so many gentlemen and gentlewomen would not be so
well qualified in this kind, if love did not incite
them. [5516]"Who,” saith Castilio, “would
learn to play, or give his mind to music, learn to
dance, or make so many rhymes, love-songs, as most
do, but for women’s sake, because they hope
by that means to purchase their good wills, and win
their favour?” We see this daily verified in
our young women and wives, they that being maids took
so much pains to sing, play, and dance, with such
cost and charge to their parents, to get those graceful
qualities, now being married will scarce touch an
instrument, they care not for it. Constantine
agricult. lib. 11. cap. 18, makes Cupid himself
to be a great dancer; by the same token as he was
capering amongst the gods, [5517]"he flung down a
bowl of nectar, which distilling upon the white rose,
ever since made it red:” and Calistratus,
by the help of Dedalus, about Cupid’s statue
[5518]made a many of young wenches still a dancing,
to signify belike that Cupid was much affected with
it, as without all doubt he was. For at his and
Psyche’s wedding, the gods being present to grace
the feast, Ganymede filled nectar in abundance (as
[5519]Apuleius describes it), Vulcan was the cook,
the Hours made all fine with roses and flowers, Apollo
played on the harp, the Muses sang to it, sed suavi
Musicae super ingressa Venus saltavit, but his
mother Venus danced to his and their sweet content.
Witty [5520]Lucian in that pathetical love passage,
or pleasant description of Jupiter’s stealing
of Europa, and swimming from Phoenicia to Crete, makes
the sea calm, the winds hush, Neptune and Amphitrite
riding in their chariot to break the waves before
them, the tritons dancing round about, with every
one a torch, the sea-nymphs half naked, keeping time
on dolphins’ backs, and singing Hymeneus, Cupid
nimbly tripping on the top of the waters, and Venus
herself coming after in a shell, strewing roses and
flowers on their heads. Praxiteles, in all his
pictures of love, feigns Cupid ever smiling, and looking
upon dancers; and in St. Mark’s in Rome (whose
work I know not), one of the most delicious pieces,
is a many of [5521]satyrs dancing about a wench asleep.
So that dancing still is as it were a necessary appendix
to love matters. Young lasses are never better
pleased than when as upon a holiday, after evensong,
they may meet their sweethearts, and dance about a
maypole, or in a town-green under a shady elm.
Nothing so familiar in. [5522]France, as for citizens’
wives and maids to dance a round in the streets, and
often too, for want of better instruments, to make
good music of their own voices, and dance after it.
Yea many times this love will make old men and women
that have more toes than teeth, dance,—“John,
come kiss me now,” mask and mum; for Comus and
Hymen love masks, and all such merriments above measure,
will allow men to put on women’s apparel in
some cases, and promiscuously to dance, young and
old, rich and poor, generous and base, of all sorts.
Paulus Jovius taxeth Augustine Niphus the philosopher,
[5523]"for that being an old man, and a public professor,
a father of many children, he was so mad for the love
of a young maid (that which many of his friends were
ashamed to see), an old gouty fellow, yet would dance
after fiddlers.” Many laughed him to scorn
for it, but this omnipotent love would have it so.