s set to music."

But as yet the ballet, or rather the ballet of action--which may be
defined to be a ballet with a plot or story of some kind told by means
of dancing dumb motions, and musical accompaniments--was not known
upon our stage; and when an entertainment of this kind did make its
appearance it was promptly designated a pantomime, and so has become
confused with the distinct kind of performances still presented under
that name at our larger theatres at Christmas time. "When one company
is too hard for another," writes Cibber, "the lower in reputation has
always been forced to exhibit some new-fangled foppery to draw the
multitude after them;" which is, however, only a way of saying that
managers need the stimulus of opposition to induce them to provide new
entertainments. In 1721 there was great rivalry between Drury
Lane--Cibber being one of its managers--and the theatre then newly
erected in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Of the "new-fangled foppery," which
it now became necessary for the one theatre to resort to as a weapon
of offence against its rival, singing and dancing had been effectual
instances. But singing was not to be thought of under the
circumstances; as Cibber writes: "At the time I am speaking of, our
English music had been so discountenanced since the taste of Italian
operas prevailed, that it was to no purpose to pretend to it. Dancing,
therefore, was now the only weight in the opposite scale, and as the
new theatres sometimes found their account in it, it could not be safe
for us wholly to neglect it. To give even dancing, therefore, some
improvement, and to make it something more than motion without
meaning, the fable of Mars and Venus was formed into a connected
presentation of dances in character, wherein the passions were so
happily expressed, and the whole story so intelligibly told by a mute
narrative of gesture only, that even thinking spectators allowed it
both a pleasing and a rational entertainment." This was certainly a
ballet of action, and it is remarkable that the production involved
but a small outlay; the managers, distrusting its reception, did not
venture "to decorate it with any extraordinary expense of scenes or
habits." Great success, however, attended the performance, and from it
is to be dated the establishment both of ballet and pantomime upon our
stage. "From this original hint, then, but every way unequal to it,
sprang forth that succession of monstrous medleys that have so