siderably
obscured the author's meaning.

In former times men of the gravest profession did not disdain to
dance. Even the judges, in compliance with ancient custom, long
continued to dance annually on Candlemas Day in the hall of Serjeants'
Inn, Chancery Lane. Lincoln's Inn, too, had its revels--four in each
year--with a master duly elected of the society to direct the
pastimes. Nor were these "exercises of dancing," as Dugdale calls
them, merely tolerated; they were held to be "very necessary, and much
conducing to the making of gentlemen more fit for their books at other
times." Indeed, it appears that, by an order made in James I.'s time,
the junior bar was severely dealt with for declining to dance: "the
under barristers were by decimation put out of commons for example's
sake, because the whole bar offended by not dancing on Candlemas Day
preceding, according to the ancient order of this society, when the
judges were present; with this, that if the like fault were committed
afterwards they should be fined or disbarred."

Gradually jigs disappeared from the stage. Even in 1632, when Shirley
wrote his comedy of "Changes, or Love in a Maze," jigs had been
discontinued at Salisbury Court Theatre, and probably at other private
playhouses. Shirley complains that, instead of a jig at the end, a
dance in the middle of the piece was now required by the spectators.
Possibly that dance of all the _dramatis personae_ with which so many
of the old comedies conclude is due to the earlier fashion of
terminating theatrical performances by a jig.

With Sir William Davenant as patentee and manager of the Duke's
Theatre, stage dancing and singing acquired a more distinguished
position among theatrical entertainments. It was Davenant's object, by
submitting attractions of this nature to the public, to check the
superiority enjoyed by Killigrew, the patentee of the Theatre Royal,
and the comedians privileged to call themselves "His Majesty's
Servants." Davenant, indeed, first brought upon the English stage what
were then called "dramatic operas," but what we should now rather
designate "spectacles," including Dryden's version of "The Tempest,"
the "Psyche" of Shadwell, and the "Circe" of Charles Davenant, "all
set off," as Cibber writes of them, "with the most expensive
decorations of scenes and habits, with the best voices and dancers."
Sir John Hawkins describes these productions as "musical dramas," or
"tragedies with interlude