Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 | Page 6

a just appreciation of the relative value of the actual,--and that he failed to see that by introducing this unessential incident he diverted attention from his higher purpose, dragged his picture from a moral to a material plane, and went at a bound far over the narrow limit between the horrible and the ludicrous.
St. Macarius is frequently introduced in the pictures of this subject; and some antiquaries suppose that hence the Dance of Death derived the name, Dance Macabre, by which it used to be generally known. Others derive it from the Arabic _mac-bourah_,--a cemetery. Neither derivation is improbable; but it is of little consequence to us which is correct.
It may seem strange that such a legend as this of "The Three Dead and the Three Living," with such a moral, should become the origin of a dance. But we should remember that in many countries dancing has been a religious ceremony. It was so with the Greeks and Romans, and also with the Hebrews, among whom, however, saltatory worship seems, on most occasions, to have been performed spontaneously, and by volunteers. All will remember the case of Miriam, who thus danced to the sound of her timbrel after the passage of the Red Sea; and who that has read it can forget the account of the dance which King David executed before the ark, dancing with all his might, and girded only with a linen ephod? Dancing has always seemed to us to be an essentially ridiculous transaction,--for a man, at least; and we confess that we sympathize with David's wife, Michal, who, seeing this extraordinary pas seul from her window, "despised David in her heart," and treated him to a little conjugal irony when he came home. What would the lovely Eug��nie have thought, if, after the fall of Sebastopol, she had seen his Majesty, the Emperor of the French, "cutting it down," in broad daylight, before the towers of Notre Dame, girded only with a linen ephod,--though that's not exactly the name we give the garment now-a-days? But David was master, not only in Israel, but in his own household, (which is not the case with all kings and great men,) and he said to Michal,--"It was before the Lord, which chose me before thy father and before all his house;.... therefore will I play before the Lord;.... and of the maid-servants which thou hast spoken of, of them shall I be had in honor." And Michal all her life repented bitterly the offence that she had given her husband.
But dancing was not one of the regular ceremonies of the Christian Church, even in its corruptest days; and yet dances were performed four hundred years ago in the churches and in church-yards, as a part of, or an appendage to, entertainments of a religious character. These were the Mysteries and Moralities, which are the origin of our drama;--and it is remarkable that in all countries the drama has been at first a religious ceremony. These Mysteries and Moralities were religious plays of the rudest kind: the Mysteries being a representation, partly by dumb show and partly by words, of some well-known incident related in the Bible; and the Moralities, a kind of discussion and enforcement of religious doctrine or moral truth by allegorical personages. They were performed at first almost entirely in the churches, upon scaffolds erected for the purpose.
In a Mystery called "Candlemas Day, or the Killing of the Children of Israel," which represented the Massacre of the Innocents, and in which Herod, Simeon, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, Watkin, a comic character, and Anna the Prophetess, appeared, there was a general dance of all the characters after the Prologue; and at the close of the play, there is a stage-direction for another, in response to a command of Anna the Prophetess, who says,--
"Shewe ye sume plesur as ye can In the worship of Jesu, our Lady, and St. Anne."
And thereupon King Herod, Simeon, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, Watkin the funny man, and the Prophetess well stricken in years, proceed to forward four, and end with a promenade all around. Indeed, our ancestors seem to have found it edifying, not to say entertaining, to go to a cathedral to see Satan and an Archbishop dance a hornpipe with the Seven Deadly Sins and the Five Cardinal Virtues.
A Morality called "Every Man," written about 1450, has a direct connection with the subject which we are considering. Every Man, the principal personage of the piece, is an allegorical representation of all mankind; and the purpose of the play is told in this sentence, which introduces it:--
"Here begynneth a Treatyse how the Hye Fader of Heven sendeth Dethe to somon every creature to come & gyve a count of theyr lyves in this worlde, & is in maner of a