A History of Country Dancing
with an emphasis on the steps
Anne Daye, HDS Director of Education and Research
Elizabethan Country Dance
Records of the time show that the country dance was current by the late sixteenth century, when ‘old and new’ country dances were enjoyed at court. We have no specific evidence for what was understood by ‘old and new’ at that time, but the lengthier long and round dances, also danced in open spaces, may have been the ‘old’ form, as Margaret Dean-Smith proposed in the modern edition of The English Dancing Master (1957, 35).
Queen Elizabeth enjoyed seeing country dancing on her progresses; a telling account of her visit to Cowdray in August 1591 shows the social range of the vernacular dance: ‘In the evening the countrie people presented themselves to hir Majestie in a plesaunt daunce, with taber and pipe, and the Lords Montague and his Lady among them, to the great pleasure of all the beholders, and gentle applause of hir Majestie’ (Nichols 3, p.95). The dance is not specifically named as a country dance, so strictly speaking this anecdote only supports the mingling of nobles and the lower orders in a dance. It’s also worth noting that Shakespeare never used the term ‘country dance’ in a play; the nymphs and reapers of The Tempest entered in ‘country footing’. Nevertheless, the enjoyment of country dancing as a recreation by the Queen and her court is plain. Earl of Worcester to Sir Robert Sidney 1602: ‘we are Frolyke heare in cowrte: mutch dauncing of contrey dawnces before the QM[Queen’s Majesty] Whoe is exceedingly pleased therwith’ (Nichols 3, p. 40).
No country dance choreographies prior to 1651 have survived. We select what we judge to be an older form or having a tune recorded as circulating in the latter half of the sixteenth century or an association with those times as representing the country dances of Elizabethan England. A few are recorded as dances (not just tunes): The Shaking of the Sheets for example.
Thomas Morley in A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) states that country dance music is in the courante or compound duple measure. This is a dance metre associated with France (according to the Italian masters) and the courante step is described by Arbeau 1589, as well as Caroso and Santucci. Two thirds of the dances in Playford 1651 are in this metre; the majority of the remainder are in duple metre. Upon a Summer’s Day is a good example of the lilting and attractive courante metre. Today, musicians have the habit of referring to the compound duple tunes as being in jig time: there are only a few true jigs in Playford 1651: Skellemafago, Millisons Jig (second strain) and Kemps Jig have the driving relentless quality of the excitable jig.
Bibliography
Arbeau, T. (1596) Orchesographie. Lengres: de Preyz. Facsimile reprint: Geneva, Minkoff 1972.
Caroso, F. (1581) Il Ballarino. Venice: Ziletti. Facsimile reprint: New York, Broude Bros. 1967
Morley, T. A. (1966) A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke. London: Short 1597. Edited by Harman, r. London: Dent 1966
Nichols, J. (1823) The Progresses and Processions of Queen Elizabeth. London 3 vols.
Morley, T. A. (1966) A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke. London: Short 1597. Edited by Harman, r. London: Dent 1966
Santucci, E. (1614) Mastro da Ballo. Facsimile and edition: Sparti, B. (2004) Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag
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