The summer a whole city danced itself to exhaustion — and no one could say why.
Each new word is hidden in a sentence. Read it aloud and say what you think the bold word means from the rest of the sentence — then reveal it and see how close you were.
Read each part. After it, there's a quick comprehension check (try the questions from memory first), then one thing to discuss.
In July 1518, in the city of Strasbourg — then part of the Holy Roman Empire, now in eastern France — a woman known to history as Frau Troffea stepped out into a narrow street and began to dance. There was no music, no festival, no reason. She simply danced, alone, her face showing no joy. And she did not stop. She danced through the afternoon, through the evening, into the night, and was still moving the next morning. Within a week, around thirty more people had joined her.
This was not a celebration; it looked more like an affliction. The dancers seemed unable to control themselves, moving compulsively even as their feet blistered and bled. By August, records suggest that as many as four hundred people had been seized by the same terrible urge. The streets of one of Europe's great trading cities had become the stage for something no one could explain.
Strasbourg in 1518 was not a happy place. The preceding years had brought failed harvests, soaring bread prices, and waves of disease — smallpox, syphilis, and a mysterious sweating sickness. The poor were hungry, frightened and exhausted, and death felt very close. Whatever the dancing was, it did not arrive in a comfortable, contented city. It erupted in one that was already gripped by dread.
1. Who was Frau Troffea, and what did she do?
2. What was daily life in Strasbourg like in the years before 1518?
1. A woman in Strasbourg who, in July 1518, began dancing alone in the street with no music or reason and could not stop; within days dozens had joined her.
2. Grim and fearful — failed harvests, high bread prices, famine and outbreaks of disease had left the poor hungry and frightened.
Faced with a crisis they could not understand, the city's authorities turned to the physicians of the day. The doctors ruled out supernatural causes — this was not, they decided, the work of a saint or a sin. Instead they reached for the medicine of their age: the dancing, they announced, was caused by "hot blood" overheating the brain. And the cure they prescribed was as strange as the disease. If the blood had to be purged, then the sufferers must be allowed — indeed encouraged — to dance the fever out of their bodies.
So the authorities made a fateful decision. Guildhalls were opened, a wooden stage was built, and musicians and even professional dancers were hired to keep the afflicted moving. The idea was that a good, hard dance would burn the illness away. In practice, it did the opposite. Surrounded by drums and pipes, more and more onlookers were drawn in, and the outbreak grew rather than shrank. It was, in effect, the worst possible treatment: a fire being fed by the very people trying to put it out.
The dancing continued for weeks. Contemporary accounts — and later chroniclers — record that some of the afflicted danced until they collapsed, and that a number suffered strokes, heart attacks or simple exhaustion. Just how many died is fiercely debated, and the true toll can never be known, but the sight of citizens dancing themselves into the ground, day after day, left a mark on everyone who witnessed it.
1. What did the physicians decide was causing the dancing, and what "cure" did they prescribe?
2. What did the authorities actually do, and why did it make things worse?
1. They blamed "hot blood" overheating the brain and prescribed more dancing, believing the sufferers had to dance the fever out of their bodies.
2. They built a stage, opened guildhalls and hired musicians and dancers to keep people moving; this drew in more people and spread the outbreak rather than stopping it.
Eventually the dancing faded. The afflicted were gathered up and taken to a shrine dedicated to Saint Vitus, high in the hills, where prayers were said over them and red shoes were placed on their feet — and, whether through ritual or simple exhaustion, the outbreak came to an end. But the question it left behind has never been settled: what on earth had happened?
One long-standing theory points to ergot, a toxic fungus that grows on damp rye and produces chemicals related to LSD; eaten in tainted bread, it can cause convulsions and hallucinations. Yet critics note that ergot poisoning usually cuts off blood to the limbs and would make sustained dancing almost impossible. A second, more widely accepted explanation is mass psychogenic illness — sometimes called mass hysteria. On this view, a population crushed by famine, disease and religious dread fell into a kind of shared trance, in which one person's compulsive movement became contagious. The regional belief that Saint Vitus could strike sinners with a dancing curse may have given that fear a shape to pour itself into.
We will probably never know for certain, and that is part of why the story endures. The Dancing Plague of 1518 is unusually well documented — it appears in physicians' notes, council records and chronicles — which is exactly what makes it so unsettling: this genuinely happened, and we still cannot fully explain it. It haunts us because it hints at how thin the line is between an individual mind and the mood of a crowd, and at how much power fear, belief and suffering can hold over the human body.
1. What are the two leading modern explanations, and what is the main objection to the first?
2. Why does this particular event continue to fascinate and disturb people?
1. Ergot poisoning (a toxic fungus on rye) and mass psychogenic illness / mass hysteria. The objection to ergot is that it usually cuts off blood to the limbs, making prolonged dancing unlikely.
2. Because it is very well documented yet still unexplained, and because it shows how powerfully fear, belief and crowd behaviour can act on the body.
This is a story of things being done to people by forces no one could name. When the doer is unknown, unimportant, or deliberately left in shadow, English shifts to the passive voice — and this event is almost impossible to tell without it.
Rewrite the underlined active clause in the passive, keeping the same tense. Drop the agent where it adds nothing.
1. The physicians prescribed more dancing. → More dancing by the physicians.
2. Someone built a wooden stage. → A wooden stage .
3. Historians have never fully explained the event. → The event fully.
1. was prescribed (past simple passive: was/were + past participle)
2. was built (agent "someone" dropped — it adds nothing)
3. has never been fully explained (present perfect passive)
Complete each sentence with the correct passive form (mind the tense and any modal).
1. In July 1518, Frau Troffea seized by an uncontrollable urge to dance. (past)
2. The true death toll never be known. (modal — impossibility)
3. The outbreak still discussed by historians today. (present)
1. was ("was seized" — past simple passive)
2. can ("can never be known" — modal + be + past participle)
3. is ("is still discussed" — present simple passive)
Fill each gap with a passive verb (a form of be + past participle), using the verb in brackets in the right tense. Read it aloud once you're done.
Frau Troffea (grip) by a strange compulsion, and soon hundreds (affect). The dancers (encourage) to keep moving, and a stage (build) for them. Five centuries later, the event still (remember), and its cause (never / explain) with certainty.
was gripped · were affected · were encouraged · was built · is still remembered · has never been explained
Notice how the passive keeps the focus on the victims and the mystery — the doer stays in the shadows, exactly where the history leaves it.
Hold on to this — you'll need the passive in the Speak tab, where the whole challenge is to describe events whose cause no one can name.
You've read the story and you have the words — so now the real thing is within reach. There's a full podcast episode that tells this story in much greater depth, in natural, real-speed English. It's optional: the lesson stands on its own without it.
From the Noiser podcast network. Hosted by historians, roughly 50 minutes. Open the show below and search "Short History Of The Dancing Plague" to find the episode.
Open the show on Spotify →This is the heart of the lesson — do all of it out loud. The timer is there to keep you going: fill the time with detail rather than escaping it.
Tell the story of the Dancing Plague of 1518 in your own words, as if to someone who has never heard of it. Move through the arc: a hungry, frightened Strasbourg → one woman dancing alone in the street → the outbreak spreading to hundreds → the doctors' "hot blood" cure and the disastrous stage → the shrine of Saint Vitus → the modern theories, and the mystery that remains.
Use the passive voice at the key moments (she was seized… a stage was built… hundreds were affected… the cause has never been explained), and work in at least five key words (seize, compulsively, afflicted, hysteria, convulsions, purge, decree, toll, dread, haunt).
Weigh the two leading explanations — ergot poisoning versus mass psychogenic illness. Set out the evidence and the objections for each, then argue for the one you find more convincing. Is it more reassuring to believe a poison caused it, or more unsettling to accept that the mind alone could do this to a whole city?
The Dancing Plague is often called an early case of mass hysteria. Talk about how emotions and behaviour spread through crowds. Use the passive to describe events whose cause is unclear.
Stuck for an idea? Pick one of these and run with it: