The Dancing Dead

A Swiss visitor to London in 1599 saw a performance of Julius Caesar, and wrote: “On September 21st after lunch, about two o’clock, I and my party crossed the water, and there in the house with the thatched roof witnessed an excellent performance of the tragedy of the first Emperor Julius Caesar with a cast of some fifteen people; when the play was over, they danced very marvellously and gracefully together as is their wont, two dressed as men and two as women.”

Apparently, it did not detract from the tragic catharsis for the corpses to rise and begin dancing. Bottom was following solid Renaissance dramatic tradition when, after a prolonged death as Pyrrhus, he asks Theseus if he wants to hear a “Bergomask dance.”