Peace and Plenty ~ Playford

Old Oxford

Peace and Plenty ~ Playford Peace and Plenty ~ Roodman

Peace and Plenty ~ Playford or Old Oxford is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1718 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the Second, 3rd ed., London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2022. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Playford writes:

Note: Each Strain is to be play'd twice over.

The first Cu. cast off behind the 2d Cu. and Jump, then cast off into the 2d Cu. Place, and Jump, then lead thro' the 3d Cu. and cast up into the 2d Cu. Place Then first and 2d Cu. lead to the Wall and back again, then the 2d Cu. lead thro' the first Cu. and cast up into the first Cu. Place Then the first Cu. being in the 2d Cu. Place, the first Man change Places with the 2d Wo. and the 2d Man with the first Wo. then turn Hands half round Then Right and Left all round, then all four turn single

In the original, the third couple only acted as posts while the 1s led through and cast around them. So I've made it a duple minor.

The tune, also called Peace and Plenty published in Playford's Dancing Master Vol. 2 of 1728. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album Fast Friends. A copy of the album was given to me by Mr. Roodman and is used with his permission.

The animation plays at 111 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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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 George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

A11-41s cast down, and halfway there jump, and jump again when in 2nd place (2s move up)
5-81s lead below next 2s and cast back
A21-4Lead neighbor out, turn and lead back
5-82s lead below 1s and cast back
B11-4M1+W2 change, W1+M2 change
5-8Circle left half, balance in and fall back
B21-6Face partner, four changes of rights and lefts
7-8Turn single cloverleaf

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=PeaceAndPlenty-Playford

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2022 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International 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.