Cuckolds all a row: Broadside ballads: songs from the streets, taverns, theatres and countryside of 17th-century England, ed. Lucie Skeaping, foreword by Andrew Motion (London: Faber Music, 2005), 19.95

Abstract

‘I love a ballad in print’ says the shepherdess Mopsa in Shakespeare's The winter's tale; she is referring to broadside ballads sold by the pedlar Autolycus. Illus.1, though from later in the 17th century, shows the format of most ballad sheets. Beneath the title comes a summary of the story or theme, the name of the tune for singing the ballad, one or more woodcuts (sometimes, as in this case, bearing a tangential relation to the topic), and the ballad itself, printed in gothic type and usually of many verses. Ballads were for singing, but the absence of music on the broadsides has meant that most collected editions, from A collection of old ballads (1723) onwards, have been compiled from a literary perspective and print the texts without music. Lucie Skeaping's Broadside ballads is the first anthology devoted to 17th-century ballads that includes tunes (supported by chord symbols) and texts.