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Introduction

In The Scourge of Folly (1611), Sir John Davies dedicates the following poem “To mine intirely beloued, Mr. Thomas Giles, most expert teacher in the Courtly Quality of Dauncing”:

Thou Master of the seemeliest motions (yet)
That e're were taught in measure of a Daunce;
Who to thy Minde, well mou'd, thy feete dost set:
So, one, the others fame doth much aduance.
In thy profession, neuer Sunne yet saw
A man that hath, or can do more then Thou;
The quaint Proportions that thy Measures draw.
And thy faire Minde (where vertues motions flow)
   Makes thee renownd, belou'd, and still admird,
   Whereto thy merrits iustly have aspirde.[1]

As the author of Orchestra Or a Poeme of Dauncing (1596), a lengthy allegorical tribute to the dance, it is not surprising that Davies would laud the terpsichorean, and Thomas Giles, royal musician and later dancing master of Prince Charles, is a logical dedicatee. However, Davies’ correlation of seemly motions with a fair mind is of particular interest. In the Renaissance, dancing was considered a visible manifestation of inner qualities, as well as a symbolic representation of cosmic order and an enjoyable recreation.[2] By examining theories of dance in literature and conduct manuals, recommendations and qualifications in educational treatises, and references and regulations in university records, this paper explores how Renaissance theorists, dancing-masters, and educators promoted dancing’s benefits and counteracted its drawbacks. Humanist influences will be considered, and terpsichorean theories will be augmented by descriptions of dancing culled from the recently published Records of Early English Drama collection for Oxford (REED: Oxford).

In Music in the English Courtly Masque 1604-1640, Peter Walls defines musica speculativa as, “theories describing the ultimate position of music in the created universe transmitted from ancient Greek sources to the mainstream of Western European thought by Boethius in the early sixth century.” The three types of music in this system – musica mundana (macrocosmic harmony of the spheres), musica humana (harmony of the healthy human body and, metaphorically, the state), and musica instrumentalis (music one hears, practical music), were viewed, “not as separate phenomena, but as different aspects or manifestations of a universal harmony.”[3] Considered both a science and an art, music was simultaneously concrete and symbolic. Other music theorists had slightly different categories, but all made a distinction between musica theorica and musica practica.[4] Humanists revived and expanded the theory of musica speculativa, and brought it into the university curriculum. While most German, French, and Italian academies included music as part of the Quadrivium by the mid-15th century, English universities were alone in offering music as a degree.[5]

Unfortunately, Renaissance texts do not offer a parallel classification system for dance types, what one might call a theory of danza speculativa. While Plato’s Laws, which provided a basis for elementary education in the Renaissance, distinguished between two categories of dancing, “the presentation of works of poetical inspiration and the development of physical fitness, nobility and beauty,” the Renaissance did not see a proper articulation of this theory, only allusions to similar ideas. However, the Boethian music categories provide a useful substitute and can be adopted retrospectively as a model for analysing dance: danza mundana would be the divinely choreographed dance of the planets; danza humana would refer to the embodiment or revelation through movement of an individual or group’s virtues; and danza instrumentalis or danza practica would describe the practical study and performance of dance steps and choreographies.[6] Indeed, most references to dance divide naturally into these classifications, suggesting the possibility that similar divisions existed in the minds of Renaissance educators and authors. However, for this paper, it will suffice to examine Renaissance dance in terms of these three, hypothetical categories.

Footnotes