BROADSIDE BALLADBiblio.com
The Woeful Lamentation of Mrs. Jane Shore
1810174973London: printed and sold by J. Pitts c.1810. An ephemeral broadside ballad detailing the story of Jane Shore a mistress of Edward IV and a popular cultural reference for many centuries. Shore's heavily fictionalized story featured many elements considered to have mass appeal in the era: a sexually voracious woman a relationship that transcended social hierarchies and an ending that punished transgressive behaviour. In Mrs. Jane Shore the eponymous character is described as a married woman who became King Edward's concubine and "lived in the court/With lords and ladies of great sort". Whilst she had influence over the King she ensured "to help the people that were poor" and "sav'd their lives condemned to die". Regardless her infidelity ultimately led to her social disgrace and she died in a ditch in East London. As detailed in the ballad urban mythology claimed that her unfortunate death gave the Shoreditch district its name. Ballads such as this were sung in a variety of communal spaces including pubs lodging houses and the streets and typically took criminal or socially deviant behaviour as their subject. In their own time broadside ballads were believed "to foster immorality and to glorify crime" O'Brien p. 16. More recent interpretations appreciate their literary and social value and consider that "their job was to voice tensions to work over the contradictions of human life" Gammon p. 237. Landscape single sheet 362 x 252 mm printed in columns. A little chipped at the edges but overall a well-preserved copy of a fragile publication. Vic Gammon "Song Sex and Society in England 1600-1850" Folk Music Journal vol. 4 no. 3 1982; Ellen L. O'Brien "'The Most Beautiful Murder': The Transgressive Aesthetics of Murder in Victorian Street Ballads" Victorian Literature and Culture vol. 28 no. 1 2000. unknown
Peter Harrington · Royaume-Uni975,00 £GB≈ 1 113,25 €
