Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 1).pdf/250

198 from the drama. The period of 'intermixed' dancing (Hymenaei), which it introduced, served as a sequel to the greater part of the mask proper, and is sometimes described as 'the revels' (Love Freed; Twelve Months). More precisely, the order of the dancing, subject to minor variations, was as follows. After the dialogue of presentation and the antimask, the maskers entered and began a series of 'masque dances' (Oberon; Love Freed), 'changes' (Malecontent; Insatiate Countess), or 'strains' (Hymenaei; Cynthia's Revels; A Woman is a Weathercock). These are also called the 'single' dances, to distinguish them from the 'intermixed' dances (Blackness) or more usually and simply, the maskers 'own' dances or the 'new' dances. Sometimes the 'first' dance is distinguished from the 'main' dance (Twelve Months; Lords' Mask; Mercury Vindicated; Golden Age). After one, two, or three 'new' dances, the maskers 'dissolved' (Hymenaei) and 'took out' for the 'revels'. Finally they gathered again for their 'going off' (Twelve Months), the 'last', 'parting', 'departing' or 'retiring' dance, which sometimes took them 'into the work' (Oberon). If they did not dance back 'into the work', they probably unmasked at this stage, after a ceremonial reverence to the company, known as the 'honour' (Hay Mask; Your Five Gallants; A Woman is a Weathercock). The revels consisted partly of the solemn figured dances known as 'measures', partly of 'lighter' dances (Hay Mask). Those most often mentioned are the galliard, coranto, and lavolta; others were the brawl (Browne's Mask), duretto (Beaumont's Mask; Mask of Flowers), and morasco (Mask of Flowers). Of course, only 'ordinary' measures (Indian and Chinese Knights) and familiar court dances were available for the revels. The mask dances proper, on the other hand, as the epithet 'new' indicates, were specially designed and carefully learnt for each occasion. They appear to have always been 'measures'. Baldassarino regards 'meslanges geometriques' as being of the essence of the mask. The dances were a technical matter, with which the poets were not much concerned, and they do not as a rule attempt any notation, or even detailed description of the figures. An occasional literary touch was, however, to their fancy. In Hymenaei some of the figures were 'formed into