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5
Turner's dish of Lenten stuff
Pepys, i, 206, B.L., one woodcut, five columns.
There is another copy of this ballad, later by fifty years, in the collection of the Earl of Crawford {Bibliotheca Lindesiana, Catalogue of English Ballads, No. 841). It is entitled
The Common Cries of London Town, Some go up street, some go down. With Turners Dish of Stuff, or a Gallymaufery,
is signed "Finis. W. Turner," and has the imprint, "London, Printed for F. C[oles]. T. V[ere]. and W. G[ilbertson]. 1662." Lord Crawford's copy was formerly in the possession of J. P. Collier, who commented on it in his Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language (1, 163) and, later, reprinted it in his Book of Roxburghe Ballads (pp. 207—216). Collations with this reprint (C.) are given in the notes. It is curious that the existence of the Pepysian ballad has remained unnoticed, for Collier's reprint has attracted a considerable amount of attention from students of the Elizabethan drama. One of them, F. G. Fleay {Chronicle History of the London Stage, New York, 1909, p. 375), correctly argued that the ballad had originally appeared in 1612, and added the following important note: "The 'lean fool' is Thomas Greene, the Queen Anne's player at the Bull. The 'fat fool' is William Rowley, the player in Prince Henry's company at the Curtain who acted Plum Porridge in the Inner Temple Mask, and in it 'moved like one of the great porridge tubs going to the Counter.' Shank's rhymes were acted as 'Shank's Ordinary' after he moved to the King's Company, c. 1623." John Shank (cf. p. xix) and his jigs are mentioned, also, in a poem in Choyce Drollery, 1656 (ed. J. W. Ebsworth, p. 7).
Apart from its interesting comments on stage-players, the ballad preserves a curious lot of old street-cries; among them the cry of "Cherry Ripe" so often used by Elizabethan lyricists. Nothing else of Turner's seems to be extant, but evidently he was prominent among Jacobean balladists. Three ballads by him were licensed to Thomas Pavier on November 19, 1612 (Arber's Transcript, in, 503): "Turners disshe of wagtayles," "Turners Dreame of Sym Subtill and Susan the brokers Daughter," and "Turners Pylgrymage to the land of Iniquitye." He is again mentioned in the Stationers' Register when, on August 25, 1613 |
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