As the director of the English Broadside Ballad Archive, which contains thousands of extant broadside ballads, and with many years of experience in her field, Professor Fumerton is ideally placed to write this book. It is an extensive and masterly study both of ballads themselves and also of previous scholarship on the subject. Fumerton states that her aim is to “explore the multifold ways the media of broadside ballad artifacts interact with each other within and between ballads, as well as within and between audience members as they respond in the form of a plural collectivity or publics to a multimedia cultural experience,” and her book fulfills this promise.
In each of the book's four main sections Fumerton analyzes individual ballads in depth to shine a clearer light on the subject. As an example, the chapter “The Lady and the Blackamore” uses the ballad of that name and others on a similar theme to show that, although there might be changes in format, context, and nuance, the same material could be presented as sensational news over nearly three centuries. Fumerton's analogy of Lego pieces that may be fitted together in innumerable different ways is particularly apt to show how ballads are made up of a number of constituent parts: text (the wide-ranging subject matter and meter), melody, woodcuts and borders, writers, printers, sellers, and audience (whether passive or active). We are reminded of the ephemeral nature of early modern broadside ballads. They were cheap, and as such were printed on flimsy pieces of printed paper, rather than bound in books. As a result, the majority have been lost over the centuries, but, fortunately for us, there were ballad collectors and antiquarians. Fumerton traces the network of seventeenth-century ballad collectors, showing how the ballads have come down to us. She also uses examples from Samuel Pepys's diary to show how individual ballads were performed or experienced within a domestic setting or played by professional musicians.
As an early music practitioner, I was delighted to see that the book spends so much time discussing the music of the ballads. Fumerton describes how ballads were an integral part of early modern soundscape, whether sung in the street by hawkers, or by men and women as they worked, or in a domestic setting, throughout all levels of society. With an unusual but very welcome addition to the printed book, Fumerton follows Ross Duffin (Shakespeare's Songbook) in providing an easily accessible audio guide (https://repository.upenn.edu/fumerton_broadside-ballad/index.html). This resource uses vocal and instrumental lines to illustrate different versions and interpretations of each ballad discussed, reminding us that written notes were more of a guide than something to be strictly followed. Thus, the audio guide considers some of the different ways in which a melody might be adapted by the performer, whether to better fit their vocal range, to fit the meter of the song, or to convey the mood or meaning of a song. This is invaluable in understanding the ballads and how they might have been experienced by their early modern public, giving us an insight not only into what our ancestors sang, played, and heard, but also how they did so. Personally, I have to admit to finding the sound of the electronic “audio fiddle” a little jarring, and preferred the interpretations played by Sara Bashore. I would also have liked the vocal recordings to be more spirited and varied in their execution, but these are tiny quibbles.
Fumerton's study concludes with a section entitled “Ballading The Winter's Tale.” In this, she consolidates the work done earlier in the book, examining later scenes of the play that are rich in ballad information on a number of ways, covering ballad sellers, the wide range of the ballads they offer, and the different levels on which the ballads are understood or enjoyed by their public, along with a discussion of end-of-play jigs. The mention in the play of Rogero (a popular ground, or set of chords, originally from Italy, but known throughout Europe, and used for songs, dances, and divisions from the mid-sixteenth century onward) leads to a demonstration of how the same tune can be interpreted in myriad ways to be almost whatever you want it to be—just like the protean broadside ballad.
