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The Bard's Galliard: A Practical Guide to Shakespearean Dance


Introduction

In the back of an unknown edition of Shakespeare, I once encountered a brief list of recommended period dances for use in Shakespeare's plays. I recall that the author suggested that choreographers use the branle or the hay for the first of two dances in The Winter's Tale. I imagine this suggestion enlightened most directors and choreographers no more than it aided me. "Branle" and "hay" remained arcane words scribbled on a notecard. It is more likely that the director or choreographer-if there even was one-would adapt a few contemporary folk-dance steps for the shepherd dance, arrange a display of gymnastic flips and leaps for the satyr dance, or cut one or both of the dances all together. At least that is what I did when first faced with the mysterious directions, "[Music]. Here a dance of Shepherds and Shepherdesses" and "Here a dance of twelve Satyrs."1 I composed a simple, slow combination for the shepherds and shepherdesses' dance based on moves I knew from swing dancing and cut the satyr dance completely.

Quite by accident, I had discovered that there were dances in Shakespeare's plays. Knowing that I had taken several dance courses, my classmates had nominated me choreographer for a class production of The Winter's Tale in the fall of 1997. My initial attempts at research met with little success. A library catalog search of "Shakespeare" and "dance" found only one book: Alan Brissenden's Shakespeare and the Dance, which provides an extensive analysis of the literary and dramatic function of dancing in the plays, but offers no practical suggestions for how a director or choreographer would go about staging any of the dances mentioned.

Shakespeare and the Dance does offer a small but useful glossary of Renaissance dance terms in which a director or dramaturge could look up the mysterious words and learn that a branle or brawl (as it is pronounced) is a:

(a) Step in the basse dance which appears to have been a rocking step in which the body remains on one spot but the weight is moved from one foot to the other. The precise interpretation has aroused much discussion. (1521) [the earliest use as cited in the O.E.D.]

(b) Linked dance related to the basse dance, usually in duple time; the dancers move sideways instead of forward. Thoinot Arbeau gives directions for twenty-four different branles in Orchesography (1589) and there were many others. (1541)2

The curious choreographer, finding understanding of the branle to be dependent on knowledge of the basse dance, might then proceed to look up "basse dance" in Brissenden's glossary. Such a search would lead to the definition of the basse dance as:

A rather solemn dance usually in duple time, without any jumps. Widespread in the Middle Ages, it seems to have developed into the pavan. 3

This definition raises several problems. The most obvious quandry being that Shakespeare was neither writing during the Middle Ages nor setting The Winter's Tale in that period. Therefore, a basse dance does not seem to be an appropriate dance to perform in a Shakespeare play. Secondly, neither the satyr dance nor the shepherd and shepherdess dance transpire during solemn moments in Scene 4 of Act 4. On the contrary, both dances occur at a festive and raucous sheep-shearing celebration. Furthermore, while the basse dance is "without any jumps," the servant who announces the satyrs specifies that "not the worst of / the three [dancers] but jumps twelve foot and a half by the'/ squier" (IV.iv. 340-342). Even if the director ignores these inconsistencies and compiles all the information known-that the branle is in duple time and the dancers move sideways with a rocking step and no jumps-he or she still lacks sufficient information to stage a dance. These definitions fail to specify the proper number of dancers or couples, the floor pattern, or the arrangement of the steps. Looking up the pavan or the hay leads to similarly unhelpful definitions. While this research may be interesting in of itself, the choreographer doing the research has drawn no closer to having a dance to teach the actors at the next rehearsal.

There was, however, a second part to the definition of the branle. The latter definition (b) offers another avenue for research. In addition to a description of the dance's structure, a "linked dance," or one where the dancers hold hands, and direction, "sideways instead of forward," the definition mentions twenty-four variations of the branle published in 1589, roughly twenty years before Shakespeare wrote The Winter's Tale. This date is more contemporaneous with Shakespeare's work than the date mentioned in the prior definition (a), 1521. The reference directs us to a volume entitled Orchesography by Thoinot Arbeau. Now, at last we find a book that lists steps, explanations, illustrations, and other details pertinent to performing dances like the hay and branle.

Footnotes

1 The Winter's Tale, Arden Shakespeare. (IV.iv. lines 167-168, and lines 343-344). back to text
2 Alan Brissenden, Shakespeare and the Dance. (London: Macmillian Press Ltd, 1981), p. 112. back to text
3 Ibid. back to text

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December 9, 2002

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