'What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?'
Masculinity and Dancing in Early Modern England

Antidance Treatises

Antidance treatises and abuses that refer to dancing are the main source for charges of men's dancing as unmanly, but even they offer surprisingly little fodder to feed the fire. One of the only instances occurs in The Schoole of Abuse, Conteining a plesaunt inuective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Iesters and such like Caterpillers of a commonwealth where Stephen Gosson relates the following annecdote:

Bunducia a notable woman and a Queene of Englande, that time that Nero was Emperour of Rome, hauing some of the Romans in garrison heere against her, in an Oration which she made to her subiects, seemed vtterly to contemne their force, and laugh at their folly. For she accounted them vnwoorthy the name of men, or title of Souldiers, because they were smoothly appareled, soft lodged, daintely feasted, bathed in warme waters, rubbed with sweet oyntments, strewd with fine poulders, wine swillers, singers, Dauncers, and Players. [57]

That the Roman soldiers are dancers is one of the reasons why the queen questions their masculinity, accounting them 'unwoorthy the name of men.' Gosson contrasts the 'traditional' martial values of the warrior queen with the effete, foreign practises of the Roman soldiers. Yet Gosson's example of dancing as unmanly is undermined by the fact known to his readers that he conveniently fails to mention; those sweet-smelling, dancing soldiers went on to brutally and thoroughly crush Queen Boudicca's rebellion. [58]

Antidance treatises are especially interesting for what they tell us about customs. Most of the treatises rail against what is commonly done, and in condemning these practices often describe them in great detail. In Thomas Lovell's Dialogue between custom and veritie, for example, Veritie is the spokesperson for the moral Christian condemnation of dance while Custom gives the pro-dance view. By naming the pro-dance mouthpiece 'Custom' Lovell clearly classifies dancing as something customarily done, however much he may disapprove of it. [59] Likewise in his treatise against dancing, John Northbrooke complains that if a man 'be no dauncer, he is a foole and a blockhead... if he can Dice, playe, and daunce, hee is named a proper and a fyne nimble man.' [60] Northbrooke states that this is the common estimation of dancing, even though he vehemently disagrees with it.

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