Before Stand Up Comedians: What Did Medieval People Find Funny?

SPEAKER_00 0:00 It's pretty common to assume that the medieval times were pretty much all doom and gloom. Life was rough, poverty was rife, the ruling classes were cruel, and you faced threats like the plague. So there probably wasn't a lot of room for laughter, right? Especially if cracking a joke at the expense of someone in power could cost you your head. Well, that's where we've got it all wrong. It was probably far less rigid than we might think. That's James Wade. He's a professor in English at Girton College in Cambridge and is an expert on the Middle Ages. And he's examined an amazing 15th-century manuscript that shows a rare glimpse into medieval live comedy performances.

SPEAKER_01 0:45 What Richard Heage did was found what's called a choir or a gathering of blank leaves. As I argue, what happened was the menstrual was traveling through, and Richard thought either on his own volition or someone told him to do this, to just write down the texts that were performed.

SPEAKER_00 1:02 There really isn't much record left of medieval comedy. So Richard Heage's manuscript was an absolute gold mine. So I wanted to find out from James, what did medieval people actually find funny? Would we laugh at their jokes today? And what was life like for the proto stand-up comedian The Minstrel? I'm Molly, this is what we did before. Thanks for joining me. Now James is going to share some medieval jokes with us in a bit, and we'll see if you laugh at them. And he'll also tell us about a joke that has survived for hundreds of years. This is the story of the killer rabbit, which was made uh quite famous in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

SPEAKER_01 1:39 Monty Python, they were very serious medieval scholars, and then Terry Jones was a great medievalist.

SPEAKER_00 1:44 But first, despite very few texts surviving about comedy performances, there is actually a very interesting clue from what does survive that makes it pretty clear that comedy was much more widespread in the Middle Ages than we tend to think. We have a distorted picture of medieval culture as more miserable than it really was, precisely because those in power try to hide the comedy.

SPEAKER_01 2:08 It takes a special effort to try to imagine a rounded view of everyday life in the Middle Ages, because so much of what survives in the written record tends towards the bureaucratic, the solemn, you know, the serious, the kind of account keeping the voices that we often hear from the Middle Ages are religious voices because they had access to the scriptoria. And you know, there's plenty of religious figures who are highly critical of even the concept of laughter, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:38 One critique of comedians in these tavern scenes actually depicts laughter as the precursor to the cries of anguish in hell. So you can see there, there is a direct correlation between having a good time and sin.

SPEAKER_01 2:51 And I think it's, you know, we have to be really careful as people who study the past to work hard to think about which voices are preserved and how do those voices fit into a more holistic um picture. And of course, the fact that there were religious figures who were critiquing the laughter in the tavern suggests that very much there was laughter in the tavern, right? Um if there wasn't, then there's no reason to critique it.

SPEAKER_00 3:15 Okay, so people were laughing. And it turns out being a minstrel, the people telling the jokes, was pretty similar to sketch or improv comics today, using physical gags or gymnastics alongside their spoken performances. Almost like theater, I suppose. Roaming taverns, sometimes in small groups, even getting paid.

SPEAKER_01 3:36 Most minstrels would be a local. It probably wouldn't be their main job. They probably have a day job and they kind of go gigging at night, and they would probably have a regular beat. There's a strong suggestion, and we don't have a lot of evidence from the Middle Ages, but by the time we get into the second half of the 16th century, we have more evidence for this. Minstrels are kind of itinerants, they travel. Um so they might be peddlers carrying a big, a big rucksack with things they want to sell, um, or a cart with you know wares, or they might be, you know, tailors where you show up, your tailor shows up at the house and they make clothes for everyone in a house and then they move on to the next house. So they got merch. Yeah, they got merch. Yeah. And while they're making their clothes, they entertain the family with stories and tales and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:21 Aaron Powell Andily, some minstrels were even mini celebrities.

SPEAKER_01 4:26 There were almost certainly a few superstars, right? So the you know, the kind of the big, the big jesters who stuck around the royal court, who were probably very skilled gymnasts or jugglers, you know, the people who would fill fill the arenas, the you know, play for royalty and play for um the lords and ladies of the manor, probably in a way that's similar to the kind of you know local gig circuit that exists today.

SPEAKER_00 4:51 And the kind of jokes they were telling? Well, as is the case today, nobody is safe in the world of comedy.

SPEAKER_01 4:57 Aristocrats are made fun of, you know, intellectuals are made fun of, we have you know, religious figures are made fun of, but also peasants and the lowborn and all you know, and in many ways, those are the easier, the more obvious objects of attack. Um and you know, and uh and uh frankly, quite a lot of stuff that would be considered distasteful now, so you know, the with which you know disabled people are the are the butt of the joke, or but highly misogynistic jokes. And not that those don't exist now, but they yeah, they tend to circulate much more kind of readily with with with the other that the butt of the jokes are the objects of critique.

SPEAKER_00 5:34 And a lot of these jokes and set pieces were adaptable for a local audience. It wasn't really the case that a minstrel would be putting their life on the line every day, mocking the king or the local lord.

SPEAKER_01 5:46 You know, the villagers next door can be, you know, the the the buffoons and the idiots, and then you then you go to that village and it's the next village over, you know, or the village you just come from where you can yeah, you can make them the buffoons. And so there's a sense of kind of local rivalry, or I suppose there's a certain element to comedy where you, you know, if you know the person who's being made fun of, it's perhaps more funny.

SPEAKER_00 6:09 The church was one of the great institutions of the Middle Ages, alongside the court. So as a source of authority, the church was also rife for comedic intervention.

SPEAKER_01 6:20 And so we do see a lot of religious comedy in which religious concepts or religious authorities are are made fun of. And so in in you know, the minstrel texts found in the in the huge manuscript, you know, the one of one of the pieces is a mock sermon. And so, you know, you can imagine the minstrel would stand up and say, you know, um, you know, and begin be, you know, begin by addressing the the congregation and I mean they potrage, you know, and delivering a sermon, but where where everything is absurd and the Eucharist becomes like a you know a sausage, you know, and everyone's kind of yeah, drinking or drunk and it's ridiculous. I quite like the sound of that. Yeah, it's I mean I it's totally recognizable as a as an absurdist plot, right? That yeah, you take something that's reverent and solemn, but also something that's highly recognizable, that you know, all of those people who are in the tavern on Saturday night are probably going to be in the church on Sunday morning.

SPEAKER_00 8:17 Now, I mentioned the joke of the killer rabbit a little earlier. So let's dig into that one a bit more, because uh this was fascinating to me. You might remember this scene in Monty Python's The Holy Grail where the bloodied rabbit attacks the Knights of King Arthur. Well, James told me variations on this joke have existed for hundreds of years. It's like a joke going viral before the internet.

SPEAKER_01 8:40 The joke of the killer rabbit is I guess the underlying logic is the world turned upside down. And it's funny because rabbits are meant to be cute and cuddly and soft and you know, have nice noses, and here they're cut, yeah, they're vicious and out to chop off your head or run you through with the with the javelin or something. And it's I mean, I think virality is is a good way of thinking about it.

SPEAKER_00 9:02 James says the killer rabbit is kind of like a meme. The basic joke stayed the same, but every time somebody retold it, they would put their own spin on it. So the rabbit might be jousting on horseback in one story or attacking an aristocrat or outsmarting the humans hunting it. And as James told me, a lot of medieval comedy tended towards this sort of absurdist stuff and also slapstick. So I asked James to share some genuine medieval jokes with me to see if we would still find funny what people did 600 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 9:34 I know loads of medieval jokes. Um I've got one here for you. Um so, all right, so this is a joke from from the 14th century. It's recorded in Middle English, widely known, probably came out of Oxford, and it's a story of a young man who goes to university. And so he is the only son of a farmer from the country and his wife, and the father decides to send his send his boy to university to get an education. So he goes down to Oxford and spends a couple, you know, two or three years there, and it's the vacation time. He comes back to the family home at the end of the Oxford term, and he sits down to dinner with his uh with his father and his mother. And his father says, Okay, well, you know, you spent three years in Oxford, but what have you learned? And the young scholar says, Well, I can tell you how these two chickens that are in this dish that we're about to eat, um, how these two chickens are really three chickens. And the father said, That would be oh, that'd be amazing. That's wow, you've learned so much. You know, go ahead, tell us how this how this can be. And so the boy um picks up one chicken and he says, Look, here's one chicken. And then immediately he picks up the other chicken in the same hand and he says, Look, here's two chickens. And he says, You know, one plus two equals three, ergo, I have three chickens. And the father said, That's I mean, that's amazing. You've you know, you went to Oxford, you spent three years studying, and you've come away, and this, you know, you learned so much. And so he takes one of the chickens and he says, Look, you know, since you're so wise in your ways, I'm going to take this chicken and that'll be my supper. And he takes the other chicken and he hands it to his wife, and he says, She'll have that chicken for her supper. And he says, you know, since you're so wise and and and subtle in the way of sophistry, you get the third chicken. And then the boy, you know, went without his supper that night. And that kind of humor, it's it's you know, obviously the butt of the joke are, you know, these very sophisticated scholars in Oxford who think they're so clever, but actually they're not. So it can be comedy that's aimed at poking fun of of the elite, of the educated. Chaucer has in The Summoner's Tale a great joke about um a friar who's out begging for money. Um and he leaves the friary. He goes out to beg for money to make money for um for his house, for his religious house. And he meets a man named Thomas who's who's um very poor and doesn't have very much money. And he says, Well, but I'm a friar, you need to give me some money, you know, it's part of your kind of religious duty to give money to the poor friars. Um and he says, Well, I have something behind my back, you know, stick your hand back there and and get it. And so the friar sticks his hand behind Thomas's back, and Thomas farts. Um and so the friar goes to the squire and says, Look, this, I've been insulted. This, you know, I've been you know promised this gift and I've been given a fart. And the squire said, Well, you know, it's your religious duty to share uh all of your gifts with your with the brethren at the you know, uh at the friary. And he says, Well, how do I do this? I only have one fart. And he says, Well, what you can do is you take a wheel, a wagon wheel that has 14 spokes, um, and you'll sit down on the hub of it, the middle of it, and you have the 14 friars around with their noses at the end of each spoke. And if someone farts, then the they both the smell and the noise will be dispersed equally in 14 directions. And then so all the friars get their equal share of this gift. So that's you know, it's a similar kind of exercise in sophistry. It's like, well, how do you, you know, how do you take one thing and make 14 things? A joke that yeah, plays with yeah, uh kind of absurdist philosophical constructs.

SPEAKER_00 13:17 Oh, I was going to ask um whether you know fart jokes stand the test of time and they and they were as funny then as they are and as they can remain to be today, yeah. Uh even if some people think they're sort of uh juvenile. I I think most people laugh at a good fart joke. James said, although many jokes would still land today, there are some jokes that perhaps haven't stood the test of time.

SPEAKER_01 13:40 In thinking about you know how medieval people were like us, but also not like us, there's a great story from the court of Henry II, and again we know of this by by accounts, where there is this um minstrel named Roland, and he was called Roland the Fartar. And it's another fart joke. Um but he would he would show up in the you know in the court of you know the great Emperor Henry II, um, show up in his court, and his gig was to uh do a skip, a whistle, and a fart. And that was it. Um, you know, and then everybody you know, everybody would laugh and he'd you know get paid uh handsomely. And I I just I I think that sort of thing just wouldn't happen today. Um I think there's actually a kind of a greater kind of rigid demarcation of you know what is appropriate in certain contexts. So you know, if you show up at a state dinner in which yeah, um, you know, the king invites some dignitaries from overseas and they can all sit down in their tuxedos, and you just wouldn't see an entertainer, you know, do a a whistle, a hop in a fart. Um and so I think yeah, I think those are really just uh you know we have so few instances where we get a kind of witness into those scenes that uh that really happened. But that's one where I think, yeah, actually that's that was funny then, but it wouldn't be funny now. Oh, I think it would be funny now. Maybe it would be too funny, that's the problem.

SPEAKER_00 15:07 Yeah, exactly. Not appropriate, maybe, but definitely funny. As a bit of an aside, coming back to this manuscript from Richard Heage, which has filled in so many blanks in our knowledge about medieval comedy. Um what I found fascinating about the parchment Heage wrote these comic records on was that they came from a book that rich 15th century households would often have, which kind of contained all the knowledge about everything they could ever need to know.

SPEAKER_01 15:35 Yeah, they had a book for education and entertainment. And, you know, we we talk about these books as kind of single-volume libraries. So, you know, a big, you know, big fat stack of parchment, which would contain religious texts, um, entertainment, you know, texts of entertainment, stories of adventures, romances, but also instructional texts. You know, here's, you know, here's how to learn your ABC. Um, here's a a book of banners, here's, you know, how you ought to conduct yourself at the dinner table. That yeah, so kind of practical manners and then also religious instruction, depending on what the weather is, what is the weather going to be the next day. So, you know, kind of practical knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 16:13 Oh, so this was all contained into one book.

SPEAKER_01 16:16 That's right. Yeah, all yeah, contained into a single a single volume.

SPEAKER_00 16:20 Yeah. They had one single book that was basically a full-blown guide to life, all packed into one place. And today you we have access to the entire world's knowledge in our pocket. But at one point in history, this singular book was seen as enough to get by. But anyway, I mentioned earlier that these texts haven't been preserved well because authority figures didn't prioritize it, or maybe were trying to avoid preserving it. But it goes beyond that.

SPEAKER_01 16:48 The main context by which most of this doesn't survive is that most of it does just circulate orally and disappears um in the way that oral culture does. One of the the you know, the the the kind of ironies or the catch-22s of the preservation of medieval culture is that often the most popular things are not written down because they think, well, gosh, everybody knows this.

SPEAKER_00 17:10 Which creates a strange historical paradox. So some of the most popular parts of medieval culture may now be the things we know the least about. And James told me this isn't just a problem for medieval culture, it's something we should seriously consider in the modern world. What will it look like for people 600 years in the future reflecting on the comedy of today? Will they even be able to?

SPEAKER_01 17:35 A similar question emerges as to survival of witnesses and artifacts. Parchment, it turns out, is an enormously stable medium. It just doesn't, it doesn't corrode, you know, you don't need any technology to read it other than eyes and a brain. And yeah, what will become of you know, what will become of our technologies, what will become of podcasts, what will become of cassette tapes and VHS tapes and MP3 players and laptops and iPhones. What will survive of our entertainment in 600 years is obviously we Yeah, there are certain ways of thinking about that in which we say actually not very much.

SPEAKER_00 18:14 Yeah, because we we think it's more permanent making digital copies of everything, but it's possible if there's no way to read it in the future, uh, though those digital records. Um, especially as I don't know if you saw recently in the news, uh and I haven't sort of dug into you know the extent of it, but there are I think AI companies um having uh sort of old manuscripts uh sort of churned out through the their models and uh all of the data all of the information lifted and then they sort of destroy the books afterwards. I'm not sure why they're doing that. It sounds absolutely dystopian. But if we start to carve up old physical records of our knowledge and and digitize them, and then sometime in the future we can't read those, then really this period of history actually disappears just like many of uh what people used to call the Dark Ages because we didn't know much about what survived. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:03 I mean, yeah, I mean those those stories are ex extremely troubling. And they're you know, I mean they're they're chopping them up because they're easier to feed through a scanner, the single pages. And so spine spines are the problem. Yeah. I mean, they're kind of analog to that is you know, occasionally I'll encounter yeah, young people who they just, you know, these digital natives who are, you know, I mean, the the undergraduate showing up this autumn to start at university, they were, you know, what, born in 2008, I think. Um, and they're just they just live in the digital world. And the thought that there could be knowledge available that isn't on the internet is just like they kind of have to think about that. And actually, some of as it's turning out, um, some of our most precious knowledge is knowledge that you can't search for with a yeah, internet search engine um or that AI cannot provide for you. And I think that that's yeah, that's something that we have to relearn um as a culture, relearn how to access that knowledge, but how to privilege it and value it so that it's not destroyed by companies who want to turn it into data.

SPEAKER_00 20:11 There's something really powerful about using comedy to reflect on the past. You can sort of imagine somebody 500 or 600 years into the future looking back on us and trying to figure out what it is that made us laugh and what we found funny. And I think that's not only deeply human, but it also helps to put a bit of perspective on our lives. Our lives can often feel really serious. We feel we must be particular in how we live, we must strive to be better at all costs and do all the things, make more money. But when you look back at the past, at these people and the jokes they laughed at, you realize life is maybe not as serious as we all sort of think it is.

SPEAKER_01 20:52 Absolutely. And it it also you know to extend that, that idea that you know we live in in really complicated times in which, you know, you you can look at the newspaper and look at the news and find all sorts of reasons to, you know, to not to not smile. But yet, you know, there are things that do make us do make us smile and laugh, and we can have fun even when horrible things are happening. And and the Middle Ages were no different. And I suspect in 600 years' time it will be no different. And that, you know, trying to kind of yeah, keep that, keep some so sense of balance of the local as well as the global, of the, you know, the good alongside the bad, and while we have the the time and privilege to do that is yeah, I think it's worth thinking about and worth meditating on with um and also, you know, feeling fortunate that we have uh the the time, the time and space and occasion to, you know, to laugh and play and make jokes and be in community while we can.

SPEAKER_00 21:52 James Wade, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much indeed. It's been a great pleasure. Thanks, Ollie. Appreciate it. If you enjoyed this conversation with James, you'll be pleased to hear that he's working on a book. This one is all about folk culture from the Middle Ages up to the present. It sounds absolutely fascinating. So make sure you keep your eyes peeled for that one in 2027. A massive thank you to James Wade. I'm Ollie. This is what we did before. Thank you for listening and for watching. Please subscribe to the channel, and I will see you next time.