Jun 8, 2023 07:17 PM
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/990400
INTRO: An unprecedented record of medieval live comedy performance has been identified in a 15th-century manuscript. Raucous texts – mocking kings, priests and peasants; encouraging audiences to get drunk; and shocking them with slapstick – shed new light on Britain’s famous sense of humour and the role played by minstrels in medieval society.
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 Cambridge University’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.
Wade’s study, published today in The Review of English Studies, focuses on the first of nine miscellaneous booklets in the ‘Heege Manuscript’. This booklet contains three texts and Wade concludes that around 1480 Heege copied them from a now lost memory-aid written by an unknown minstrel performing near the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border. The three texts comprise a tail-rhyme burlesque romance entitled The Hunting of the Hare; a mock sermon in prose; and The Battle of Brackonwet, an alliterative nonsense verse.
“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. Stand-up comedy has always involved taking risks and these texts are risky! They poke fun at everyone, high and low.”
The booklet’s secrets have been hiding in plain sight because, Wade believes, previous study has focused on how the manuscript was made and overlooked its comedic significance... (MORE - missing details)
Medieval roots of British comedy ... https://youtu.be/UaX-m_dk0xo
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/UaX-m_dk0xo
INTRO: An unprecedented record of medieval live comedy performance has been identified in a 15th-century manuscript. Raucous texts – mocking kings, priests and peasants; encouraging audiences to get drunk; and shocking them with slapstick – shed new light on Britain’s famous sense of humour and the role played by minstrels in medieval society.
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 Cambridge University’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.
Wade’s study, published today in The Review of English Studies, focuses on the first of nine miscellaneous booklets in the ‘Heege Manuscript’. This booklet contains three texts and Wade concludes that around 1480 Heege copied them from a now lost memory-aid written by an unknown minstrel performing near the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border. The three texts comprise a tail-rhyme burlesque romance entitled The Hunting of the Hare; a mock sermon in prose; and The Battle of Brackonwet, an alliterative nonsense verse.
“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. Stand-up comedy has always involved taking risks and these texts are risky! They poke fun at everyone, high and low.”
The booklet’s secrets have been hiding in plain sight because, Wade believes, previous study has focused on how the manuscript was made and overlooked its comedic significance... (MORE - missing details)
Medieval roots of British comedy ... https://youtu.be/UaX-m_dk0xo