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Was it shyness, or sheer fraud that made him write it under a false name, a nom de théâtre it would almost seem. For Thoinot Arbeau was not his name, but a sort of anagram on his real one, which was Jehan Tabourot. Moreover, he was sixty-seven when he wrote it, and was a Canon of the Church! He was born at Dijon in 1519, and was the son of one Estienne Tabourot, a King’s Counsellor! Think of it—born four hundred years ago, yet he speaks to our time, telling us, albeit in somewhat stiff and difficult French, of the dances that were in vogue in his dancing days.

As to the strange title of his work, its meaning will of course be apparent to all who know anything of the history of the subject, for they will remember that the Greek word for the dance was Orcheisthai (the Orchestra being the floor-space where the dancers performed); and so Orchésographie is merely a treatise on the writing of dances; that is, the setting of them down in such form that subsequent readers could study the dances therefrom.