upon, the actors who supported the characters of fools and clowns in the regular dramatic representations.  He points out that Tarleton, one of Queen Elizabeth’s players, much famed for his comicality, obtained great success by his efforts in jigs, and that, upon the showing of the tract entitled Tarleton’s “News from Purgatory,” jigs usually lasted for an hour.  The precise nature of these entertainments cannot now be ascertained; for although each jig had what may be called its libretto, which was duly printed and published when the popularity of the work so required, yet no specimen of any such performance is now extant.  The Stationers’ registers, however, contain entries in 1595 of two jigs described respectively as Phillips’s “Jig of the Slippers,” and Kempe’s “Jig of the Kitchen-stuff Woman.”  Other jigs referred to by contemporary writers are “The Jig of the Ship” and “The Jig of Garlick.”  It may be assumed, therefore, that each jig possessed special characteristics in the nature of distinct plot and characters; but in what respects “The Jig of the Kitchen-stuff Woman,” let us say, differed from “The Jig of Garlick,” or what was the precise story either was supposed to narrate, we must now be content to leave to the conjecture of the curious.

Probably dancing, as a dramatic entertainment, first came upon our stage in the form of these jigs.  Of course, as a means of recreation among all ranks of people, it had thriven since a very remote period.  Into the question of the state of dancing prior to the invention of any method of denoting by signs or characters the length or duration of sounds, we need scarcely enter.  Doubtless music was felt and appreciated by a sort of instinct long before it was understood scientifically, or duly measured out and written down upon a recognised system.  If dancing is to be viewed as dependent upon its correspondence with mensurable music, it must date simply from the invention of the Cantus Mensurabilis, attributed by some writers to Franco, the scholastic of Liege, who flourished in the eleventh century; and by others to Johannes de Muris, doctor of Sorbonne and a native of England, at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

There were dances of the court and dances of the people.  The Morris dance, which seems to have been an invention of the Moors, had firmly established itself in England in the sixteenth century.  The country dance was even of earlier date.  The old Roundel or Roundelay has been described by ancient authorities as an air appropriate to dancing, and would indicate little more than a circular dance with the hands joined.  Among the nobler and statelier dances in vogue at the court of the Tudors, were the Pavan (from pavo, a peacock), with the Galliard (a lighter measure, which was probably to the Pavan what in later years the Gavotte was to the Minuet), the Passamezzo, the Courant, and the Saraband.  Sir John Elyot, who published in 1531 his book called “The Governor,”