Joan's Ale is Now

This musical score represents a traditional broadside ballad, a popular form of street literature and satire in early modern England. Such ballads were printed on single sheets and sung in taverns and public spaces, making them accessible to common people who couldn't read. The notation here—treble and bass clefs—indicates this was music for voice and instrumental accompaniment.

Ballads functioned as the period's equivalent of newspapers and opinion pieces, commenting on current events, morality, and social life through song. Their melody and rhyme made satirical messages memorable and shareable. This broadside tradition established the foundation for illustrated political satire that would flourish in the 18th and 19th centuries through prints by Hogarth, Gillray, and Rowlandson, eventually evolving into the sequential comic narratives of modern comics.