![master of my domain meme master of my domain meme](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/75/79/44/757944e3080faa49b4c5283f93722b66.gif)
Thankfully, recent scholarship rejects the dismissal of ballad woodcuts as mere decorative extras. The obvious practical upshot to reusing the same woodcut over and over has lent some credence to the assumption that printers must have been apathetic about which images they chose - that the significance of a woodcut’s particular image was secondary to its ability to stand in as an eye-catching stock image, irrespective of the text it accompanied. Publishers and printers would reuse old images in dozens of different ways rather than go through the costly process of commissioning new illustrations for each text. But the crafting of a woodcut from a woodblock was a major financial investment for a printer, as it required high quality, resilient wood and the artistic labor to carve a detailed image into its surface.
![master of my domain meme master of my domain meme](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/35/21/db/3521db9cc18e4876d2273cc6ebdc7990--lol-funny-pictures-seinfeld.jpg)
Printers and booksellers were competing against each other for readership so they had to be able to produce lots of texts quite quickly and pique a customer’s interest in buying one with an eye-catching image. Quick, timely, and engaging popular literature was in increasingly high demand in seventeenth-century England.
![master of my domain meme master of my domain meme](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7e/2d/f1/7e2df1362ad312b69f49b16c084d27c2.jpg)
The reuse of woodcuts in early modern popular print was an industry standard. These two ships would reemerge time and time again on printed ballads, each time in a different context and performing a different representational function. Its representational function would morph over time as it changed owners and began to be used primarily to illustrate broadside ballads. As the century drew on, however, this woodblock would go through some dramatic changes. Of Ianuary last 1616 does not mention a grisly double hanging in its text, the reuse of the woodcut was perfectly logical and thematically appropriate. Although A fight at sea, famously fought by the Dolphin of London against fiue of the Turkes men of warre, and a satty the 12. Between 16 the woodblock either changed hands or was lent, from Edward Allde to George Eld, who employed it in 1617 in another news pamphlet that told a similarly harrowing tale of English merchants battling bravely against a horde of Turkish pirate ships. But it was far from a one time use illustration. In all likelihood, the woodblock that produced the imprint featured on the pamphlet was created specifically for that text.