Daniel de Lincoln (Tim McDaniel), tmcd@panix.com, 22 February 2014
This is a brief and general introduction to my class "Intermediate English Country Investigations" at the dance symposium at Bryn Gwlad on 22 February 2014. This is by no means thorough! It's just pointers to sources and a few superficial impressions.
I have started to enjoy a little looking into variations of dances, between sources or even within a source (like comparing Playford's Black Nag with his Millison's Jigg). One source can sometimes fill in a gap or illuminate meaning in another source. Also, seeing variations may give an indication of what they considered to be reasonable changes, which can allow us to make more informed reconstruction decisions, and also consider historical-style modifications for danceability or simple preference.
A drawback is that these dance choreographies appear to be well after the end of the SCA's period, although there are listings of dance names from late period. On the other hand, the great advantages of these sources is that they're in English, and the sources other than Playford haven't been used much.
I have heard of five sources of any significance for early English country dances, all generally considered to be from the middle of the 1600s.
Of course, the 800-pound gorilla doing a reel down the set is John Playford's The English Dancing Master. That's the first edition, 1651; later editions were just The Dancing Master. http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/playford_1651/ says that it's a facsimile of the first edition. http://www.izaak.unh.edu/nhltmd/indexes/dancingmaster/ is a nice site, because it compares versions of dances through all 23ish editions / volumes.
Dafydd Cyhoeddwr writes, "The manuscript exists in the Houghton Library of Harvard with the identifying number of MS Eng. 1356. It has various names, mainly Pattricke, after a signature on the cover in a different hand than the dances, and Lovelace, after the name attached to one of the published poems that shows up well after the dances in the manuscript (the poem was published in 1649, and most of the scholarly citations of this manuscript use this designation)."
There are 32 dances. Dafydd says that 16 of them match or very closely resemble dances from Playford early editions, and says that others may share a name but don't resemble the steps, seem to use the same tune, and/or have some resemblance, and he can see no connections for 6 of them.
Dafydd has transcribed and reconstructed this source. In particular, see his transcription of the original source at http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~white/ECD/Lovelace%20mms.htm, and his reconstructions at http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~white/dlovelace.html. He links to a scan of the original source at http://www.wiglaf.org/~aaronm/scadance/MSEng1356/, and a paper by Carol G Marsh, "The Lovelace Manuscript: A Preliminary Study" at http://fagisis.zeddele.de/morgenroete-pdfs/Marsh_.pdf.
There are some interesting differences between Lovelace and Playford.
Playford specifies a specific number of dancers for small sets. Lovelace tends to give freedom. For example, There's one dance where Playford specifies that it's for 6, but Lovelace calls for 8 or more.
Ms. Marsh notes, "Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the dances in the Lovelace manuscript is the casualness with which the instructions are presented as compared to [Playford's] the Dancing Master. The dancers are accorded considerably more freedom than they are in Playford, ...". She adduces examples like optional "salutes" (kisses), "dance the hay [...] 3, 4, or 5 times", doing figures as long as you please, or choosing whether or not the women repeat the same figure that the men just did.
Cuckles all a Rowe's last verse says that the man arms with his partner and then with the other woman, or in the other order if they prefer.
Moll Peatlye's last verse has "arme, or halfe turne"! That likely is a flexibility utterly unknown to Playford. More excitingly, it may be "or" in the sense of "alias", meaning that arming is a half turn, and so all modern English Country dance is doing it wrong. I don't assert that (yet).
"Sett" is particularly striking. Ms. Marsh pointed out that "The omission of the turn single in the Lovelace manuscript is very surprising, particularly since the 'set and turn single' figure is the one that occurs most frequently in Playford. Its absence creates a problem fitting the dance to the music, ..." She considers three possibilities:
Dafydd reconstructs it as set and turn single. I tentatively and currently prefer doing setting twice. However, given the flexibility elsewhere, I feel much better about changing my mind and have no strong objection to Dafydd's reconstruction. In the instructions, I use "set" to mean the standard Playford "set": in 4 beats, step sideways and then step sideways home.
"British Museum Library MS Sloane 3858" has an approximately literal transcription at at http://www.peterdur.com/dance/sloane3858.htm. It has 10 dances; 6 of them share a name with a Playford dance. Interestingly, The Boone Companion is in MS Sloane 3858 (well, the first half is) and Lovelace, but not Playford.
Barbara Ravelhofer wrote a book, The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music (http://www.google.com/url?q=http://ishare.games.sina.com.cn/download.php%3Ffileid%3D17103679&sa=U&ei=aO8GU5auMeiR2QWg1IDgDg&ved=0CCUQFjAC&usg=AFQjCNHd4yZoDAbU-KPo3U0HEj61QmtKEw). She mentions "A few manuscript sources in seventeenth-century hands of uncertain date survive. Several are held at the British Library: MS Lansdowne 1115 (fols. 35–8) contains four unnamed dances with the patterns of the dancers' initial positions; MS Add. 41996 gives step instructions for a 'Maurice daunce', 'Newcastle' (a round dance for eight), 'Put up thy dagger', and 'Lavena', ..." Christopher Darras considers MS Lansdowne 1115 in http://sca.uwaterloo.ca/~praetzel/sca/lansdowne.html. I don't know of a transcription of MS Add. 41996.
The URL of this page is http://www.panix.com/~tmcd/dance/dms2014/intermediate_english_country_investigations.html.