Dancing masters
Dancing masters danced and played while giving lessons, so the fiddles they used were made especially small and light.
For a picture of a dancing master on stage, see the title-page of the play The Wits.
Those pictured here date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the video clip [available on CD ROM only], a modern fiddler plays a coranto* in the old style with his fiddle held low on the shoulder.
Footnotes
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The coranto
The Italian coranto (the French version is "courante," from the word for "running"), was related to the earlier dance the saltarello ("a small leap"). Click for another example.