If you’ve ever played the video game “Skyrim” or watched a Monty Python sketch, you’ve probably encountered medieval minstrels, performers who entertained audiences with stories, songs and stunts.
But despite how often such characters appear in fiction, scholars know very little about what the average minstrel actually joked about.
Now, a medieval comedy routine has been found in the pages of the Heege manuscript, a 15th-century text housed in the National Library of Scotland.
“It gives us a glimpse into live comedy and entertainment in the Middle Ages that would otherwise be lost,” says James Wade, a literary scholar at the University of Cambridge, to the Washington Post’s Leo Sands .
Wade is the author of a new study on the text published in The Review of English Studies. While the manuscript has been studied before, previous research focused primarily on its physical characteristics and significance as an artifact.
