The repertory of Elizabethan street songs must be like mother’s milk to Tarleton’s Jig, a multivalent quartet that acts as a kind of ensemble-in-residence to London’s Globe Theatre. If many of the tunes are instantly familiar, it’s because so often they were recycled to fit different texts: thus, a tune now better known as a Christmas carol appears under the guise of a drinking song (“Stanes’ Morris”). But the emphasis is definitely on the words, which sport the usual rogues’ gallery of lecherous knights, wanton wenches and cuckolds all a-row (that said, there’s little here that you’d be afraid of playing to a five-year-old). The variety of instruments is also worth mentioning: alongside the familiar ones we hear an ass’s jawbone, a rommelpot of dubious sonority, and…some spoons, all of which are lovingly described in the booklet-note.

As an introduction to a certain facet of Elizabethan life, the one preserved in Shakespeare’s comedies, this is worth exploring; the pity is that this gaggle of strange instruments and louche lyrics never quite conveys the bawdy atmosphere that’s plainly aimed at. And when a song appears whose lyrics call for poignancy (as in the well known “Three Ravens”), the effect is strangely unresonant. Paradoxically, although live performance is the ensemble’s stock-in-trade, it’s the whiff of post-production that robs these performances of spirit. “From the Alehouse to the Whore-house” promises the disc’s subtitle. Perhaps I got lost on the way.