Annotation:Tunbridge Walks
TUNBRIDGE WALKS. English, Country Dance Tune (6/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody with directions for a country dance was first published in London by Henry Playford in his Dancing Master, 12th edition (1703) and was retained in the long-running series through the 18th and final edition of 1728 (then published by John Young, heir to the Playford publishing concerns). It was also published by rival London publisher John Walsh in his Complete Country Dancing Master, editions of 1719, 1731 and 1754, and in Walsh's Complete Country Dancing Master, Volume the Fourth (c. 1740).
Tunbridge-Walks, or the yeoman of Kent is the name of a comic play written by lawyer and playwright Thomas Baker (c. 1680–1749) in 1703. It was his most successful play and premiered at the Drury Lane Theatre Royal in January of that year. Drury Lane was then one of two theaters operating in London at the time, along with Lincoln’s Inn Fields.