This chapter is on the print aspect of ballads. Part one shows that theatre ballads were published as occasion-specific souvenirs, and asks when stationers (i.e., publishers) commissioned theatre ballads, when they ‘stole’ them, and when they simply accepted them from authors and playhouses. It focuses on John Danter, John Trundle and Abel Jeffes, who sent their own chapmen (roving sellers of print texts) to trade around the playhouses. Part two considers normal and celebrity popular ballad writers, like William Elderton, Thomas Deloney, Richard Johnson and Martin Parker, investigating the sums of money they might make from publishers. Part three explores purchasers who bought theatre ballads for their print qualities: to use as wastepaper, decoration, or reading matter.

This chapter is on the performance of ballads. The first section explains how ballads were sold outside the ‘playhouse’ as an extended part of its merchandise. The second part is on the people who sold ballads: the balladmongers (also known as chapmen, pedlars and hawkers), who were regularly drawn from amongst the visually or physically impaired and were as likely to be female as male. Explaining the way books and ballads were ‘cried’ and sung to entertain the queue waiting for entrance into the playhouse, it explores balladmongers as people outside the playhouse, yet deeply part of it, whose wares impacted upon the spectators’ understanding of the drama to follow and, later, the memories of the drama they had seen. The third part considers the purchasers of theatre ballads and the gendered spaces, in particular, dairies and alehouses, where they would later sing the songs they had acquired.