From: KGANDEK@mitvmc.mit.EDU (Kathryn Gandek)
Subject: Elizabethan Jigs
Organization: The Internet
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 15:36:53 GMT

>Greetings unto the Rialto from a hallaciously busy Justin du Coeur!
And now from Catrin o'r Rhyd For, who's suffered from the same hallacious woe!

>Miklos talks briefly about jigs, and the way they seem to mix music,
>dance, and theatre. Vashti asks:
>
>>haven't heard of anything like this in any of my sources. Are you finding
>>this in period writings or in modern histories?  Please to cite sources????

I found a brief description in a bunch of handed down xeroxes which are still
lurking in my office.  (I'll remember to copy and return them one of these
years, Caleb!)  Watch for it in a follow-up posting on the heels of this one.

>Unfortunately, I don't *think* the sources say anything much about
>choreography -- my recollection is that we just have lyrics and maybe
>some music. It's interesting to know that they existed, though. While
>I wouldn't agree that music, dance, and theatre were exactly inextricably
>entwined, they *were* clearly far more related in period than we generally
>think of them being today. (Several of the more interesting dramatic
>forms that Catrin is working on, like disguisings and masques, involved
>dance as a pretty fundemental element.)

Exactly as Justin says.  In disguisings and masques, the elements of music,
dance and theatre are entwined.  How one defines theatre is worth considering
when making this statement.  In the simplest of definitions, disguisings and
masques contain dramatic elements which move them beyond a simple performance
of dance to music into an experience designed to have a thematic and/or
emotional response.  (Modern dance or traditional ballets fit this description
for example.  Unstaged social dancing does not fit this description.)  These
dramatic elements can include costumes, props, dramatic structure, performers
portraying characters other than themselves, plots with purposes, etc.

Jigs apparently frequently contained ballads which moved a plot along.  The one
example I can easily call to mind is Attowell's Jig, which has been performed
locally as a play in verse by simply acting out the ballads without the music.
In this jig, a man propositions his neighbor's virtuous wife.  The wife and her
husband set their neighbor up by informing his wife and having the two women
exchange clothes.  The neighbor then sleeps with his own wife, paying her for
the pleasure under the assumption she is his neighbor's wife.  All is revealed
in the end, the man promises not to err again and everyone parts happily.   The
most interesting part of this to me is that the ballads are all done as
dialogue and not as descriptive narrative.

Very definitely in mummings, disguisings, masques and jigs the elements of
music, dance and theater are combined.  However, do remember that this does not
mean these forms can all be lumped into a category together or bear any strong
resemblance.  These art forms cover several hundreds of years and different
venues such as town celebrations, court entertainment and professional theater.
It would be a bit like trying to say  a modern broadway musical, ante-bellum
minstrel show, off-off Broadway performance art piece and comic operetta are
similar because they all contain music, dance and theater.  Each art form has
its own distinct quality and that quality varies with the time period in which
it occurred.

Catrin o'r Rhyd For        Kathryn Gandek
Barony of Carolingia       Boston area
East Kingdom               kgandek@mitvmc.mit.edu
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca