Queen Bess's Dame of Honour

Queen Bess's Dame of Honour is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1710 in TThe Dancing Master, Vol. the Second, London. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 1988 and published in Retreads Vol.3. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 48 bars.

Playford writes:

Note: The Tune is to be play'd quite through.

The first Man turn the 2d Woman, the first Woman the 2d Man, then cross over and cast up and cross round into the 2nd Couple's Place. The first and 2d Couple take Right-hands a-cross and go half found, then Left-hands and back again, then cast off, and Right and Left quite round. The first and 2d Couple take Hands and draw half round, then back again, and cross over and lead through the third Couple and turn.

Originally a triple minor.

The animation plays at 120 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance will often be slowed down so people can learn the moves more readily. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color, however the border of each dancer indicates what role they currently play so the border color may change each time through the minor set.

The dances of Charles Bolton (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-41st corners two hand turn
5-82nd corners two hand turn
9-121s half figure eight down
13-161s cross go below as 2s lead up
A21-8With next neighbors, facing partner, four changes of rights and lefts
9-12With original neighbors right hands across
13-16With next neighbors left hands across
A31-8With original neighbors full draw poussette (W1+M2 push)
9-121s lead down below next 2s and cast back
13-16All partner two hand turn

If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.

If you wish to link to this animation please see my comments on the perils of youtube. You may freely link to this page, of course, and that should have no problems, but use one of my redirects when linking to the youtube video itself:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=QueenBesssDameOfHonour

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1988 by Charles Bolton. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 by George W. Williams V
Creative Commons License My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.