(derived through the Italian ballare, from the
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1 Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. i. p. 81. Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. i. p. 7. Jamieson's Popular Ballads and Songs, vol. i. p. 157. See Macpherson's Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern, p. xlvii. Glasgow, 1827, 4to. 2 Pinkerton's Enquiry, vol. i. p. 364. Jamieson's Ballads, vol. ii. p. 87. Nyerg, Danske Viser, Blind. v. 8. 12. Geijer, Svenska Folks-Visor, del. i. s. liv.—The affinity between the old English and the old Danish ballads is noticed in the preface (S. xxxi.) to Altstädtische Heldliedler, Balladen, und Märchen, übersetzt von Wilhelm Carl Grimm. Heidelberg, 1811, 8vo. 3 Debes's Description of the Islands and Inhabitants of Feroe, Englished by Dr Sterpin, p. 273. Lond. 1676, 12mo. 4 Torfæi Commentatio historica de Rebus gestis Færoecensium seu Færoecensium, p. 7. Havniæ, 1695, 8vo. Greek Βαλλίτης, to dance) is a dramatic representation composed of dancing and pantomime guided by music.
The Greeks were the first who united the dance to their tragedies and comedies; not indeed as making part of those spectacles, but merely as an accessory.
The Romans, as usual, copied from the Greeks; but in the reign of Augustus they left their instructors far behind them. At that time a new species of entertainment was brought upon the stage, and carried to an astonishing degree of perfection. Nothing was then talked of but the wonderful performances of Bathyllus, Pylades, and Hylas, who were the first to introduce among the Romans what the French call the ballet d'action, in which the performer is both actor and dancer.
The enthusiasm excited among the Roman public by these celebrated pantomimes (pantomimi) was extraordinary. Pylades personified grave and tragic subjects, while Bathyllus excelled in the representation of the comic. Each had his school of disciples, and his host of partizans, whose eager rivalry often led to serious disturbances. The demoralizing effects of these exciting representations are severely noted by the great satirist Juvenal (vi. 63). These entertainments, though proscribed by some of the emperors, continued popular down to the fall of the empire. In the time of Augustus, only one actor appeared on the stage, representing singly the various parts in succession. About the end of the following century the number of performers was increased. No women took part in the public pantomimes till the last and worst period of the empire.
Buried with the other arts in the fall of the Roman empire, dancing remained uncultivated till about the fifteenth century, when ballets were revived in Italy at a magnificent entertainment given by a nobleman of Lombardy at Tortona, on account of the marriage of Galeas Duke of Milan with Isabella of Aragon. Every resource that poetry, music, dancing, and machinery could supply, was employed and exhausted on the occasion. The description given of so superb an entertainment excited the admiration of all Europe, and roused the emulation of several ingenious persons, who improved the hint by introducing amongst their countrymen a kind of spectacle equally pleasing and novel.
Female performers do not appear to have taken part in the various entertainments given at the opera in Paris till the 21st of January 1681, when the then dauphiness, the Princess of Conti, and some other ladies of the first distinction in the court of Louis XIV., performed a ballet in the opera called Le Triomphe de l'Amour. This additional attraction rendered the spectacle more lively than it ever had been at any other period; and it was received with so much applause, that on the 16th of May following, when the same opera was acted in Paris at the theatre of the Palais Royal, it was thought indispensable for its success to introduce female dancers. They have continued ever since to be the principal support of the opera.
A ballet perfect in all its parts, says Noverre, in his treatise on this subject, is a picture drawn from life, of the manners, dresses, ceremonies, and customs of all nations. It must therefore be a complete pantomime, and speak, as it were, through the eyes, to the very soul of the spectator. If it be deficient in point of expression, of situation, or of scenery, it degenerates into a spectacle equally flat and monotonous. (Lettres sur les Arts Imitateurs, et sur la Danse en particulier, 8vo. Paris, 1807.)