graphie"
(1588). In "Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 1), Dull says: "I will play on
tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance their hay."

[828] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 146.

_Jig._ Besides meaning a merry, sprightly dance, a jig also implied a
coarse sort of comic entertainment, in which sense it is probably used
by Hamlet (ii. 2): "He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry." "It seems,"
says Mr. Collier,[829] "to have been a ludicrous composition in rhyme,
sung, or said, by the clown, and accompanied by dancing and playing upon
the pipe and tabor."[830] an instance of which perhaps occurs in the
Clown's song at the close of "Twelfth Night:"

"When that I was and a little tiny boy."

[829] "History of English Dramatic Poetry," vol. iii. p. 380;
see Dyce's "Glossary," p. 229; Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p.
450; Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. ix. pp. 198, 219.

[830] "Hamlet:" iii. 2: "your only jig-maker."

Fletcher, in the Prologue to the "Fair Maid of the Inn," says:

"A jig should be clapt at, and every rhyme
Praised and applauded by a clamorous chime."

Among the allusions to this dance we may quote one in "Much Ado About
Nothing" (ii. 1), where Beatrice compares wooing to a Scotch jig; and
another in "Twelfth Night" (i. 3), where Sir Toby Belch says, his "very
walk should be a jig."

_Lavolta._ According to Florio, the lavolta is a kind of turning French
dance, in which the man turns the woman round several times, and then
assists her in making a high spring or _cabriole_. It is thus described
by Sir John Davies:

"Yet is there one the most delightful kind.
A loftie jumping, or a leaping round,
Where arme in arme two dauncers are entwined,
And whirle themselves, with strict embracements bound;
And still their feet an anapest do sound,
An anapest is all their musicks song,
Whose first two feet are short, and third is long."

Douce,[831] however, considers it to be of Italian origin, and says, "It
passed from Italy into Provence and the rest of France, and thence into
England." Scot, too, in his "Discovery of Witchcraft," thus speaks of
it: "He saith, that these night-walking, or rather night-dancing,
witches, brought out of Italie into France that dance which is called
_la Volta_." Shakespeare, in his "Henry V." (iii. 5), makes the Duke of
Bourbon allude to it:

"They bid us to the English dancing-schools,
And teach lavoltas high,