Popular Music Of The Olden Time Vol 1

Ancient Songs, Ballads, & Dance Tunes, Sheet Music & Lyrics - online book

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294
ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC.
RED BULL. .
This tune is named after the Ked Bull Playhouse, which formerly stood in St. John Street, Clerkenwell. It was in use throughout the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and perhaps before. At the Restoration, the King's actors, under Thomas Killigrew, played there until they removed to the new Theatre in Drury Lane; and when Davenant produced his Playhouse to he Let, in 1663, it was entirely abandoned. (See Collier's Annals of the Stage.)
In the Itoxburghe Collection, i. 246, is a ballad .entitled " A mad kind of wooing; or A Dialogue between Will the simple, and Nan the subtle, with their loving agreement: to the tune of The new Dance at the Red Bull Playhouse." It is black-letter, printed for the assigns of T. Symcocke, whose patent for " printing of paper and parchment on the one side " was granted in 1620, and assigned in the same year. Another copy of the ballad will be found in the Pepys Collection, i. 276, "printed for H[enry] G[osson] on London Bridge.
The tune is contained in Apollo's Banquet for the Treble Violin, entitled The Damsell's Dance; and in The Dancing Master (1698), Bed Bull.