Ballads, Tudor Vagabonds, and Roundhead Reputations: The Restoration Afterlife of Cook Laurel

Abstract

abstract:This essay examines how ballad song was appropriated to present the demise of the Rump Parliament and commemorate the restoration of the monarchy. Songs not only provide a tune through which words can be performed but also weave together disparate texts through memory of past utterances and performances. The tune "Cook Laurel" establishes a mnemonic connection between parliamentarian figures and ubiquitous rascals in Elizabethan folklore and in Ben Jonson's Gypsies Metamorphosed, performed in 1621. This use of song emphasizes and consolidates representations of parliamentarians as rogues, thus offering royalists a way to lament the regicide and to celebrate the Restoration.