600) 45
Cely, George 105 Cypris. See Venus
Chamberlain, John 43
Chambers of Rhetoric 59–62, 162 Dallington, Robert 106
chariot, triumphal 54, 65, 66–70, 76, 85, 86, dance
158, 244, 247, 248, 249 and alchemy 6, 96
Charles IX, king of France 31 and civic pride 40
Charles, Prince of Wales 106 and courtship 34–35

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Index 281
and drama 5, 34, 36–37, 43–47, 57–59, Dorat, Jean 132

60–61 Du Bellay, cardinal 160
and fireworks 99–101 Duchesne, Joseph 32
and politics 41–43 Durand, Étiènne 73, 75, 84
and social order 40–41 Dürer, Albrecht 107
as entertainment 30–32, 44 Durosoir, Georgie 66
as ethical activity 35–40, 46, 108 dwarfs 69, 74, 78, 80, 83, 86, 138, 246–247
as physical exercise 32 See also notebook S 253, ballet plots
as social marker 33–34
bodily control 33, 38, 109–110 Eleanor, queen of France 49
skill required 33 elite, dance of 30, 49
social 34, 49, 50, 52, 54, 69–70, 86, 133, Elizabeth, daughter of James I 98n89
159 Elyot, Thomas 35–36, 46, 108
See also court balls Emeraud, Antoine (dance master) 156
teaching 2, 4, 6, 33, 47–48, 53, 63–64, emotions, portrayal of in
105–109, 111–112 choreographies 79–80, 82
theatrical 72, 92, 131 entrechat 77, 79
treatises 1 Epicene 47
dance masters 2, 53, 58–59, 61, 76, 78, 99, Esquivel Navarro, Juan de 103–104, 113,
100, 103–104, 106, 107–108, 120, 128–129, 136n46
131–132, 139, 156, 157, 161 Este 102
dance music 2, 6, 7–8, 140–141, 151–152, Alfonso d’ 134
154–159, 162 Isabella d’ 41
dance pupils Estourmel 160–161
general description of 2, 7–8, 15, 113–117, Antoine d’ 160
158 Jean d’ 160
signatures of 2, 7–8, 15–16, 113, 114–115, Louis d’, Baron de Surville 160
116–117 Estrella, Juan Calvete de 49n93
social standing of 116–117
dancers fantasmata 129
bodily movements of 77 Feltre, Vittorino da 108
professional 85, 107 fencing positions 135–136
dance schools 6, 15, 48, 103–105, 107–109, Ferdinand of Austria 64
110–113, 115–116, 117, 161, 162–164 Ferrara 40, 108, 134
dance steps 76–77, 127 Ficino, Marsilio 94–95
Daniel, Samuel 99 Filelfo, Francesco 32
Daye, Anne 72 Filelfo, Mario 100
Delamotte, Jean (dance master) 157 Fineschi, Maestro Marcantonio di Maestro
demy sault rond 77 Francesco (dance master) 104
deportment 33, 38–39 fireworks 2, 5, 6, 7, 11–12, 96–101
Destourmelle 10, 157, 159–160, 161, 164 floor patterns 33, 34, 61, 133
Diana, goddess 80, 82, 136 Florence 102–103, 121
Diane de Foix, comtesse de Gurson 55, 81, Ford, John 47
136 Fortune, figure of 67, 245, 247, 249
Dickinson, Alis 154 Francesco, Mariotto di Bastiano di (dance
Domenico da Piacenza (dance master) 102, teacher) 103
128 Francesco (ran a dance school with Guiseppe
Donne, John 43 Ebreo) 103

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282 Index
François I, king of France 42, 160 Henrietta Maria, queen of England 83

Frederick V 98n89 Henri III, king of France 41, 42, 56, 69
Frías, Manuel de (dance master) 106 Henri II, king of France 134
Frythe, Richard 107 Henri IV, king of France 42, 109, 147
Fuccio, Maestro Lorenzo di (dance Henry, Prince of Wales 42
master) 105 Henry VIII, king of England 106
Hercules 134
Gaffoyne, Jasper (dance master) 106 Hours, the 52, 81
Gagliarda di Spagna 128 Hugh of Saint Victor 38
galliard 31, 69, 92, 110, 141 Hymenaei (1606) 100
gavotte 10, 129
geometric figures 2–3, 5, 7, 9, 37, 42, 46n73, imitative dancing 65
57–58, 75–76, 78, 87–94, 95, 96, 99–100, See also mime
132, 163 ingenio 100
gestures 33, 38–39, 77, 78–80 Inns of Court 109
Ghent 60n127 Instruction pour dancer 128–130
Gheyn, Jacob de 118, 121–125 Isabella Clara Eugenia, Infanta of Spain 14,
Gibbsons, Jérémias 110 15, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 63–64, 81, 84, 86,
Giuseppe Ebreo (dance master) 102 120, 162
glissades 129–130
glisses 129–130 James I, king of England 42
goddesses 51–52, 54, 66, 68, 74, 85, 248 Jesuit colleges 58n121, 60, 135n44
Gonzaga 102 in Brussels 56–57, 59, 162, 163
Margherita 68 Jesuit drama 36–37, 57–59
Vincenzo 68 jig 43–44
Grand Ballet 4, 10, 52, 54, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, Jonson, Ben 42, 43, 45, 47, 100
76, 85, 95, 132, 137, 158, 245, 248, 249, Joyeuse, duc de 55
250, 251
Grassi, Giacomo di 119 Ker, Robert 43
Grelle, Anthony 110
grimaces. See gestures La Grené, Adam-Pierre de (dance
groot 16 master) 115
Guarini, Guarino 108 La Grénée, Pierre (dance master) 157
Guédron, Pierre 15, 82, 140, 142, 147–148 La Grené, family of musicians 64
Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro (dance Lambrecht, J. 62
master) 38, 45, 77, 100, 102, 103, 128 Langen, Otto à 116
guilds 40, 47–48, 59 Lassus, Orlando 44
militia 62, 119–120, 163 Lavagnolo, Lorenzo (dance master) 102
Guise, Charles de, duc de Aumale 52 Lespine, Charles de 151–153, 164
gunners 11, 96, 98, 100–101 Lille 58
livret 5, 55, 65, 67, 70, 79
Hancock, Edward 15, 111–112 London 60n127, 105, 107–108
Hatton, Christopher 110 Lorraine, court of 152, 153, 163
Hearne, Jeremy (dance master) 54 ballets at 71, 74, 76, 79, 85
Hearne, Mr (dance teacher in York) 105 Louis XIII, king of France 65, 73, 85
Heawood, Edward 9 Louis XIV, king of France 85
Hector 100 Louvain 115
Henri, duc de Bar 68 Lupi, Livio (dance master) 139

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Index 283
Lutij, Prospero (dance master) 139 Nancy 71, 74, 76, 85, 163

Lyon 134 Naples 37, 60n127
festa a ballo (1620) 2
Madrid 40, 104, 106 Naunton, Sir Robert 110
Maestro Lorenzo (dance master) 104 Negri, Cesare (dance master) 1, 72, 76, 92,
Mantua 108 127, 134–135, 139
Marais 67, 85 Neufville, Charles de (son of Nicholas de
Margaret of Austria 48–49 Villeroy) 106
Marolles, Michel de 99–100 Norwich 60n127
Mars 67, 74 notebook S 253
Marston, John 46 airs de cour in 12–13, 142–151, 164
martial arts 118–119, 130, 136, 139, 163 ballet plots 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 50, 54, 65,
See also pike 80–81, 84–85, 121, 137–138, 163, 164,
Mary of Hungary 49 244–251
masks 79 Aultre Ballet De la fleur d’Amour 66,
masque 41, 42, 43, 61, 69–71, 72, 75, 83, 92, 67, 75, 85, 249–250
96, 100 Ballet de sept Vertus 67, 158–159,
masquerades 41, 50, 55, 71, 80, 81, 136–137, 247–248
138 Ballet des mineúrs des Paÿs 54, 69, 74,
master-of-arms 11, 119, 120, 131, 138, 163 78, 86, 137–138, 245–247
measures 69 Ballet L’enuie de l’honneur de
Mechelen 49 l’Amour 10, 66, 87, 244–245
Medici characters in 74
Catherine de’ 42 choreographic descriptions in
Lorenzo de’ 102 75–78
Marie de’ 85 ending formula 69–70
Medusa 129 l’assaút fúrieux des dames 67, 80, 87,
Mercoeur, duc de 41 137, 248–249
Mercury 85 L’esperance des malcontens 85, 87,
Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at 250–251
Court (1615) 42 music 80–81
mesura 77–78 purpose of 82–83
military drill manuals 121–126, 138–139, 163 staging of 86–87
mime 65, 75, 78, 82, 85 structure of 66–70
miners 78, 80, 83, 86 ballet titles, list of 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 87, 162
See also notebook S 253, ballet plots dance music in 151–152, 153–156,
Minerva 74 157–159, 161
Monteux, Jérôme de 32 date of compilation 14–16
Montmorency, Jacques de (or different hands in 8, 9–14, 159, 164
Belleville) 66–67, 156, 164 language of 14–15
Montpellier 31 music for ballet entrées 157–159
moresca 31, 105, 133 orthographic features of 14
Munich 44 physical description of 8–9
Muses, Nine 51–52 provenance of 9
musicians 15, 49, 50, 61, 63, 64, 66, 72, 79, 80, purpose of 4, 164
111–112, 156, 164, 244, 247, 248 resets 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11–12, 15, 164
guild of 47–48, 111n46 teaching records in 112–116
mutanze 127, 128 See also pike, exhibition in notebook

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284 Index
Nuremberg 33 Psyche 51–52
nymphs 49–50, 60, 66, 74, 247, 251 Puckering, Sir John 107
of Diana 80, 133, 136–137
Nyon, Claude (dance master) 157 Ravelhofer, Barbara 37, 45
Rede, Thomas (musician and dance
Oberon (1611) 54 teacher) 105
ommegang 62, 120 rehearsals 53–54, 61
Orgel, Stephen 44 Renée, Princess of Lorraine 44
Orpheus 66, 67, 80, 244 revels 69–70
reverence 86, 105n16, 118, 127, 129
Padua 106 rijksdaaler 16
pages 68–69, 71–72 riverenza grave 127
See also notebook S 253, ballet plots Roche, Sieur de la 55
Palmierei, Matteo 38 Rome 59, 134
Paris 60n127, 100, 107, 108, 109, 140, 146, 156, Ronsard, Pierre de 46, 95
162 royal entry 40
Parma 118
passamezzo 140 Saint Ambrose 38
passi gravi 127 Saint Catherine (location) 114
Passo e mezzo 127, 128 Saint-Hubert 65, 77
pause. See fantasmata Santucci, Ercole 139
pavane 69 sarabande 140
Pavaniglia 127 Saturn 74
Pesaro 133 seguiti finti 127
Philidor, André Danican 155n46 seguiti ordinari 127
Philidor collection 153–154, 155–156, Sforza 102
157–158 Costanzo 133
See also dance music Galeazzo Maria 32, 100n95
Philip II, king of Spain 40, 49, 63, 119 Ippolita 1
Philip IV, king of Spain 104 Shakespeare, William 45
Philips, Peter 15 ‘s Hertogenbosch 59n124
Piccolomini, Aeneas Silvius 38n36 Siena 103, 104, 105
pike 118–120 slaves 66, 68, 74, 158
combat with 119 See also notebook S 253, ballet plots
exhibition in notebook 2, 3, 6, 8, 11, 118, Slingsby
120, 121–126, 138–139, 163, 252–262 Eleanor 105
similarities with choreographed Henry 105
dances 127–131 Thomas 105
step vocabulary 129–130 Sophonisba Africana 61
Plato 46 spectacles 2, 4, 5, 41, 42, 46, 49, 50, 53, 59,
Platter, Felix 31 71–72, 75, 82, 95, 98–100, 120–121, 131,
Pluvinel, Antoine de 108–109 133, 136
Polk, Keith 47 music forces for 80–81
Pontaymery, Alexandre de 109 rehearsals for 53–54
posture. See deportment staging of 54–55
Powell, John S. 43 Spencer, Margaret 105
Praetorius, Michael 108, 140, 152, 156–157 staff weapons 11, 118–119, 120, 130n27, 163
processions, dancing in 62 See also pike

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Index 285
stage machines 75, 86 Vendôme, duc de 160

Stefonio, Bernardino 37 Venice 107
step sequences 127–128 Venus 67, 74, 159, 248, 251
storks 74, 80, 83, 138, 246 Verçeppe 133
See also notebook S 253, ballet plots Vermeulen, Juan (or Hans, dance
Strozzi, Filippo di Piero 31 teacher) 53
Strozzi, Piero 99 Vezzani, Antonio 118
stuivers 16 Villeroy, Nicolas de 106
Swift, Richard 110, 111 Villiers, George, Marquess of
sword dances 62, 135–136 Buckingham 42–43, 106
See also combat, danced virtue, physical enactment through
symbols 94–96 dance 35–39
virtues 35–36
tablature charity 158
lute 2, 8, 141–142, 161 chastity 82, 136
mandore 2, 153, 161 circumspection 36
violin 2, 154, 161 faith 158
Tethys Festival (1610) 42, 99 fortitude 158
Thuloye, Madame de la 50 industry 36
Tindel, Robert 111 justice 158
torchbearers 65, 68, 70–74 moderation 36
torch dances 71–72 patience 158
torches, effect of 72–74 providence 36
Tordiglione 127 prudence 35–36, 158
Tordiglione nuovo 127 temperance 158
Torneo Amoroso 132 Vlaemsche Vrede-vrengd 62
Toulouse 108 volta 31, 69, 140, 151–152
trabuchetti presti 127 von Waldheim, Fredrik August Schürer 9
Trevi, Matteo da 32
Tuccaro, Arcangelo 39, 46 Ward, John M. 3
turns 122, 125–126, 129 Warren, Robert (dance teacher) 107
Warren, William (dance teacher) 107
Valladolid 71 watermarks 9
Vallet, Nicolas 15, 110–112, 114, 140, 151, Weckherlin, Georg Rudolf 82–83
154–155, 161, 164 Wilhelm of Bavaria, Crown Prince 44
Valois, Marguerite de 63, 133 William IX, duke of Aquitaine 57
van Alsloot, Denis 120 Winter’s Tale, The 45
Vandenesse, Jean de 49n93
van der Briel, Hans (dance master) 61 York 60n127, 105
Vaudemont, Mademoiselle de 55
Vegio, Maffeo 38n36 zurlo 92

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Footprints of The Dance: An Early Seventeenth-Century Dance Master's Notebook

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Footprints of the Dance: An Early Seventeenth-Century

Dance Master’s Notebook

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jan Bloemendal (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and

Peter G. F. Eversmann (University of Amsterdam)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/dtem

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2018030410

Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

1 A Dance Master’s Notebook 7

2 Dance in Early Modern Europe 30

3 Ballet Plots, Dance Figures and Fireworks 65

4 Dance Teaching, Schools and Pupils 102

5 Danced Combat and the Pike Exhibition 118

6 Dance Music, Dance Songs and Airs de Cour 140

Facsimile of Dance-Related Material from S 253 165

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

1a Melody of Je voudrois bien by Antoine de Boësset from Gabriel Bataille, Airs de

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

The following principles were observed in the transcriptions of material from

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

The handwritten notebook held in the Kungliga Biblioteket in Stockholm Cod.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004377738_002 Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

study I have sought to provide an explanation of why the dance-related mate­

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

A Dance Master’s Notebook

1 Contents of the Notebook

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004377738_003 Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

2 Physical Description and Provenance

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

3 The Different Literary and Musical Hands

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

seventeenth-century binding with ‘Bassus’ on the front cover, that presumably

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

patrons.8 If so, H6 evidently copied medical, cosmetic and agricultural recipes

8 Werrett, Fireworks, pp. 36–8.

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

illustration 1 Decorative motif by H7 to end

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

4 Questions of Dating and Geography

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

table 1 Contents of S 253

Folio Contents Hands

f. 1r List of Ballet Titles H1

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

table 1 Contents of S 253 (cont.)

Folio Contents Hands

f. 18r Geometric Figures for 13 dancers F1, H1

Jennifer Nevile - 978-90-04-37773-8

study I have sought to provide an explanation of why the dance-related mate

8 Werrett, Fireworks, pp. 36–8.

16 Elyot, The Book, p. 79.