ther, in response to a command of Anna the
Prophetess, who says,--

"Shewe ye sume plesur as ye can
In the worship of Jesu, our Lady, and St. Anne."

And thereupon King Herod, Simeon, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, Watkin the
funny man, and the Prophetess well stricken in years, proceed to forward
four, and end with a promenade all around. Indeed, our ancestors seem to
have found it edifying, not to say entertaining, to go to a cathedral to
see Satan and an Archbishop dance a hornpipe with the Seven Deadly Sins
and the Five Cardinal Virtues.

A Morality called "Every Man," written about 1450, has a direct
connection with the subject which we are considering. Every Man, the
principal personage of the piece, is an allegorical representation of
all mankind; and the purpose of the play is told in this sentence, which
introduces it:--

"Here begynneth a Treatyse how the Hye Fader of Heven sendeth Dethe
to somon every creature to come & gyve a count of theyr lyves in this
worlde, & is in maner of a Morall Playe."

On the title-page of an edition printed in 1500, only one copy of which
exists, is a very rude wood-cut, in which an individual, who is labelled
"Every Man," is startled at the sight of Death standing at the door of
a church and summoning him. In this Moral Play, Fellowship, Good Deeds,
Worldly Goods, Knowledge, Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wittes
are characters; and they cannot interpose between Every Man and the
summons of Death, nor will any of them, except Good Deeds, go with him.
The representation of this play was a kind of Dance of Death, and from
the acting of "Every Man" to the execution of that Dance was but a short
step.

But the Dance of Death had been performed before "Every Man" was
written; and dances in churches and churchyards were of yet greater
antiquity. For, by an order of a Roman council under Pope Pius II. in
the tenth century, priests were directed "to admonish men and women not
to dance and sing in the churches on feast-days, like Pagans." The evil
increased, however, until, according to the old chroniclers, a terrible
punishment fell upon a party of dancers. One of them, Ubert, tells the
story. It was on Christmas Eve, in the time of the Emperor Henry II.,
who assumed the imperial diadem in the year 1002, that a company of
eighteen men and women amused themselves by dancing and singing in the
churchyard of St. Magnus, in the diocese of Magdeburg, to the annoyance
of a priest