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Conclusion

To again quote Peter Walls’ description of musica speculativa, the three branches of Boethian (and Renaissance) music theory – musica mundana, musica humana, and musica instrumentalis or practica –  “were understood, not as separate phenomena, but as different aspects or manifestations of a universal harmony.”[66] In this paper I have argued that theorists and educators in Renaissance Europe thought about dance in similar categories, that there was a de facto danza speculativa. Although scholars know of no systematic or comprehensive theory of dance, adopting the Boethian music divisions facilitates analysing and comparing ideas about and references to dance in conduct manuals, educational treatises, and university records.

This initial study suggests several conclusions. Firstly, considering the above dance references in terms of the branches of an overarching danza speculativa reveals that the celestial dance of the spheres or danza mundana, the most often cited explanation of dance in the Renaissance, has been overemphasized. While it was certainly a known and accepted interpretation, especially for dancing in court masques, of the writers on dancing, only Sir John Davies favours it above the other theories. Secondly, scholars have rightly acknowledged danza humana’s debt to Baldesar Castiglione, but have wrongly classified other humanists’ less enthusiastic comments about dancing as outright condemnations when they merely express reservations. Moreover, the inherent contradiction between danza humana and danza practica has been overlooked. Dancing masters like Fabritio Caroso asserted that the requisite grace of courtly dance was innate and could not be learned at the same time as they attempted to teach it by publishing etiquette tips and step instructions. Finally, in the category of danza practica, religious reformers’ accusations that dancing led to sexual misbehaviour have been too easily accepted. While dancing was an important means of courtship and socializing for many social classes, the main concern about dancing according to university administrators and instructors was disorder. Whether dancing led to unsanctioned assemblies in the street, property damage to university buildings, or simply gave students an excuse to skip class, maintaining order, not moral issues, was what motivated university officials to suppress students’ dancing. When dancing occurred within an established structure such as a college-sponsored masque or at a dancing school, the University might even offer financial or legal support.

Renaissance dancing masters and dance writers drew on humanist learning – referencing dancing in Antiquity to bolster the status of contemporary dancing, adopting the dialogue structure of classical texts, publishing treatises and manuals, and emphasizing the individual rather than the ensemble in many choreographies. Dances like the galliard offered opportunities for individual’s to demonstrate their terpsichorean skills, with opportunities for variations and improvisations for both men and women built into the structure of the dance. They also required dancers to be able to judge if and when more impressive embellishments might be appropriate.

That the Renaissance saw a conduct manual explosion suggests pervasive anxiety and confusion about what proper behaviour entailed. Knowing the rules of the dance, and having the grace and ability to follow them, demonstrated not only a courtier’s genteel breeding and good judgement, but also that he knew his place in the intricate and sometimes dangerous dance of the Renaissance court. As George Silver writes of the Spanish duel in Paradoxes of Defense (1599), “They stand as brave as they can with their bodies straight upright, narrow spaced, with their feet continually moving, as if they were in a dance, holding forth their arms and rapiers very straight against the face or bodies of their enemies, and this is the only lying to accomplish that kind of fight.”[67] After all, in the Renaissance, even fighting was a dance.

Footnotes