Medieval Entertainers

When people think of castles their minds naturally turn to Kings and Queens, knights, and soldiers, but the jester probably isn’t too far behind that as a figure that people associate with the great castles of the Middle Ages. But beyond the weird hats with bells on, just who were the jesters and other entertainers of the Medieval era? What did they do to earn their keep? Were they well paid? Let’s find out!

Our information about professional entertainers is somewhat limited, as detailed descriptions of specific entertainers and their acts rarely survive. What we do have is many manuscript illustrations showing medieval entertainers at work, from which we can get a good idea of how they dressed and what their acts might have looked like, and records from things like the Royal Wardrobe Accounts, from which we can get the names of some of the jesters and minstrels who performed in front of royalty, and how much they were paid!

To begin with, the classic “jester” with the bells on their hats telling jokes and doing slapstick comedy would be known in medieval times as a “fool” – the word comes from the Latin for a bellows and indicates someone who is full of hot air. Edward I had a personal fool simply called “Tom le Fol”, which just means Tom the Fool. This was quite possibly not his real name – many medieval entertainers used stage names, just as actors, musicians and comedians do nowadays. “Tom Fool” was a sort of generic name for a fool, like Robin Hood was for outlaws, and it’s where we get our phrase “tomfoolery”, which generally means light-hearted silliness. Not that jesters were always light-hearted – it seems to have been a common idea that jesters or fools could say things to powerful employers that no one else could say, by disguising it as a joke. There is a story that after the disastrous French defeat in the Battle of Sluys in 1340 nobody would give the bad news to King Phillip VI of France for fear of his anger, except for his jester. He is said to have quipped that the English sailors “didn’t have the guts to leap into the water, like our brave French.”

This kind of wicked and barbed humour would be what was expected from someone termed an “artificial fool”. These were essentially comedians and performers who would often combine telling jokes with other performances including juggling, acrobatics and so on (although there were also professional jugglers or acrobats who specialised). “Natural fools” were also employed as entertainers, something which seems extremely cruel or degrading to modern eyes, though it was widely accepted at the time. A “natural fool” was usually a person with a learning disability of some kind who were looked down upon or laughed at as a result. However, natural fools who were retained by a royal or noble court were usually comparatively well paid and well cared for by the standards of the time – their perceived lack of guile, good humour and directness were seen as valuable traits, and they were often imagined as being closer to God than most as a result.

Musicians were also valued entertainers in medieval times, and like “jesters” often combined lots of different performance skills, typically also reciting poetry, telling stories and sometimes juggling or dancing. The word ‘minstrel’ for this kind of itinerant musician comes from the 16th century – in the medieval period they might be known as jongleurs or gleemen. They played a huge variety of instruments. The Kings of England employed harpers, violinists, a rhymer or poet who played the “crowd”, a type of lyre. There were also minstrels who played the citole (a sort of early guitar), nakers (a brass drum), trumpets, the psaltery and the bagpipes – these were hugely popular all over medieval Europe, and certainly not confined to Scotland, where they were ironically often considered a typically “English” instrument.

Troubadours were a slightly higher class of musician who performed poetry, often to the accompaniment of the harp, about knights, romance, and chivalry, usually in the Occitan dialect of Southern France. These were popular with knights and the upper classes and were often based around the so called Matter of France, which deals with Charlemagne and his exploits, or even more popularly the Matter of Britain, which were stories about King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. These became so popular that kings would hold jousts where competitors dressed as their favourite character from the Arthurian stories – the world’s first cosplay?

Various other entertainers are also known from these records, including magicians or conjurers, snake charmers, animal trainers (with dancing bears, monkeys and so on), acrobats, naked dancers and even short plays called Interludes. The earliest English non-religious play is called the Interlude of the Student and the Girl and is a short bawdy comedy from around the year 1200. These were probably not performed on a stage, but like a mummer’s play directly in front of the audience.

Finally, there were certainly some unique performers who appeared before the royal court from time to time. Reginald the Liar must have been telling some pretty impressive whoppers to have been worth the five marks he was paid in 1306 – five marks is about 400 days wages for the average worker in England in those days! Then of course, there was Roland the Farter – no prizes for guessing what his speciality was. It says a lot about the sophisticated sense of humour of medieval kings that this chap was given a manor and 30 acres of land for turning up at the King’s Christmas feast each year to perform "Unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum" – One jump, one whistle, and one fart.