SOURCE: Preface to A Pepsyian Garland: Black Letter Broadside Ballads of the Years 1595-1639, Chiefly from the Collection of Samuel Pepys, edited by Hyder E. Rollins, Cambridge University Press, 1922, pp. vii-xxiii.

[In the following excerpt, Rollins explains that a great many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century broadsides, ballads, and jigs served not only as popular entertainments but as journalism and social commentary as well.]

Perhaps the most important of all the treasures—apart from the inimitable Diary—in the library bequeathed by Samuel Pepys to Magdalene College, Cambridge, is his collection of broadside ballads. These were grouped loosely according to subject-matter and provided with title-pages and descriptive headings in Pepys's own hand before being bound into five large folio volumes. The first title-page runs:

My Collection of Ballads. Vol. I. Begun by M^r Selden; Improv'd by y^e addition of many Pieces elder thereto in Time; and the whole continued to the year 1700. When the Form, till then peculiar thereto, viz^t. of the Black Letter with Picturs, seems (for cheapness sake) wholly laid aside, for that of the White Letter without Pictures.

Nearly every broadside in the first four volumes is printed in black-letter type, while in the fifth volume appear only broadsides in roman and italic type. Ballads of a comparatively early date—almost none later than 1640—are found in the first volume, those in the other volumes being, for the most part, printed during the years 1660-1700. It seems likely that the majority of the older ballads came from John Selden's collection. A careful study of the old numbering on the separate sheets and of Pepys's new pagination would no doubt partially reveal the extent of the Selden nucleus on which the collection was built.

A manuscript catalogue of the collection shows 1797 entries of first lines. This number, however, not only includes printed duplicates as well as manuscript ballads that Pepys copied but also fails to indicate when more than one ballad is printed on a single sheet. J. W. Ebsworth¹, after a painstaking examination of the collection, stated that it contains 1738 individual printed sheets, 67 of which are duplicates, and that of the 1671 distinct ballads in the five volumes 964 are unique.

No edition of Pepysian ballads has hitherto been published: for the present edition students are indebted to the good offices of Mr Stephen Gaselee and Mr O. F. Morshead, past and present Librarians of the Bibliotheca Pepysiana. The Ballad Society, founded by Dr Furnivall in 1868, announced its intention of printing the Pepys collection as an initial effort, but, failing to obtain the necessary authorization, turned instead to the huge collections in the British Museum. The Roxburghe and Bagford collections, have, as a result, long been accessible in the eleven volumes published by the Ballad Society under the titles of the Roxburghe Ballads (1871-1891) and the Bagford Ballads (1878). Among the eight volumes of these publications that appeared under his riotous, if learned, editorship, Ebsworth² estimated that he had reprinted, in one form or another, at least five hundred ballads that occur in Pepys's collection. From the collection, too, long before Ebsworth's time, distinguished students had drawn heavily. Bishop Percy made a thorough study of it before beginning the publication of his epoch-making Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), in that work reproduced a number of Pepysian ballads, and had many others copied for him. These copies, by the way, are now preserved in the Percy Papers owned by the Harvard College Library. Others were reprinted by Thomas Evans and R. H. Evans in various editions of their Old Ballads, Historical and Narrative (1777-1810). Macaulay gleaned from the ballads some picturesque facts for his History of England; and within the last few years many other broadsides from the collection have been here and there reprinted³, often in unexpected places. Many of Pepys's ballads, then, are accessible if one searches diligently. The bulk of the collection, however, is still generally unknown, and is likely to remain so until a trustworthy printed catalogue is published. Such a catalogue I hope to make some day. Meanwhile, this Garland reprints the most interesting seventeenth century ballads in Pepys's first volume, none of a later date than 1639, and to them adds from other sources six or seven early ballads in which Pepys himself would have revelled.

Undeniably the golden age of the ballad, like the golden age of the theatre, ended with the outbreak of the Great Rebellion. During the Commonwealth period (1649-1659) ballad-singing was prohibited by law, and offending street singers were flogged out of the trade. To be sure, ballads continued to be printed, but in not so large numbers as in the years before 1642 and after 1660. For this decay repressive laws were but partly to blame: more important is the fact that the chief writers turned from ballads to chapbooks and news-pamphlets. Martin Parker, the greatest of them all, is known to have written many pamphlets but only five or six ballads after 1642, and with his death in 1652 the best part of balladry came to an end. Laurence Price, almost the last of the distinguished line of ballad-writers that began in 1559 with William Elderton (or in 1512 with John Skelton), wrote for only a brief time after the Restoration. In authorship, in typography, and in subject-matter, Restoration ballads can seldom compare in interest with those of the reigns of the Tudors and early Stuarts.

It may be well to explain the use of the word ballad. Modern critics very often think of a ballad only as a traditional song that, like “Sir Patrick Spens,” “Barbara Allen,” or “Johnny Armstrong,” has decided merits as poetry. This unhistoric restriction of the term to the English and Scottish “popular” ballads is a development of the nineteenth century. To quarrel with it would be out of place; but at least readers may be reminded that to Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Dryden, and Pepys the word ballad had in general one meaning only: namely, a song (usually written by a hack-poet) that was printed on a broadside and sold in the streets by professional singers. If “Johnny Armstrong,” “Chevy Chase,” or Sir Edward Dyer's “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is” got into the hands of the John Trundles of London, it, too, became a ballad. Elizabethans and Jacobeans recognized no difference whatever in type between what are now called traditional (or popular) ballads and broadside (or stall) ballads: some of them no doubt thought “Chevy Chase” a better ballad than, say, “The Famous Rat-catcher” (No. 10). But, if so, they were judging each by its manner and matter, not discriminating between traditional and stall songs. In this book the word ballad, when otherwise unqualified, refers to the printed broadside type only.

To judge the ballad as poetry is altogether unfair. A few ballads, to be sure, do appear in Tottel's Miscellany, the Paradise of Dainty Devises, and the Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions without reeking of their humble origin; while the Handfull of Pleasant Delights (1584), which contains nothing but ballads, has been absurdly overpraised by critics (who, apparently, do not know that all of its songs had before collection been printed as broadside ballads) as “a work of considerable merit, containing some notable songs,” or as “one of the most prized of the poetical book gems of the Elizabethan period,” or as “lyric poems⁴.” If such criticism of the Handfull were sound, an editor need have no fear in introducing the eighty ballads in this book as a very notable collection indeed of Elizabethan and Stuart lyrics. But sound it is not.

Ballads worthy to be called real poetry can almost be counted on the fingers of both hands. Among them might be placed the old ballad of “Love Will Find Out the Way,” which Palgrave included in his Golden Treasury and which Thomas Hardy and Alfred Noyes quote with evident gusto; or “A Farewell to Love,” from Thomas Deloney's Garland of Good Will, that is also included in the Passionate Pilgrim as the work of Shakespeare; or “Mary Ambree,” a stirring song beloved by literary men from Ben Jonson to George Meredith; or, possibly, “The Babes in the Woods,” so highly praised in Wordsworth's preface to the Lyrical Ballads.

From the point of view of sheer melody and rhythm, ballads often answer more than fairly to the test. It is a fact too often forgotten that, whatever their subject, ballads were written to be sung to certain definite and well-known tunes. Hence it often happens that the most doleful subject-matter is embodied in a measure that is decidedly musical and attractive. Cases in point are the refrains to the lugubrious ditty of Mrs Francis (No. 52) and the history of Jonah (No. 11). The matter and the diction of ballads are often contemptible while the measure is very good indeed. For this reason, or simply from the fact that a naïve news-story is told, ballads may at times pardonably be described as “remarkable” or “splendid” or even “delicious.”

Ballads were not written for poetry. They were, in the main, the equivalent of modern newspapers, and it cannot well be denied that customarily they performed their function as creditably in verse as the average newspaper does in prose. Journalistic ballads outnumbered all other types. Others were sermons, or romances, or ditties of love and jealousy, of tricks and “jests,” comparable to the ragtime, or music hall, songs of the present time. As such they may be beyond praise, however woefully lacking in high seriousness and criticism of life. The ballad has interest and value quite independent of its defects or its merits as poetry; and many of the most delightful and most valuable ballads are those which as poetry are worthless or even contemptible. Written for the common people by professional rhymesters—journalists of the earth earthy—ballads made no claims to poetry and art. They have always interested educated men, not as poems but as popular songs or as mirrors held up to the life of the people. In them are clearly reflected the lives and thoughts, the hopes and fears, the beliefs and amusements, of sixteenth and seventeenth century Englishmen. In them history becomes animated.

Shakespeare knew dozens of ballads by heart: he and his fellow-dramatists quote from ballads in nearly every play; and if occasionally they quote in ridicule, then their ridicule applies also to “John Dory,” “George Aloe,” “Little Musgrave,” and “Mussleborough Field,”—traditional ballads now enshrined in Professor Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The great Elizabethans did not dream of judging ballads as poetry—though indisputably they enjoyed reading and singing them—and lost no opportunity of denouncing their authors. Ben Jonson, for example, flatly declared that “a poet should detest a ballad-maker,” echoing Thomas Nashe's grave remark that if a man would “love good poets he must not countenance ballad-makers.” The Parkers and Prices of balladry were butts of never-ceasing ridicule: their very names were odious to poets, though many of their ballads rang pleasingly on the ear, sounded trippingly on the tongue. Nothing else brings one so close to the mass of people for whom Shakespeare wrote as do these songs of the street. Produced solely for the common people, in them are presented topics often of real value and interest. It is doubtful if a more remarkable group of ballads has ever been brought together in one volume than those here reprinted; but he would be a bold man who should characterize them as poetry.

The Pepysian Garland contains eighty ballads. Seventy-three of them come from the Pepys collection, six from the Wood and Rawlinson collections at the Bodleian Library, and one from the Manchester Free Reference Library. The earliest is dated 1595, the latest (except for No. 26, which is included only to illustrate another ballad) 1639. For obvious reasons a chronological arrangement has been adopted, with the result that great variety of subjects greets the eye of a reader as he turns through the pages,—a variety characteristic of the wares offered daily in the streets of seventeenth century London. A ballad-monger, said Thomas Middleton, never lacked “a subject to write of: one hangs himself today, another drowns himself tomorrow, a sergeant, stabbed next day; here a pettifogger a' the pillory; a bawd in the cart's nose, and a pander in the tail; hic mulier, haec vir, fashions, fictions, felonies, fooleries;—a hundred havens has the ballad-monger to traffic at, and new ones still daily discovered⁵.” Middleton's comment reads like a description of the Pepysian Gerland!

Among the eighty ballads are historical accounts, more or less trustworthy,—a few derived from news-books, others from actual observation,—of the assassination of Henry IV of France, the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, the activities of three Northamptonshire witches against the Earl of Rutland, the fall of Oldenbarneveldt and of Sir Francis Michell, prodigies above Cork and the burning of that city in 1622, the Amboyna Massacre, the murder of Dr John Lamb, and a battle between the Dutch and Spanish fleets in 1639. Journalistic, too, are the “hanging ballads” and doleful “good-nights” of criminals who atoned for their crimes at the stake or on the gallows—illustrating a curiosity for news, often mistakenly called morbid, that is quite as eager to-day as then. As journalism some of these ballads are admirable.

Sermonizing ballads full of dire warnings and moralizing also have a place, and we are asked to shudder at a “passing bell” that tolled from heaven in 1582, at Caleb Shillock's prophecies for the year 1607, and at a prophecy of the Judgment Day found in France in 1618. In a curiously modern tone “The Goodfellow's Complaint” and “The Back's Complaint” present the woes attendant on drunkeness and plead for total abstinence; while for the edification of the unread other ballads paraphrase the Biblical account of Solomon's judgment and of Jonah.

A number deal with marvellous events or persons,—with the “admirable” teeth and stomach of Nicholas Wood, with a “monstrous strange” fish caught in Cheshire, with a sprightly “pig-faced gentlewoman” who was called Miss Tannakin Skinker, or with the too severely punished Lamenting Lady who bore 365 children at one burden. Fewer demands on one's credulity are made by the romances of Hero and Leander, of a conventionally cruel Western Knight and a Bristol maid, of a Wiltshire Cressid and a doting old dad. Pictures of manners and customs as valuable as those in the comedies of Dekker and Middleton,—coming as they do from another angle of observation,—are given in “Whipping Cheer,” “The Rat-catcher,” “A Banquet for Sovereign Husbands,” and “Turner's Dish of Lenten Stuff.” Satires of the foibles of the people abound. Lovers and their ladies are laughed at in “Ten Shillings for a Kiss,” “A Proverb Old,” and “The Wiving Age”; husbands are depicted as “He-Devils,” wives as incorrigible scolds; and all trades and professions are held up to scorn for their dishonest actions. In contrast to these tirades, however, are a number of pleasing ballads written to glorify certain low trades and honest manual labour.

The most important single ballad in the volume is “Francis' New Jig” (No. 1), of the date 1595. This is apparently the only printed Elizabethan jig that has been preserved. Of hardly less interest is the “Country New Jig between Simon and Susan” (No. 21), and there are at least two other ballads (Nos. 29, 36; cf. also No. 38) that perhaps were jigs. A jig may be defined as a miniature comedy or farce, written in ballad-measure, which, at the end of a play, was sung and danced on the stage to ballad-tunes. Thanks to the mystifications of J. P. Collier⁶ the jig has received scanty and inadequate treatment from historians of the English drama. A number of other genuine jigs are extant. First in importance is that preserved in MS. Rawlinson Poet. 185 under the title of “A proper new ballett, intituled Rowland's god-sonne. To the tune of Loth to departe.” There is a reference to this jig in the prologue to Nashe's play Summer's Last Will, and a two-part moralization was registered on April 28 and 29, 1592⁷. Almost as interesting is an unnamed jig preserved among the Henslowe papers at Dulwich College, which Collier misled scholars into believing to be a fragment of a play by Christopher Marlowe⁸. Still other jigs occur among the Roxburghe Ballads⁹, in Robert Cox's drolls¹⁰, and, from lost originals, in German translations¹¹.

By 1590 jigs were thoroughly established in London theatres as the usual conclusions to plays. In his Pierce Penilesse (1592) Thomas Nashe sneered at

                                        the queint comedians of our time,
That when their Play is donne do fal to ryme(12);

and he threatened Gabriel Harvey that “Comedie vpon Comedie he shall haue, a Morall, a Historie, a Tragedie, or what hee will … with a Iigge at the latter ende in English Hexameters of O neighbour Gabriell, and his wooing of Kate Cotton¹³.” Comparatively few jigs were registered at Stationers' Hall, all during the years 1591-1595. The reason for the small number lies, no doubt, in the unwillingness of the dramatic companies to have their jigs “staled” by the press: they protected the jigs in their repertory more successfully than their plays. Uncertainty about printers' rights to the copies caused the Clerk of the Stationers' Company to license, in December, 1591, two jigs with the proviso, so often met with in entries of plays, “so that they appertain not to any other¹⁴.” But jigs did not die out in 1595; far from it.

On December 12, 1597, Philip Henslowe bought two jigs for the use of a company of actors, paying for the two six shillings and eight pence¹⁵,—proof that jigs had received the approval of the box-office. In 1598, Ben Jonson tells us, jigs came “ordinarily after a play¹⁶.” He loathed “the concupiscence of jigs and dances,” and believed that they prevented audiences from appreciating plays¹⁷. “Your only jig-maker,” Hamlet calls himself after he has carried on a vulgar dialogue with the bewildered Ophelia. As for Polonius, who is bored by the long tragic speech of the Player, Hamlet sarcastically remarks: “He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps¹⁸.”

Customarily when a play was finished and the epilogue spoken, the musicians struck up a tune and the comedians came dancing out for the jig. “I haue often seene,” wrote Thomas Dekker in 1613, “after the finishing of some worthy Tragedy, or Catastrophe in the open Theaters, that the Sceane after the Epilogue hath beene more blacke (about a nasty bawdy Iigge) then the most horrid Sceane in the Play was¹⁹.” There can be no doubt that some people went to the theatres to see the jig no less than the play. Says Thrift, in Thomas Goffe's Careless Shepherdess²⁰ (about 1620):

          I will hasten to the money Box,
And take my shilling out again, for now
I have considered that it is too much;
I'le go to th' Bull, or Fortune, and there see
A Play for two pense, with a Jig to boot.

A document of the highest importance,—not quoted, I believe, in any work on the drama,—that shows the attitude both of the common people and of the civil authorities towards jigs is printed in J. C. Jeaffreson's Middlesex County Records (II, 83). It is “An Order for suppressinge of Jigges att the ende of Playes” passed at the General Sessions of the Peace on October 1, 1612, which runs as follows:

Whereas Complaynte have [sic] beene made at this last Generall Sessions that by reason of certayne lewde Jigges songes and daunces vsed and accustomed at the play-house called the Fortune in Gouldinglane divers cutt-purses and other lewde and ill disposed persons in greate multitudes doe resorte thither at th' end of euerye playe many tymes causinge tumultes and outrages … Itt was hereuppon expresselye commaunded and ordered by the Justices of the said benche That all Actors of euerye playehouse within this cittye and liberties thereof and in the Countye of Middlesex that they and euerie of them utterlye abolishe all Jigges Rymes and Daunces after their playes And not to tollerate permitt or suffer anye of them to be used vpon payne of ymprisonment and puttinge downe and suppressinge of theire playes, And such further punishment to be inflicted upon them as their offences shall deserve …

As a result of this order, the comedian John Shank ceased “to sing his rhymes,” as William Turner (cf. p. 35) phrased it: no doubt other jig-dancers suffered a like eclipse; but the effect of the order was temporary, and jigs continued to be sung regularly down to 1642.

At least two characters were required in all jigs for the sake of dialogue, and the number often, perhaps usually, was three or four. Jigs were never improvised: instead they were composed by professional ballad-writers or jig-makers, and were performed with fairly elaborate costumes and stage-properties. “Francis' New Jig” has rôles for two women, both of whom were at times masked, and for two men, whose costumes indicate which was the gentleman, which the farmer. Furthermore, the gentleman was provided with ten pounds in stage money and a ring to give his supposed mistress. One scene in “Rowland's Godson” is represented as taking place in an orchard, where the servant beats his master, who is disguised in a woman's clothes. One of Robert Cox's jigs required a bedroom set and a chest big enough to hold a man. Stage-directions, too, were as explicit as in the majority of plays and, with the action itself, show that jigs were written with the peculiar conventions of the Elizabethan stage in mind. Notice, for example, the principle of alternating scenes and the lapse of an entire night's time in “Francis' New Jig.”

There is reason to believe that educated and ignorant people alike delighted in jigs. Good jig-makers invariably aimed at making their work “both witty to the wise, and pleasing to the ignorant²¹.” That they succeeded the continual protests of the great dramatists show. Shortly before his death John Fletcher declared with some bitterness that a good play

Meets oftentimes with the sweet commendation
Of “Hang't!” “'tis scurvy”: when for
approbation
A jig shall be clapt at, and every rhyme
Prais'd and applauded by a clamorous chime.(22)

In jigs Elizabethan comedians won much of their fame. William Kemp, in particular, gained enormous popularity during the years 1591-1595 with his jigs of “The Broomman,” “The Kitchen-Stuff Woman,” “A Soldier, a Miser, and Sym the Clown,” and the three parts of “Kemp's Jig²³.” That his reputation for jigs had not declined in 1599 is attested by striking allusions to them in the satires of John Marston and Edward Guilpin²⁴. Hardly less popular, perhaps, were Augustine Phillips—an actor in Shakespeare's plays—whose “Jig of the Slippers²⁵” was licensed in May, 1595; George Attowell, who danced “Francis' New Jig” in 1595; John Shank, who is mentioned in “Turner's Dish” (No. 5); and, much later, Robert Cox.

Of the widespread influence of the jigs a bare mention must suffice. Through the visits of English comedians to the Continent after 1585, a lively imitation of English ballad-tunes and jigs grew up, especially in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Germany. A particularly notable result in Germany was the Singspiele of Jacob Ayrer and his successors²⁶. In England itself, until the closing of the theatres by the Long Parliament, jigs lost none of their popularity. In 1633 Lupton wrote that “most commonly when the play is done, you shal haue a Iige or dance of all trads, they mean to put their legs to it, as well as their tongs²⁷.” After the severe anti-stage laws of 1642 and 1649, jigs continued to be performed regularly, though the term usually applied to them nowaday is droll. “The incomparable Robert Cox, who,” as Francis Kirkman²⁸ wrote, “was not only the principal actor, but also the contriver and author of most of these farces,” did not flatter himself on inventing a new type of amusement. He merely substituted jigs for the plays themselves; his performances were called jigs by some of his contemporaries²⁹; and in several of them, like “Singing Simpkin,” he merely revived old jigs that years before had been carried abroad by English comedians and that survive in Swedish, Dutch, and German versions far earlier than his own³⁰.

But by an extension of the drolls to include farces in prose as well as comic scenes cut from the plays of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and other playwrights, the jig may have been partially forgotten. After the Restoration, however, it was immediately revived. Typical early examples are “A Dialogue Betwixt Tom and Dick, The former a Country-man, The other a Citizen, Presented to his Excellency and the Council of State, at Drapers-Hall in London, March 28. 1660³¹,” and Thomas Jordan's “The Cheaters Cheated. A Representation in four parts to be Sung by Nim, Filcher, Wat, and Moll, made for the Sheriffs of London³².” Jigs and drolls long survived in the provincial towns after they had been displaced from the London theatres³³; and possibly their influence can be traced in the farces with which plays even in the first half of the nineteenth century customarily ended. Certainly their influence is seen in the dances and dialogue songs³⁴ so common in Restoration plays. Few minor forms of literature have had so great an influence, and none has been so neglected by students.

The Garland introduces a number of ballad-writers who have for three centuries been forgotten, in spite of the belief they once must have shared with other members of their tribe that

Who makes a ballad for an ale-house door
Shall live in future times for evermore!(35)

The most important of these old ballad-poets is undoubtedly Thomas Brewer. His ballad of the year 1605 on the Society of Porters, and another, dated 1609, on two monstrous births (cf. No. 2) clearly indicate that he flourished rather in 1605-10 than, as all writers interested in the history of the drama have said, in “1620?” The 1605 ballad is the earliest work of Brewer's yet brought to light. Interesting also is the signature of George Attowell, a well-known Elizabethan actor, though the authenticity of it is open to grave suspicion. William Turner, a figure who has mystified earlier commentators, is the author of No. 5, and is shown to have been actively writing ballads in 1613. Other new ballad-authors, about whom no biographical details are obtainable, are William Meash, T. Platte, Edward Culter, William Cooke, Thomas Dickerson, Ll. Morgan, and T.F.

Many well-known writers, too, are represented here by ballads that have not before been reprinted,—among them John Cart, Richard Climsal, and Robert Guy. Sixteen of the ballads are signed by Martin Parker, most of them new additions to his bibliography. Only one ballad by him now remains in the Pepys collection (I, 410) unreproduced: “The Married-womans Case. Or, Good Counsell to Mayds, to be carefull of hastie Marriage, by the example of other Married-women. To the tune of The Married-mans Case.” It was printed by H[enry]. G[osson]. and begins “You Maidens all, that are willing to wed,” but almost the entire first column is torn away. Laurence Price is the author of five of the ballads, and one in the Pepys collection (I, 218) still remains to be reprinted: “Oh Gramercy Penny. To the tune of Its better late thriue then neuer.”

Notes

1. Roxburghe Ballads, viii, 740.

2. Roxburghe Ballads, viii, 740.

3. Noteworthy are the photographic reproductions in Professor C. H. Firth's six volume illustrated edition of Macaulay's History.

4. See a discussion of A Handfull of Pleasant Delights by the present writer in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, January, 1919.

5. The World Tost at Tennis, 1620 (Works, ed. A. H. Bullen, vii, 154).

6. In his New Facts Regarding the Life of Shakespeare (1835), pp. 18-20, Collier gave an erroneous definition and a specimen jig from a spurious MS. that have deceived his followers. Fleay (Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, ii, 258), Furness (New Variorum Hamlet, i, 190), A. W. Ward (History of English Dramatic Literature, i, 454, 476), and others accept Collier's definition and his specimen as genuine. W. W. Greg (Henslowe's Diary, ii, 189) says that “no undoubtedly genuine specimen [of a jig] is extant.”

7. Andrew Clark's Shirburn Ballads, p. 354; Herrig's Archiv, 1904, cxiv, 326 ff.; R. B. McKerrow's Nashe, iii, 235; Arber's Transcript of the Stationers' Registers, ii, 609 f.

8. Collier's Alleyn Papers, pp. 8-11; G. F. Warner's Catalogue of the MSS. and Muniments of Alleyn's College at Dulwich, pp. 60 f.; A. Dyce's Marlowe, Appendix.

9. E.g. i, 125, 201, 249.

10. Actaeon and Diana, etc., 1656.

11. E.g. “Roland und Margareth, Ein Lied, von Englischen Comedianten albie gemacht” (F. M. Boehme's Altdeutsches Liederbuch, 1877, pp. 174 ff.), which appears to be a translation of the “gigge betwene Rowland and the Sexton” that was licensed on December 16, 1591.

12. R. B. McKerrow's Nashe, i, 244.

13. Ibid. iii, 114.

14. Arber's Transcript, ii, 600.

15. Henslowe's Diary, ed. W. W. Greg, i, 70, 82.

16. Every Man out of His Humour, ii, i.

17. Induction to Bartholomew Fair.

18. Hamlet, iii, ii, 132; ii, ii, 522.

19. A Strange Horse Race (Works, ed. Grosart, iii, 340). Cf. Edmund Gayton's Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot, 1654, pp. 108, 187, 271-272.

20. 1654 ed., sig. B 4^v (Praeludium).

21. Hog Hath Lost His Pearl (Dodsley-Hazlitt's Old Plays, xi, 435).

22. Prologue to The Fair Maid of the Inn.

23. Cf. Arber's Transcript, ii, 297, 600, 669; iii, 50.

24. Marston's Works, ed. A. H. Bullen, iii, 372; Guilpin's Skialethia, Satire V.

25. Arber's Transcript, ii, 298.

26. Cf. J. Bolte's Die Singspiele der englischen Komoedianten und ihrer Nachfolger in Deutschland, Holland, und Skandinavien, 1893, and a review by B. Hoenig in Anzeiger für Deutsches Altertum, xxii, 296-319.

27. London and Country Carbonadoed, p. 81.

28. Preface to The Wits, or Sport upon Sport, 1672.

29. Thus Mercurius Democritus for June 22-29, 1653, tells of how soldiers raided the Red Bull playhouse and arrested Cox who was performing “a modest and ha[r]mless jigge, calle[d] Swobber”—one of the drolls on which Kirkman lavished praise.

30. See especially Cox's own edition, Actaeon and Diana, etc., and cf. the work of Bolte previously cited.

31. Luttrell Collection, ii, 63 (British Museum); The Rump, 1662, ii, 188 ff.

32. Thomas Jordan's A Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie, 1664, pp. 34-55.

33. At Norwich licenses were granted to players of drolls on October 21, 1671, and March 9, 1687 (Walter Rye, Depositions taken before the Mayor and Aldermen of Norwich, 1905, pp. 143, 180).

34. Many of them are printed with the music in Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy (e.g. 1719 ed., i, 46, 91, 236).

35. Parnassus Plays, ed. Macray, p. 83.