216:, a Swiss-German tourist reports that "At the end of the play, as is customary, they danced quite elegantly, with two people dressed as men and two as women" and the next day, following a comedy, "they danced very charmingly in English and Irish fashion". Paulus Hentzner, a German traveller to England, also observes that the many tragedies and comedies performed in the theatres conclude by "mixing acrobatic dancing with the sweetest music, they can expect to receive the final reward of great popular applause" A year later, Ben Jonson, in
17:
57:
44:
84:...let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
119:, who was as famous for his stage jigs as for his acting in regular drama. It is sometimes thought that when Kempe resigned from the Lord Chamberlain's Men in 1599, it indicated that jigs were falling out of favor. But there was still a demand for them until 1612 when there was an order to suppress them. A famous 17th-century jig called
28:
was a short comic drama that immediately followed a full-length play. This phenomenon added an additional comic or light-hearted offering at the end of a performance. A jig might include songs sung to popular tunes of the day, and it might feature dance, stage fighting, cross-dressing, disguisings,
143:
in the early seventeenth century. The documents setting out the proceedings for the cases detail that the "libels" (verse that is sung of published in an attempt to defame a person's reputation) were written and performed by amateurs about the infamies of their neighbours and were sometimes taken up
262:
There are dialogue-ballads that have survived, some with the word jig in the title, and some that were featured in early modern plays; these were not stage jigs, but songs. A number of examples of stage jigs from the Tudor and Stuart period have survived as texts, and can be found spread across the
266:
The surviving texts of stage jigs feature between 3-6 male performers, some cross-dressed, in a sung-drama that on the page last between 10 and 25 minutes, but would have been extended in performance (the extant texts call for comic sword fighting, episodes of dance and comic routines) and include
151:, which could easily be converted to a sung-drama by adding to the narrative of the ballad various elements such as props, settings, choreography, or mime. This process was quickened by the performing talents of certain celebrated players, such as Richard Tarlton, William Kemp and George Attowel.
89:
In the 1590s this tension was negotiated by giving the comedians their own moment and their own space at the end of the performance. This practice developed, and during the last decade of the 16th century and into the 17th century, it became the jig in all of its variations, as one or more
138:
The writing and performance of jigs was not just reserved for professionals on London stages. Two of the surviving jig scripts appear as evidence appended to the Bill of
Complaint in two separate cases of libel brought before the court of
212:(1599), suggests that "For as we see at all the play house dore,/When ended is the play, the daunce, and song,/A thousand townsmen, gentlemen, and whores,/Porters and serving-men together throng ... ", the same year that
32:
These short comic dramas are referred to by historians as stage jigs, dramatic jigs, or
Elizabethan jigs. The term, jig, at the same time maintained its common definition, which refers to a type of
101:, rustic clowns, fools, bawdy wenches, enterprisingly faithless wives, gullible and cuckolded husbands, blustering soldiers, slippery gentlemen, foolish constables easily outwitted, prurient
71:
there had been a competition or tension between the playwright's script, where the lines were written down and memorized, and the comedian players, who could get laughs with extemporaneous
170:(1613), observes that in the open playhouses "the sceane, after the epilogue, hath been more black, about a nasty bawdy jigge" than any scene in the play. William Davenant, writing in
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40:. In the various primary sources the term appears with a number of different spellings: jigg, jigge, gig, gigg, gigge, gigue, jigue, jeg, jegg, and jygge.
111:
is considered London's first great performer the theatrical jig. He was a celebrated actor, clown, and author; and he wrote a number of jigs. Next came
155:
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with: "Comedie upon
Comedie he shall have, a Morall, a Historie, a Tragedie, or what hee will . . . with a jigge at the latter end in English
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A number of references to theatre practices between 1590 and 1642 suggest the sort of post-play entertainment that might occur. For example,
93:
Often bawdy, sometimes satirical, usually comic, and something of the nature of farce, these sung-dramas, or playlets, drew their plots from
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602:
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97:, jest books, and Italian novellas and were populated by an assortment of traditional stock characters and tricksters, such as "
239:(1606), remarks that "now adayes they put at the end of euerie Tragedie (as poison into meat) a comedie or jigge"; and by 1611
174:(performed 1638 ), but looking back twenty years, says that attendants to the theatres would "expect a jig, or target fight".
247:, defines French 'farce' by comparing it to "the Jyg at the end of an Enterlude, wherein some pretie knauerie is acted".
68:
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collections at The
Bodleian Library, The British Library, The National Library of Wales and Dulwich College Library.
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254:, Polonius is insulted when Hamlet suggests that he'd prefer to see "a jig or a tale of bawdry" than a good play.
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Singing
Simpkin and Other Bawdy Jigs: Musical Comedy on the Shakespearean Stage - Music, Scripts & Context
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228:(1601), says that "the Iigge is cald for when the play is done". At the end of the sixteenth century,
192:(1592), writes "the quaint comedians of our time/That when their play is done doe fall to ryme". In
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79:, that indicates this. Hamlet, while welcoming a troupe of traveling players, discusses clowning:
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The Six Bookes of a
Commonweale, Out of the French and Latine copies, done into English by
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by semi-professional players and toured around towns and villages in
England's localities.
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was named for him and was published almost a half century after Kempe in the first book of
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were so concerned by such post-play entertainment that they saw fit to issue an
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The jig probably had some relationship to, the street-ballad or dialogue-
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impromptu improvisation. They were probably related to French farce or
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of O neighbour
Gabriell, and his wooing of Kate Cotton". In 1599,
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42:
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Have With You To
Saffron Walden Or, Gabriell Harveys Hunt is Up
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and by disrupting. There is a passage in
Shakespeare's tragedy
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performers would sometimes reenter to perform an after-piece.
33:
220:(1600; 2.1), talks of "as a jigge after a Play", as does
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Order for suppressinge of Jigges att the ende of Playes
572:
315:
350:Shakespeare, 2008, Act III, Scene 2, lines 38–39
24:In theatres, beginning in Elizabethan London, a
20:Characters from various plays of this era (1662)
245:A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues
105:, falsely coy maidens and drunken foreigners".
81:
530:Shakespeare, 2008, Act II, scene ii, line 502.
8:
613:The Elizabethan Jig and Related Song Drama
29:asides, masks, and elements of pantomime.
288:
178:16th- and 17th-century sources quoted
7:
631:A Preface to Shakespeare's Comedies
14:
611:Baskervill, Charles Read (2012),
593:Clegg, R.; Skeaping, L. (2014),
575:The Cambridge Guide to Theatre
1:
647:Shakespeare, William (2008),
667:Review: Measure for Measure
597:, Exeter University Press,
218:Every Man Out of his Humour
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132:The English Dancing Master
115:, an actor of the time of
226:Jack Drum's Entertainment
665:Walpole, Elinor (2011),
629:Mangan, Michael (2014),
571:Banham, Martin (1995),
328:Oxford University Press
250:In Shakespeare's play,
196:(1596) Nashe threatens
156:Westminster Magistrates
615:, Dover Publications,
579:, Dover Publications,
314:Thurston Dart (2001).
210:Epigrammes and Elegies
172:The Unfortunate Lovers
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359:Mangan 2014, p. 66-67
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557:Clegg 2014, p. 13-14
476:Clegg 2014, p. 56-57
413:Clegg 2014, p. 43-44
386:Banham, 1995. p. 575
377:Clegg 2014, p. 14-24
669:, A Younger Theatre
395:Clegg 2014, p. 5-38
117:William Shakespeare
67:In London's public
467:Clegg 2014, p. 8-9
323:Grove Music Online
276:commedia dell'arte
168:Strange Horse-Race
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49:
22:
684:Theatrical genres
521:Clegg 2014, p. 60
512:Clegg 2014, p. 60
503:Clegg 2014, p. 60
494:Clegg 2014, p. 60
485:Clegg 2014, p. 60
458:Clegg 2014, p. 60
449:Clegg 2014, p. 25
440:Clegg 2014, p. 25
431:Clegg 2014, p. 60
422:Clegg 2014, p. 42
404:Clegg 2014, p. 13
337:978-1-56159-263-0
304:Clegg 2014, p. 55
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109:Richard Tarlton
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206:John Davies
651:, Oxford,
548:Clegg 2014
283:References
230:Jean Bodin
202:Hexameters
122:Kemp's Jig
113:Will Kempe
95:folk tales
69:playhouses
135:of 1651.
678:Category
224:who, in
103:Puritans
99:cuckolds
62:(right)
52:History
655:
649:Hamlet
637:
619:
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583:
334:
317:"jigg"
252:Hamlet
149:ballad
77:Hamlet
73:asides
270:sotie
243:, in
208:, in
186:, in
166:, in
38:music
34:dance
653:ISBN
635:ISBN
617:ISBN
599:ISBN
581:ISBN
332:ISBN
232:in
129:'s
36:or
26:jig
680::
330:.
320:.
279:.
340:.
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