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Chapter 5 - After-Play Ballads
Tiffany Stern, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Book:

Ballad Business

Published online:

05 February 2026

Print publication:

19 February 2026, pp 172-204
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Summary

This chapter is on ballads performed inside the playhouse but when plays were over, jigs, and then sold outside by the balladmongers. The first part considers how jigs were written and published by a range of clowns, including Richard Tarlton, Robert Armin and William Kempe; the second part looks at how ‘themes’ or poetic song exchanges, though not themselves printed, were used to enhance sales of other ballads to the same tune; and the third part is on how ‘fan fiction’ ballads, like ‘Robin Goodfellow’ and ‘Poor Tom’, which take play characters and give them new songs, were printed often enough to suggest they were themselves jigs. Jigs, themes and fan fiction ballads ensured plays and ballads were always linked by place and performance, while every production that employed jigs contributed to the selling of broadside ballads.

Part XXI - Audiences
- By Lori Humphrey Newcomb
Edited by Bruce R. Smith, University of Southern California
Edited in association with Katherine Rowe, Smith College, Massachusetts
With Ton Hoenselaars, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands, Akiko Kusunoki, Andrew Murphy, Trinity College Dublin, Aimara da Cunha Resende, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Book:

The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare

Published online:

17 August 2019

Print publication:

21 January 2016, pp 1483-1544
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204 - English-Speaking Audiences: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
from Part XXI - Audiences
- By Richard Preiss
Edited by Bruce R. Smith, University of Southern California
Edited in association with Katherine Rowe, Smith College, Massachusetts
With Ton Hoenselaars, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands, Akiko Kusunoki, Andrew Murphy, Trinity College Dublin, Aimara da Cunha Resende, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Book:

The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare

Published online:

17 August 2019

Print publication:

21 January 2016, pp 1493-1500
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Part II - Theater
- By Andrew Gurr
Edited by Bruce R. Smith, University of Southern California
Edited in association with Katherine Rowe, Smith College, Massachusetts
With Ton Hoenselaars, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands, Akiko Kusunoki, Andrew Murphy, Trinity College Dublin, Aimara da Cunha Resende, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Book:

The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare

Published online:

17 August 2019

Print publication:

21 January 2016, pp 67-160
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