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smouching and slabbering of one another: what filthy groping and

unclean handling is not practised everywhere in these dancings’

and that these ‘provoketh lust, and the fires of lust, [which] once

conceived…burst forth into the open action of whoredom and

fornication.’ Stubbes’ narrative takes place in an imaginary land

he calls Aligna, a transparent anagram for Anglia. His Anatomy of

Abuses was a vitriolic diatribe against the mores of the Elizabethan

lifestyle in which, no less than the monarch herself, indulged in such

scandalous behaviour as dancing the LaVolta with her favourites in

public.There is a picture in Penshurst Place in Kent depicting just

such a scene, Queen Elizabeth I Dancing with Robert Dudley, Earl

of Leicester, which is probably based on Bal à la Cour des Valois,

which can be seen in the Musée de Rennes. The female partner’s

dress was arranged in such a way that the male could lift his partner

by grasping, and more probably groping her by the lower end of the

busk, which was strategically placed over her pudenda (Fig. 13).

Might this possibly explain the disapproval of the onlooking ma-

Fig. 13. LaVolta, Bal à la Cour des Valois, trons in our painting? For a young lady of quality to abase herself
Musée de Rennes. with a man who appears to be a simple peasant or contadino would

be construed as the introduction of a commoner into an institution

ruled by manners and decorum as represented by the castle on the hill above. Might she not thus be com-

promising herself, hence her bashful expression turning away, invoking the displeasure of the huntsman who

grasps his gun with arms akimbo? Stubbes would say she was discommoding her class and its culture - ‘Every
leap or skip in dance is a leap towards hell.’15

15. I am grateful to Jeanne Teston for providing this information.

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