long
infested the stage, and which arose upon one another alternately at
both houses, outvying in expense, like contending bribes on both sides
at an election, to secure a majority of the multitude." Cibber indeed
waxes very wrath over the matter, and appears to desire that lawful
authority should "interpose to put down these poetical drams, these
gin-shops of the stage, that intoxicate its auditors and dishonour
their understanding with a levity for which I want a name." But
Cibber's anger is in truth very much that of a manager vying with the
liberal outlay of a rival, and in such wise forced to expend large
sums in costly entertainments.

At an earlier date ballet-dancers had been imported from France. Some
time about 1704 the great Mr. Betterton and his company, suffering
from insufficient patronage at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
had been reduced to resort to "foreign novelties." Three of the most
famous dancers of the French Opera, L'Abbee, Balon, and Mademoiselle
Subligny, were at several times brought over at extraordinary rates to
revive that sickly appetite which plain sense and nature had satiated.
In Paris, indeed, the ballet was very securely instituted. The
Academie Royale de Musique et de Danse had been founded in 1669, and
from that date the ballet, as an entertainment of dancing only, may be
said to have come into being. There had been earlier ballets, but
these were of the nature of old English masques, and consisted of
songs and spoken dialogues in addition to dances; the term _ballet_,
it need hardly be explained, being derived from the Italian _ballata_,
the parent of our own _ballad_. At first the French Opera or Academy
suffered from the smallness of its troop; vocalists could be obtained
from the church choirs, but for the ballet it was hard to find
recruits; and sometimes young boys were pressed into the service, and
constrained to personate nymphs, dryads, and shepherdesses--"_danseurs_,"
writes a French historian of the Opera, "_qui sous un masque et des
vetements feminins, les formes arrondies par l'art et le coton,
n'excitaient qu'un enthousiasme modere_." At court there
was no lack of dancers of the gentler sex, however, and at court
the ballet prospered greatly. A ballet performed in 1681 was at
any rate strongly cast, since there appeared among the dancers Madame
la Dauphine, the Princesse de Conti, and Mdlle. de Nantes, supported
by the Dauphin, the Prince de Conti, and the Duc