Five Elizabethan Dances is drawn from the music that sets the scene and provides the accompaniment for the Ballroom Scene from Don Freund's Romeo and Juliet: A Shakespearean Music Drama for singing actors and piano. The style of the dances is freely drawn from dances found in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (music from ca. 1562 to 1612), spiced up with changing meters and chromatic twists of melody and harmony reflecting a more recent musical language. Each of the dances represents a pivotal scene-within-a-scene.