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 14^th to 16^th 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 15^th 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 14^th to 16^th Centuries.

The only thing from that definition I could find at the Renaissance Fair was “under the influence”.