Tiberio Fiorilli, also known as Scaramouche, (November 9, 1608 - December 7, 1694) was an Italian actor of commedia dell'arte, popular in France for his role of Scaramouche. He was the director of the troop of the Comediens Italiens, which shared with the troop of his friend Moliere the Theatre of the Petit-Bourbon, and the Theatre of the Palais-Royal. This biography of Fiorilli by his fellow-actor Angelo Constantini was published in Paris in 1695, shortly after the actor's death. The English translation by the dance scholar and historian Cyril W Beaumont, presented here, includes detailed...

Gregorio Lambranzi was an Italian dancing master, working in Venice in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. His New and Curious School of Theatrical Dancing, originally published in two parts in Nuremberg in 1716, gives details of more than one hundred theatrical dances of the time, with the emphasis on the comic and grotesque, many drawn from Commedia dellarte characters. Also included are dances suggested by various professions and trades, and dances representing sports and pastimes.

Each dance is illustrated by a full page engraving by Johann Georg Puschner and accompanied by a melody...

This is the first English translation of Andre Levinson's classic biography of the celebrated ballerina Marie Taglioni, one of the greatest representatives of the art of classical ballet. The book affords a complete account of the dancer's career from her first appearance at Vienna in 1822 to her triumphs in La Sylphide, La Gitane, and La Fille du Danube; it tells the story of her immensely successful tours all over continental Europe, and ends with the sadness of her last years, when straightened circumstances forced her to eke out a bare living by giving lessons in deportment to young...

In 1922 the dance historian Cyril Beaumont contributed to the Dancing Times an article on the history of Harlequin, which as a result of continuous research since that period grew into the present volume. It covers the history of Harlequin, and of the Commedia dell'Arte, from their beginnings in the 16th century through their heydays in the 17th and 18th century and their gradual decline thereafter. The book includes more than 40 illustrations and the complete text of a Harlequinade from 1806, together with a dance for a Harlequin in Feuillet notation.