Verbal and Visual Instruction in Early Dance Manuals: The Curious Case of John Playford’s Tables

Movement and its different nuances can be very difficult to express in words. This chapter examines the tabular format introduced by John Playford in his famous 1651 manual "The English Dancing Master" to connect the different dance figures to the structure of the music. The presentation of this innovative table format changed throughout successive editions of the text, and in spite of the advantages of the table, each new edition made less use of it.