ABSTRACT
The public stage in London, w i th its professional companies o f actors, does not exhaust the possibilities o f dramatic material for suits for libel in the Court o f Star Chamber during Shakespeare's lifetime. There are two further types o f dramatic literature, which are hardly mentioned in histories o f what might be called official literature, but which were widely practised, both in the provinces and in London, and from time to time emerged from their obscurity to exercise the minds o f the Judges in that Court, and so to come upon record. The Jig and the May Game, indeed, in one way or another, were evidently a source o f continual trouble to the officers o f government and o f justice throughout the Tudor
The Jig was a kind o f entertainment whose history is at least as obscure as that o f the May Game, but which is better known in a general way because o f its close relation to the Elizabethan stage in London and to the literary drama. A l l readers o f Shakespeare know, for example, how the play o f Twelfth Night ends w i th a song sung by the Clown or jester, Feste, and how this song, probably accompanied by a dance, is taken as an example o f the Jig which frequently followed a play as an after-piece on the public stage, just as in later centuries a pantomime came after the serious play to conclude the evening's entertainment. So again Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth ends w i th a humorous prose speech spoken by a dancer who appends a dance to his speech before kneeling down to pray for the Queen.
