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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

A unique record of medieval live comedy performance has been identified in a 15th-century manuscript [cam.ac.uk]:

The texts contain the earliest recorded use of 'red herring' in English, extremely rare forms of medieval literature, as well as a killer rabbit worthy of Monty Python. The discovery changes the way we should think about English comic culture between Chaucer and Shakespeare.

[...] Throughout the Middle Ages, minstrels travelled between fairs, taverns and baronial halls to entertain people with songs and stories.

Fictional minstrels are common in medieval literature but references to real-life performers are rare and fleeting. We have first names, payments, instruments played and occasionally locations, but until now virtually no evidence of their lives or work.

Dr James Wade, from the University of Cambridge's English Faculty and Girton College, came across the texts by accident while researching in the National Library of Scotland. He then had a "moment of epiphany" when he noticed the scribe had written:

'By me, Richard Heege, because I was at that feast and did not have a drink.'

"It was an intriguing display of humour and it's rare for medieval scribes to share that much of their character," Wade says. That made him investigate how, where and why Heege had copied out the texts.

[...] This booklet contains three texts and Wade concludes that around the year 1480 Heege copied them from a now lost memory-aid written by an unknown minstrel performing near the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border.

[...] "Most medieval poetry, song and storytelling has been lost", Wade says. "Manuscripts often preserve relics of high art. This is something else. It's mad and offensive, but just as valuable."

[...] Wade thinks the minstrel wrote part of his act down because its many nonsense sequences would have been extremely difficult to recall. "He didn't give himself the kind of repetition or story trajectory which would have made things simpler to remember," Wade says.

[...] The texts add to what we thought minstrels did. Fictional depictions suggest they performed ballads about Robin Hood, chivalric romances, adventure stories and songs about great battles.

"These texts are far more comedic and they serve up everything from the satirical, ironic, and nonsensical to the topical, interactive and meta-comedic. It's a comedy feast," Wade says.

[...] "People back then partied a lot more than we do today, so minstrels had plenty of opportunities to perform. They were really important figures in people's lives right across the social hierarchy. These texts give us a snapshot of medieval life being lived well."

Journal Reference:
J. Wade, Entertainments from a medieval minstrel's repertoire book [open], The Review of English Studies (2023). DOI: 10.1093/res/hgad053 [doi.org]

Original Submission