The magazine of THE COUNTRY DANCE SOCIE'IY OF AMERICA Calendar of Events August THE EDITOR 2 - 30 NATIONAL C.D.S. PINEWOODS CAMP )tiy Gadd 2 - 9 CHAMBER MUS;IC'; WEEK Buzzards 9 - 23 TWO DANCE WEEKs Bay, RFD 2 counTRY ASSOCIA'IE EDITOR 23 - 30 FOIK MUSict:WEEK Massachusetts Genevieve Shimer September DAnCER 9 - 19 RALPH PAGE'S FALL CAMP, with Nibs CONTRIBurnm EDITORS and Jean Matthews Lee Haring J. Donnell Tilghman 25 - 27 BOSTON C. ·D. S. -APPAlACHIAN MOUNTAIN Evezyu K. Wells Roberta Yerkes CLUB - Cardigan Weekend 26 C.D.S. WORLD"S FAIR PERFORMANCE U.S. PAVILION, 4-5 p.m. 29 C.D.S. NEW YORK - Opening Party THE COUNTRY DANCER is published twice a year. Subscrip­ October tion is by membership in the Country Dance Society of 3 C.D.S. NEW YORK - Morris and Sword America.(annual dues $5, educational institutions and Workshop, with Nibs & Jean libraries $3). Inquiries and subscriptions should be Matthews, followed by a Country sent to the Secretary, Country Dance Society of America, Dance Party in the evening 6 55 Christopher St., New York, N.Y. 10014. C.D.S. NEW YORK - Dance Classes, Fall Series, begin Tel: ALgonquin 5 - 8895 23 - 25 HUDSON GUILD FARM DANCE HOU'3EPARTY Oct. 30-Noy. 1 PITTSBURGH - Workshop with May Gadd November Copyright 1964 by the Country Dance Society, Inc. 7 - 8 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 1 ITHACA , Workshop with May Gadd * * * * * * * * * * * * * Marriages Table of Contents HURT-MITCHELL On July 25, 1964, Martha Ann Hurt of Raleigh, North Carolina, to Howard Mitchell of Washing­ Page ton, D.C. Calendar of Events . • • . 3 A Gallimaufry of Gambols • • . • 4 SIMMONS-BAKER On June 28, 1964, Violet Era Simmons of History through Song and Ballad. 9 Merion., Pennsylvania to Louis Coombs Weller Baker of CDS - World's Fair Performance 12 Washington, D.C. The Baron of Brackley. 20 Center News .••. 22 TATTON-ALCOCK Madeleine Tatton to Thomas E .E. Alcock; News from all over • • 24 residing at St. Anne's, Tanners Lane, Haselmere 1 Surrey 1 England. PICTURE CREDITS By Stan Levy, George Pickow and Gerry Steinfeld Birth IAWSON: To John and Becky Lawson, of Boston, a son, ear~ in 1964. 2 3 masters, the music masters and the masque designers. The A Gallimaufry fJf GamiJfJis sophisticated touch lent elegance to the native practice, but the older, simpler country dances still kept their ( "But what started you on training fal­ place in the affections of the "dancing English. " The cons--how did you learn to do it?" I asked Earl of Worcester writes to the Earl of Salisbury in 1602, a Yale graduate student who was raising "We frolic here at court; much dancing of country dances rock birds in his New Haven bathroom. before the Queen's Majesty, who is exceeding pleased there­ "Oh, I just began by reading up in Shake­ with." speare", be quite seriously replied; "You More popular on the stage than the court pavana, can learn all about falconry in Shakespeare.") gaillards and lavoltas were the one-man Jigs, the height of virtuosity in capers, caprioles and other cavortings. The Jig-maker often ended the play, as in Henry V, when What one learns about dancing in Shakespeare muat the final lines are assigned to "a dancer", for the jig be set against the background of his audience--that play­ might be sung as well as danced. It was the forerunner bouse spilling over with every class of society, all to of the music-ball turn. An actor was often hired for be kept entertained by actors hired for their special his talents as a Jig-maker. While other dramatists brought talents; against the street life of London, noisy and in the Jig as an extra, Shakespeare incorporated it to bustling, ballad vendors bawling the news to popular tunes, emphasize the dramatic mood of the play as a whole, es­ street cries, maypoles and their morris men; against pecially in the song-and-dance ending. Shakespeare's own country-town youth, when travelling Here is Beatrice on wooing, wedding and repenting showmen arrived, set up their tents and pageants like as "a Scotch Jig, a measure, and a sinka.pace (cinque-pas) today's circuses, played, and passed on to the next town, "The first is bot and hasty, as a Scotch Jig, and leaving echoes and memories; against the surviving texts :f'ull as fantastical." Sir Toby, after listing all the of contemporary dramatists and poets, often richer in fashionable dances, says, "My very valk should be a Jig", specific allusion to dances and tunes than Shakespeare; and incites Sir Andrew to show the excellence of his leg: against the outpouring of Puritan diatribes on the pre­ "Let me see thee caper ..• Ha! Higher! Ha ba, higber!.!xcel­ valence of "lewd plays and bawdry"--actually one of our lent!" On the Jig-cum-song, we have Moth "Ji.gging off ,, best sources of informatio.n as to what was really going ·a tune at the tongue's end", Biron bored with "Great Her­ on. And in a broader sense, what one learns--or sees cules whipping off a Jig", and Hamlet on Polonius; "He's some scholars finding in Shakespeare is the underlying for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or be sleeps." Pla¥; Falstaff as the folk fool; The Winter's Tale as an This patchwork of references, while endlessly en- · allegory of the spring ritual of renewal. tertaining as one moves the pieces around, cannot really Shakespeare recalls in his imagery every aspect of represent the essence and atmosphere of Shakespeare's his Warwickshire youth--not only falconry, but every infusion of song and dance and tune and instrument into sport, riding, animals and crops; the surrounding wood­ his plays as a whole. Hardest of all is it to separate lands, every eddy in the Avon as it ~wirled around the folk from courtly, for his audience demanded the two, in­ arches of Clopton Bridge. The most incidental reference discriminately. These bits and pieces, fascinating in may emanate from a calendar cuatom, a travelling mummer's themselves but more so in context, are here lifted out troupe, . the Cotswold Games, even an Elizabethan progress of their setting--a cardinal sin in literary criticism. to a neighboring great bouse (Kenilworth and Warwick were (And footnotes are omitted: references will be furnished nearby) when local artisans or shepherds were brought in on request! ) as entertainers . His plays echo both town and country Shakespeare uses a few ballad tunes tnat have come attitudes towards these shows; they are both friendly down to us as Playford Dances: "Ja.ck-a-Lent" (a small and satiric. puppet used as a target of ridicule during Lent); "Jog The importation of foreign, and therefore highly On", the setting for a score of ballads; "Heartsease", .admired dances and songs was increasing at every level· tragicomically effective when Peter rushes in with the the French and Italian dancing masters came into the ' news of Juliet's death: "Ob musicians, musicians, play great houses, along with the fencing masters, the riding 'Heartsease' for 'My heart is full of woe'", quoting from a ballad set to that tune. "Kemp's Jig" is named 4 5 hoof of the Dauphin's horse "is more musical than the for Will Kemp 1 Shakespeare's clown and jig-maker. The tune of Ophelia's mad song, "And will he not come again?", pipe of Hermes". Gloucester laments "the piping times of peace" . And "Rumour is a pipe blown by surmises". Truly is a minor variant of our "Milkmaids". The pipe-and-tabor 1 tune for the catch "played by the picture of No-Body the pipe has many stops. The tabor is often used without (Ariel being invisible) may be related to our tune for the pipe, often, too, with supernatural import. No-Body's Jig", for the old play, "No-Body and Some-Body", But "Oh, the hobby horse is forgot". Hamlet is quoting from a ballad about the Puritan suppression of waa endlessly punned upon. And, of course 1 "Greensleeves ". Sir Toby'a roistering "Susanna" is a natural for that May Day observances. Other uses of the term suggest that tune.. It is almost a cliche in The Mercy Wives. No wonder "hobby horse" was a cornful epithet, sometimes with a Ralph Vaughan-Williams uses it as a theme in his opera, broad or bawdy connotation. Sir John in Love. These tunes my well have been danced A wonderful gathering up of folk elements, used realistically rather than as "escape" as in As You Like as well as aung in Shakespeare's day 1 though his allusions are only to the songs. ~~ is found in the lovely pastoral scene towards the end of The Winter's Tale, when poetic allusion, explicit As to performance 1 country dances are called for in The Tempest, when, in a maaque-like episode, Juno calls on reference and performance combine in the village merry­ "the sun-burnt farmers to put on rye-straw hats, make hol­ making of swains and wenches, rogues and courtiers in iday, and these fresh nymphs encounter in country footing." disguise. Shakespeare's own memory may be at work when There is magic in the First Witch's direction: "I'll charm Perdita, costumed as Flora, says, "Metbinks I play as I the air to give a sound/While you perform your antic have seen them do in Whitsun pastorals", for there is an round." And Dull is the satiric means of ridiculing the entry in the Stratford records of 1583: "Payd to Davi mal-apropos: "I will play the tabor to the (nine) worthies Jones and his companye for his pastyme at Whitsontyde and let them dance the hay.