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

writer, but most unsafe critical guide,
commits an error of a kind not uncommon with him. The representation
of so homely an action, in such a composition, merely shows that the
painter had not arrived at 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 Eugénie 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