A Modest Proposal to
Change the Name of the Renaissance Fair
Let’s begin at the source: the OED:
Renaissance – the revival of European art and literature
under the influence of classical models in the 14th to 16th
Centuries.
First Impressions – Barbarians, Maid Marions, Rastafarians, Popes
and puppets, tea and crumpets, trumpets, dunces, morris dancers, bird fanciers,
fancy pantsers, necromancers, bust enhancers, oriental spices, exorbitant
prices, mead, lager, sac, and ales, Princes of Wales, braided horse tails,
horsemen, chessmen, talismen, henchmen, Monty Python Frenchmen, (I fart in your general direction!). wenches in bunches, whole
trenches of stenches, particularly from the elephant rides – yes, elephant
rides. And not only elephants but camels and llamas. Jousting, axe throwing,
hammer throwing, poison dart blowing, witch dunkin’, bumpkin dunkin’, and shoot
the punkin.
Is this the Renaissance?
Nonsense.
It was my impression that the Renaissance was a revival of
Greek, like Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Socrates, but the only
Greek I heard was feta cheese and gyros, with a teeny bit of tahini. If you don’t
like that, there’s sushi and sashimi, burgers and weanies, chili beanies,
bologna, spumoni, Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat (It could happen.), and
everybody’s favorite, American turkey legs at 8 bucks a pop. What you won’t see
is good old 15th century food like gruel, bulgur, millet, sheep’s
head, boiled brains, pig’s feet , peas porridge cold or peas porridge hot.
Is this the Renaissance?
NOT.
How about art? You bet
your arse there’s art. There are drip candles, belts and sandals, scrimshawed
axe handles, walking sticks, canes, capes, dunce caps, leather cups, leather
thongs, hand-blown bongs and pipes, hand-thrown pots, hand sewn tights, home
grown plants, head bands, lamp stands, and flaminco fans.
Titian, da Vinci,and Donatello? Hello???!!!
No!!!
Then, there are the costumes, which are mostly barbarians:
Huns, Vikings, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, just plain Goths, Tartars, Gauls, Picts
and Scots, in kilts and no shorts (don’t ask me how I know that.), Franks,
Angles, mostly obtuse, Saxons, and Vandals.
They’re all wearing Birkenstock sandals and wielding horrendous weapons
like axes and maces, which might pose a danger except for the fact that they
have one hand on their cell phones and the other on a tankard of ale (Bud Lite
or Milwaukee’s Best, at 8 bucks a pop).
Next, there are the fantasizers: wizards, dragon slayers,
soothe sayers, mayors of Munchkin City (it could happen), nymphs, gnomes,
trolls, hobbits, knights in chain mails with holy grails.
Let’s not forget the royalty, some in jeans with only a
crown, some in gowns and full regalia. All the kings are Henry the eighth,
boisterous and corpulent, and all the
queens are his wives, all six of them, and they all have their heads. There are
princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, earls and earlesses, knights and
knightesses, etc. etc. If you’re looking for nobles oblige, don’t try to cut in front of them in the line for ye
ol ale stand or it might get your tongue cut out or a week in the stocks.
There’s that victim of the Black Death. Yes, there’s only one, and, believe me,
nobody touches him.
And, of course, there’s the clergy: Bishops in mitres,
epistle writers, Nuns and priests, nun’s priests a la Chaucer, abbots and
abbesses, monks and prioresses, mendicants, penitents, flagellants, acolytes,
transvestites (There’s something about men wanting to wear nun’s habits that’s
really disturbing). The only thing that seems historically correct is that
there’s more than one pope. Lastly there
are catechists, heretics, and Grand Inquisitors like Torquemada.
Is this the Renaissance?
Nada que ver! It’s the
Renaissance Fair.
Let’s review our definition:
Renaissance – the revival of European art and literature under the
influence of classical models in the 14th to 16th
Centuries.
The only thing from that definition I could find at the
Renaissance Fair was “under the influence”.
