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Medieval roots of British comedy

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A unique record of medieval live comedy performance has been identified in a 15th-century manuscript: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/bawdy-bard-act-discovered-revealing-fifteenth-century-roots-of-british-comedy

Raucous texts – mocking kings, priests and peasants; encouraging audiences to get drunk; and shocking them with slapstick – shed new light on Britain’s famous sense of humour, and the role played by minstrels in medieval society.

The texts contain the earliest recorded use of ‘red herring’ in English, extremely rare forms of medieval literature, as well as a killer rabbit worthy of Monty Python. The discovery changes the way we should think about English comic culture between Chaucer and Shakespeare.
Category
Academic
Tags
Cambridge University, Cambridge research
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