Medieval Comedy: Minstrels

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every historian dreams of hitting gold in the archives. Matt Lewis’s guest Dr. James Wade of Girton College, Cambridge has done just that.

James has uncovered a manuscript by cleric and tutor Richard Heege, which reports the routines of a medieval minstrel. It reads like a mixture of stand-up script and satirical panel show. The text mocks kings, priests and peasants, encourages audiences to get drunk and shocks them with slapstick as well as a killer rabbit worthy of Monty Python. It all sheds new light on the English sense of humour, and the role played by minstrels in medieval society.

This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit.
0:02.6	To listen to all of our episodes, add free and watch hundreds of history documentaries
0:06.8	download the History Hit app or go to historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.
0:12.4	And if you're an Apple listener, you can subscribe for new, add free episodes within the app.
0:23.4	Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis.
0:26.0	Today's guest has hit gold in the archives, something every historian dreams of in those
0:30.3	hallowed spaces.
0:31.3	Dr. James Wade is a fellow at Goethe and College Cambridge and is working on a book about folklore
0:36.5	collecting that spans the venerable bead to Bob Dylan.
0:40.3	One of his subjects is an East Midlands man in the second half of the 15th century named
0:45.1	Richard Heige.
0:46.5	The manuscript James' own cupboard comes across as a mixture of stand-up acts, script and
0:51.5	satirical panel show and it offers an unprecedented insight into the world of medieval comedy
0:57.1	and fun.
0:58.1	It's great to have you on Gone Medieval James, thanks for joining us.
1:00.6	Hi, Matt.
1:01.6	Yeah, thank you for having me.
1:02.6	It's a pleasure.
1:03.6	So to start off with, what is this manuscript?
1:06.0	What has Richard Heige compiled?
1:08.4	It's a manuscript that was produced in the third quarter of the 15th century and it's
1:14.4	slightly misleading to call it a manuscript in some ways because it was only compiled as
	...

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