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We have lingered somewhat over this old manual of dancing, but there are some half-dozen points in the history of ballet that it is of vital importance to emphasise, and Arbeau’s book is one of them.

Dancing itself of course had continued to exist through all time. But from the decadence of Rome until fairly late in the fifteenth century, ballet had only a precarious sporadic existence; and the production of Beaujoyeux’s volume of the Ballet Comique de la Royne in 1582, and Arbeau’s Orchésographie in 1588, made a turning-point in the history of ballet—the point where a popular amusement was once again taken up by men of intellect and given a new form and a new spirit. Beaujoyeux created an interest in ballet, Arbeau assisted an advance in the technique of one of the chief elements of the art, namely, dancing; and there can be little doubt that both men were largely instrumental in forwarding that movement towards popular delight in the theatrical masque and ballet which were to become an outstanding feature of the next two centuries, the seventeenth and the eighteenth.