The Dance of Death: Exhibited in Elegant Engravings on Wood with a Dissertation on the Several Representations of that Subject but More Particularly on Those Ascribed to Macaber and Hans HolbeinDouce, Francis
History
The Dance of Death: Exhibited in Elegant Engravings on Wood with a Dissertation on the Several Representations of that Subject but More Particularly on Those Ascribed to Macaber and Hans Holbein
Douce, Francis
Bible. Old Testament -- Illustrations; Dance of death
In an elegant series of prints, illustrative of the poetical works of
Goethe, there is a poem of seven stanzas, intitled "Der Todtentanz," where
the embellishment represents a church-yard, in which several groups of
skeletons are introduced, some of them rising, or just raised, from their
graves; others in the attitude of dancing together or preparing for a
dance. These prints are beautifully etched in outline in the manner of the
drawings in the margins of Albert Durer's prayer-book in the library of
Munich.
Prefixed to a poem by Edward Quillinan, in a volume of wood-cuts used at
the press of Lee Priory, the seat of Sir Egerton Brydges, intitled "Death
to Doctor Quackery," there is an elegant wood-cut, representing Death
hob-and-nobbing with the Doctor at a table.
In the same volume is another wood-cut on the subject of a dance given by
the Lord of Death in Clifton Halls. A motley group of various characters
are dancing in a circle whilst Death plays the fiddle.
In 1832 was published at Paris "La Danse des Morts, ballade dediée à
Madame la Comtesse de Tryon Montalembert. Paroles et musique de P.
Merruau." The subject is as follows: A girl named Lise is admonished by
her mother not to dance on a Saturday, the day on which Satan calls the
dead to the infernal _Sabbat_. She promises obedience, but whilst her
mother is napping, escapes to the ball. She forgets the midnight hour,
when a company of damned souls, led by Satan, enter the ball-room
hand-in-hand, exclaiming "Make way for Death." All the party escape,
except Lise, who suddenly finds herself encircled by skeletons, who
continue dancing round her. From that time, on every Saturday at midnight,
there is heard under ground, in the church-yard, the lamentation of a soul
forcibly detained, and exclaiming "Girls beware of dancing Satan!" At the
head of this ballad is a lithographic print of the terrified Lise in
Satan's clutches, surrounded by dancing, piping, and fiddling Deaths.
About the same time there appeared a silly ballad, set to music, intitled
"the Cork Leg," accompanied by a print in which the man with the cork leg
falling on the ground drops his leg. It is seized by Death, who stalks
away with it in a very grotesque manner.
CHAPTER XV.
_Initial or capital Letters with the Dance of Death._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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