The Anatomy of Melancholy

The sun and moon, some say, dance around the earth, and the three outer planets around the sun as their centre: now stationary, now moving forwards, now backwards; now at apogee, then at perigee; now swift, then slow; westward, eastward. They turn, leap and tread their figures. Venus and Mercury dance around the sun with those thirty-three spots or Bourbonian planets, “dancing around the sun, the lyre-player,” as Fromundus says.

Four Medicean stars dance around Jupiter, two Austrian ones around Saturn, and so on; and all, presumably, to the music of the spheres.

Our greatest counsellors and most dignified senators sometimes dance, as David did before the Ark, in 2 Samuel 6:14; Miriam, in Exodus 15:20; and Judith, in Judith 15:13. Perhaps the Devil took his cue from this to introduce those bawdy bacchanals, but they may rightly dance.

The greatest soldiers, as Quintilian, Aemilius Probus and Caelius Rhodiginus have shown at length, continually practise it in Greece and Rome, as do the worthiest senators: “singing and dancing.” Lucian, Macrobius, Libanius, Plutarch, Julius, Pollux and Athenaeus have written full discussions in its praise. In our own age it is much sought after in those countries, as in all civilized commonwealths, as Alexander ab Alexandro has demonstrated at length in book 4, chapter 10, and book 2, chapter 25. Even among the barbarians nothing is more prized; the whole world approves it.

I scorn your wealth, King Croesus, and would sell Your Asia for perfumes, flowers, wine and dances.

Plato, in his Republic, would have dancing schools maintained so that young people could meet, become acquainted, see one another and be seen. More than that, he would have them dance naked, and mocks those who laugh at it.

But Eusebius, in Preparation for the Gospel, book 13, chapter 11, and Theodoret, in book 9 of his Cure of the Greek Maladies, rightly lash him for it; and well they may. As one writer says, “The very sight of naked parts causes immoderate and excessive desires, and stirs both men and women to burning lust.”

There is a proper measure in everything. This is my judgment in brief: dancing is a pleasant recreation for body and mind when it is sober and modest, as our Christian dances are, and practised at the proper time; but it is a fierce incitement to burning lust when unchastely abused, as it once was by the pagans. But I proceed.

If these enticements fail—for even Simierus, that great master of dalliance, could do no better—they will swear and lie, promise, protest, fabricate, counterfeit, boast, bribe, flatter and dissemble on every side, to move others more effectively and satisfy their own lust.