Читать книгу The Art of Ballet онлайн

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These are but two instances of the ballet-ambulatoire. More might be given, but these will suffice to afford some idea of a type of spectacle which the older historians speak of as a “ballet,” but which is of special interest to us by reason of the contrast it forms to the masque, which was the reverse of “ambulatory,” and from the fact that though in direct contrast on another score, namely, that it was not a private but a public spectacle, it was under the “immediate patronage” of the Church!

Neither the masque nor the ballet-ambulatoire, was yet a theatrical entertainment; but it is curious, is it not, to note that they had a certain kinship with theatrical tradition, for these magnificent peripatetic “ballets” of the ecclesiastics had had a primitive forerunner in the performance of Thespis with his travelling car in Grecian towns and villages some six centuries before the Christian era! Even as, later, we in fourteenth-century England had our Mystery and Miracle plays travelling from “station” to “station” in similar fashion, and our “mummers” or mimers; while, on the other hand, the masque itself, as a private entertainment of the English Court, with its stage, and “machines,” scenery, dancing, music and song, not to mention its Royal and Courtly audience, was forerunner of similar entertainments which a century later were to become the features of the Courts of Louis XIV and XV, and from that to develop under Royal Patronage into the Ballet of the Theatre.