medieval – Tim Boucher

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Mummers play (Wikipedia)

Names:

“mummers or guisers (also by local names such as rhymers, pace-eggers, soulers, tipteerers, wrenboys, and galoshins)”

Characters:

“The principal characters, presented in a wide variety of manners, are a hero, most commonly Saint George, King George, or Prince George (but Robin Hood in the Cotswolds and Galoshin in Scotland), and his chief opponent, (known as the Turkish Knight in southern England), named Slasher elsewhere, and a quack Doctor who comes to restore the dead man to life. Other characters include: Old Father Christmas, who introduces some plays, the Fool and Beelzebub or Little Devil Doubt (who demands money from the audience). “

Old Horse:

“A group of men accompanied a hobby horse (either a wooden head, with jaws operated by strings, or a real horse’s skull, painted black and red, mounted on a wooden pole so that its snapping jaws could be operated by a man stooping under a cloth to represent the horse’s body)…”

Jesters & French Chansons des Gestes

By Tim B.

On 16 September 2018

In History, Reference, Research

Jester (Wikipedia)

“This modern term derives from the older form gestour, or jestour, originally from Anglo-Norman (French) meaning story-teller or minstrel.”

Chanson de geste (Wikipedia)

“Another theory (largely discredited today[16]), developed by Joseph Bédier, posited that the early chansons were recent creations, not earlier than the year 1000, developed by singers who, emulating the songs of “saints lives” sung in front of churches (and collaborating with the church clerics[16]), created epic stories based on the heroes whose shrines and tombs dotted the great pilgrimage routes, as a way of drawing pilgrims to these churches.”

[…]

“Similarly, scholars differ greatly on the social condition and literacy of the poets themselves; were they cultured clerics or illiterate jongleurs working within an oral tradition?”

[…]

“Several manuscript texts include lines in which the jongleur demands attention, threatens to stop singing, promises to continue the next day, and asks for money or gifts.”

[…]

“It has been calculated that a reciter could sing about a thousand verses an hour[31] and probably limited himself to 1000–1300 verses by performance,[27] making it likely that the performance of works extended over several days.[31]”