The Apology

I cannot pretend to possess a vast knowledge either of Shakespeare or historical dance' as an undergraduate student, I am only wetting my feet in the waters of academic inquiry, and all my conclusions should be considered hypotheses. Nevertheless for reasons that remains a mystery to me, no one has previously written a practical guide for staging the dances in the plays of William Shakespeare despite there being a large number of frequently performed plays that contain dancing. Therefore, despite my acknowledged inadequacies as a scholar and writer, I hope this paper may probe a useful resource for scholars, students and directors as well as a stimulus for examining one of the underexplored Shakespeare topics, dance in Shakespeare.