Political street songs and singers in seventeenth‐century England

Abstract Ballad singers and sellers were unquestionably important contributors to the urban and rural soundscape in seventeenth century England. They brought the popular musical productions of the metropolis to the provinces and acted as cultural mediators between town and country, centre and periphery, orality and print. While ballads dealing with a wide array of topics were performed and sold on early modern streets for centuries, this article specifically explores the nature and significance of street performance to the newly burgeoning commercial trade in political song that emerged in England from the late 1630s. First, the ‘ballad singer’ is historicised as a newly emerging phenomenon, closely related to the burgeoning printed ballad trade from about the 1590s. Second, the article examines the variegated social profile of performers and the significance of the street as a place for performance in the febrile political environment of the mid‐ and late‐seventeenth century. Finally, the article considers the seventeenth‐century printed ballad sheet itself as an important political performer in the English street.