_Macaber Dance in England.--St. Paul's.--Salisbury.--Wortley
Hall.--Hexham.--Croydon.--Tower of London.--Lines in Pierce Plowman's
Vision supposed to refer to it._
We are next to examine this subject in relation to its existence in our
own country. On the authority of the work ascribed to Walter de Mapes,
already noticed in p. 24, it is not unreasonable to infer that paintings
of the Macaber Dance were coeval with that writer, though no specimens of
it that now remain will warrant the conclusion. We know that it existed at
Old Saint Paul's. Stowe informs us that there was a great cloister on the
north side of the church, environing a plot of ground, of old time called
Pardon church-yard. He then states, that "about this _cloyster_ was
artificially and richly painted the Dance of Machabray, or Dance of Death,
commonly called the Dance of Paul's: the like whereof was painted about
St. Innocent's cloyster at Paris: the meters or poesie of this dance were
translated out of French into English, by John Lidgate, Monke of Bury, the
picture of Death leading all estates; at the dispence of Jenken Carpenter
in the reigne of Henry the Sixt."[78] Lydgate's verses were first printed
at the end of Tottell's edition of the translation of his Fall of Princes,
from Boccaccio, 1554, folio, and afterwards, in Sir W. Dugdale's History
of St. Paul's cathedral.[79] In another place Stowe records that "on the
10th April, 1549, the cloister of St. Paul's church, called Pardon
church-yard, with the Dance of Death, commonly called the Dance of Paul's,
about the same cloister, costly and cunningly wrought, and the chappel in
the midst of the same church-yard, were all begun to be pulled down."[80]
This spoliation was made by the Protector Somerset, in order to obtain
materials for building his palace in the Strand.[81]
The single figure that remained in the Hungerford chapel at Salisbury
cathedral, previously to its demolition, was formerly known by the title
of "Death and the Young Man," and was, undoubtedly, a portion of the
Macaber Dance, as there was close to it another compartment belonging to
the same subject. In 1748, a print of these figures was published,
accompanied with the following inscription, which differs from that in
Lydgate. The young man says:
Alasse Dethe alasse a blesful thyng thou were
Yf thou woldyst spare us yn ouwre lustynesse.
And cum to wretches that bethe of hevy chere
Whene thay ye clepe to slake their dystresse
But owte alasse thyne own sely selfwyldnesse
Crewelly werneth me that seygh wayle and wepe
To close there then that after ye doth clepe.
Death answers:
Grosless galante in all thy luste and pryde
Remembyr that thou schalle onys dye
Deth schall fro thy body thy sowle devyde
Thou mayst him not escape certaynly
To the dede bodyes cast down thyne ye
Beholde thayme well consydere and see
For such as thay ar such shalt thou be.
This painting was made about the year 1460, and from the remaining
specimen its destruction is extremely to be regretted, as, judging from
that of the young gallant, the dresses of the time would be correctly
exhibited.
In the chapel at Wortley Hall, in Gloucestershire, there was inscribed,
and most likely painted, "an history and Daunce of Deathe of all estatts
and degrees." This inscribed history was the same as Lydgate's, with some
additional characters.[82] From a manuscript note by John Stowe, in his
copy of Leland's Itinerary, it appears that there was a Dance of Death in
the church of Stratford upon Avon: and the conjecture that Shakespeare, in
a passage in Measure for Measure, might have remembered it, will not,
perhaps, be deemed very extravagant. He there alludes to Death and the
fool, a subject always introduced into the paintings in question.[83]
On the upper part of the great screen which closes the entrance to the
choir of the church at Hexham, in Northumberland, are the painted remains
of a Dance of Death.[84] These consist of the figures of a pope, a
cardinal, and a king, which were copied by the ingenious John Carter, of
well-deserved antiquarian memory.
Vestiges of a Macaber Dance were not long since to be traced on the walls
of the hall of the Archiepiscopal palace at Croydon, but so much obscured
by time and neglect that no particular compartment could be ascertained.
The tapestries that decorated the walls of palaces, and other dwelling
places, were sometimes applied in extension of this moral subject. In the
tower of London, the original and most ancient seat of our monarchs, there
was some tapestry with the Macaber Dance.[85]
The following lines in that admirable satire, the Vision of Pierce
Plowman, written about the year 1350, have evidently an allusion to the
Dance, unless they might be thought to apply rather to the celebrated
triumph of Death by Petrarch, of which some very early paintings, and many
engravings, still exist; or they may even refer to some of the ancient
representations of the infernal regions that follow Death on the Pale
horse of the Revelations, and in which is seen a grotesque intermixture of
all classes of people.[86]
Death came driving after, and all to dust pashed
Kynges and Kaysers, Knightes and Popes,
Learned and lewde: he ne let no man stande
That he hitte even, he never stode after.
Many a lovely ladie and lemmans of knightes
Swouned and swelted for sorrowe of Deathes dyntes.
It is probable that many cathedrals and other edifices, civil as well as
ecclesiastical, in France, Germany, England, and probably other European
countries, were ornamented with paintings and sculpture of this extremely
popular subject.