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Famed for Dance:

Essays on the Theory and Practice
of Theatrical Dancing in England,

1660-1740

By IFAN KYRLE FLETCHER, SELMA JEANNE COHEN

and ROGER LONSDALE

New York

The New York Public Library

1960

GV
1781
F62

1960 marks the 200th anniversary of the death of John Weaver, one
of the greatest figures in the history of English dance. Today, when
the achievements of British ballet are recognized throughout the
world, we take this occasion to draw attention to the long unrecog-
nized but manifestly remarkable accomplishments of an earlier era.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-11245

Reprinted (and preprinted) from the
Bulletin of The New York Public Library

June, November 1959; January, February, May 1960
Printed at The New York Public Library

form p686 [iii-21-60 8c]

I glimpses

Ballet in England, 1660-1740*

By IFAN KYRLE FLETCHER

AM asking you to join me on a journey of exploration. I can offer you glimpses of many revealing and unusual facts, but I assure you that the exploration is into a period and a subject which have still the nature of a jungle in which there are few reliable guides and fewer accurate maps. I place myself in the position of your guide with considerable misgiving, but I hope that the story of ballet in England from 1660 to 1740 will rouse your curiosity as it has roused mine and that something in the nature of a connected story will emerge.

During the Commonwealth the public performance of entertainments of dancing almost ceased. I say "public performance" advisedly because there is evidence that even the bitter opposition of the Puritans did not succeed in stamping out dancing entirely. It was still practised in the schools; it was even encouraged by the Inns of Court. In 1663 Samuel Pepys engaged Mary Ashwell as a companion to his wife and in April of that year they walked in the fields by the river, gathering cowslips, while Mary told them of the parts she had played in the masques at Chelsea School "six or seven years ago," that is, in 1656 or 1657. A few days earlier Pepys had recorded that the girl was a fine dancer. In 1653 Luke Channel, a famous dancing master, organised a private entertainment for the Portuguese Ambassador, at which Shirley's Cupid and Death was performed. Shirley wrote that "the Gentlemen that perform'd the Dance shew'd themselves Masters of their quality." But the outstanding proof of the popularity of dancing at what we have always thought of as an unfavourable time was the fact that the most famous English book in the whole of dance literature was published

* The Woodward Lecture, delivered in Yale University Library, Monday, 9 March 1959.

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