ESSAYS
CAMPFIRES,
WENCHES AND INTERSTATE TOURISTS
PAGE 3
©
2006 - Please do not remove the copyright from this essay
ay
the words “Renaissance
Faire” and even if you’ve never heard of the actual event, the term
itself is so evocative that an image will quickly formulate in your head
as to what it might mean. And in most cases, that image will probably
be an accurate one. A Renaissance
Faire is a period celebration designed to conjure up images of medieval
Europe, specifically Elizabethan England.
Traditionally there are multiple stages showcasing all kinds of
period-appropriate talent, from minstrels to jugglers to Shakespearean
theater, as well as booths with independent merchants selling medieval
clothing, food and
paraphernalia. Workers of the
Faire, from the girl who sells you your popcorn to the guy who sweeps
up the cigarette butts, walk the grounds in full Renaissance attire: chain
mail, bodices, pantaloons, puffy shirts, codpieces, velvet robes and other
such things. Guests of the Faire are also widely encouraged
to show up in costume, and good percentage of them usually do.
Although
there is a bit of discrepancy as to where
the idea originated, schoolteachers Ronald and Phyllis Patterson are
generally the ones given credit for creating the first Renaissance Faire. Held in North Hollywood, California over a
single weekend in 1963, the event was supposedly the result of a class
project that grew and grew. Now,
over forty years later, forty-one states host at least one rendition of
the Faire each year, and most states put on several.
California alone boasts thirty-three.
The size and scope of each festival differs from town to town. Most Renaissance Faires take place over a single
weekend and are generally hosted on some kind of public fairgrounds.
Like a traveling carnival, the workers come into town, set up shop,
put on their show, then break down and move on to the next town.
Other Faires operate on permanent parcels of land that have been
meticulously designed and built specifically and exclusively for the Faire
itself. These Faires often go on for a month or more,
generally on weekends, and showcase not only traveling bands of performers,
who are there one week and gone the next, but also local and out-of-town
talent who stay for the duration of the event.
The
Pennsylvania Renaissance
Faire in Manheim is one of these latter types.
Everything takes place over the course of a whopping twelve weekends
on a thirty-five acre replica of an Elizabethan village called “The Shire”
built into the side of a mountain. The
site boasts over one hundred Tudor Structures, fourteen outdoor stages
and a jousting amphitheater (supposedly the largest one outside of Europe). Each nine-hour day is so crammed full of entertainment that, according
to their website, if you came right at opening and left right at closing
you would see less than half of everything they had to offer.
A
friend of mine had told me that one of the best things about going to
the Renaissance Faire is looking and poking fun at all the freaky paying
customers who show up in costume and walk around in character all day
long, speaking in faux-English accents and interacting with other in-character
patrons. Less than thirty seconds
after arriving at the Faire, I saw immediately what he was talking about. The grass parking lot was filled with people
dressed as everything from winged fairies and roguish brutes to prim and
proper noblewomen and swashbuckling pirates.
There was quite a large show of people representing this latter
category since the theme of this particular weekend had been trumpeted
as “Invasion
of the Pirates.”
More
often than not these were not cheap homemade getups where somebody merely
cut triangular jags into the cuffs of their jeans, tied a red bandana
around their head and called themselves a pirate. These were full-fledged period costumes, most
likely custom-tailored and bought, not inexpensively, from an outfitter
specializing in this fashion niche, and characterized by a multi-layered
attention to detail. Low-cut wench
dresses were accompanied by breast-augmenting corsets and puffy knee-length
bloomers, completed by flowery head 
wreaths
and Mary-Jane shoes, and accessorized with silver crosses, leather pouches
and goblets on chains. Hairy and bearded squires strode about town
dressed in laced-up cuff pants over black leather boots, and brushed cotton
tunics over wrinkled poets shirts. Feathered
Rembrandts on their heads and swords “peace-tied”
at their sides completed the picture.
When one puts that much time, imagination and money into
an ensemble like that, I think it would be hard not to remain in
character for as long as you were wearing it.
And compared to the way people will dress up for other events (men
painting their bare chests blue for an outdoor football game in January
for instance) the costumed characters at the Renaissance Faire, for as
eccentric as they might have been, carried with them a certain degree
of class and, dare I say, integrity that I actually found myself
respecting and even envying.
That’s
not to say you didn’t have your share of freaks thrown into the mix.
Here and there we saw overly large women or overly ugly men dressed
in inappropriately revealing bodices or kilts, kind of limp-shuffling
down the street and trying to engage any patron who made eye contact with
some kind of witty repartee that they had neither the skill as an actor,
nor the brain capacity as a human to keep up for more than a few lines.
Instead, they had to keep falling back on clichés like, “God save
the Queen,” and “Good morrow my lord,” before the whole act fell apart
completely.
But
contrary to my friend’s appraisal, I actually felt as though Lauren
and I were the ones who were freakishly out of place. All day long, walking amidst a sea of meticulously
costumed men and women (most of whom looked so much the parts they were
playing that it was often difficult to differentiate between those who
were getting paid to be there and those who had paid to get in) I felt
both lame and conspicuous in my standard street wear of jeans and t-shirt.
As near as I could tell, there was no one typecast of person who showed up in costume. If anything, it was people like Lauren and myself, families with small children, who were the stereotypical ones, because more often than not these were the people who were not dressed up. Here and there you’d see a little kid walking around in Spongebob t-shirt holding a cheap plastic sword and wearing a rubber band eye-patch, but that was about it. Other than that, the costumes seemed to be spread out amongst all ages and all types of people. Although I will make one caveat and say that there were a couple of unofficial statistics that I mentally noted pertaining to people in costume. Men with beards, hairy chests and long hair were more than ten times as likely to be wearing a costume as clean-shaven men. Unnaturally pale women with unnaturally dark hair and eyes – who it seemed likely were Goths in their daily lives – almost without exception showed up in costume. I also noticed that pretty much every audibly gay man I encountered had come dressed as a pirate.
Through
the gate, the Renaissance Faire was exactly as I’d pictured it.
There were cobblestoned streets, a town crier on stilts, hand-painted
signs advertising “ALE”, artisans at work demonstrating trades from blacksmithing
to glass blowing, and the smell of wood smoke and incense everywhere we
went. There was music and laughter
and thick English accents constantly in the background.
I imagine “The Shire” is an accurate representation of Renaissance
life in much the same way that Times Square is an accurate representation
of New York City. What each of these places really are are heightened
realities. Times Square captures
and heightens in one place all the fantastical things anybody has ever
imagined about the big city that never sleeps, complete with its bright
lights, bustling activity and twenty-four-hour eateries – without including
all the mundane day-to-day details of New York life like smelly gutters,
monotonously brown buildings and their omnipresent scaffolding. 
The
Shire at the Renaissance Faire does the same thing by amplifying every
quaint thing you’ve ever imagined or seen in a movie about Renaissance
life without its dreary and mundane aspects like bland food, no
plumbing or the Black Plague. The
Renaissance Faire’s website describes the scenario
as one where England is experiencing a long period of peace and prosperity
following the reign of Bloody Mary. The
village is throwing a festival and people are coming from miles around
to celebrate a long-awaited visit from Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth.
The Faire people aren’t trying to suggest that life was like this
all the time. Just during
major social events. Taken from
that perspective, one can forgive the not-so-authentic aspects of The
Shire’s design and ambience – assuming one had a reason to be so historically
snobbish to begin with.
Lauren
and I walked around for a few minutes pushing Allison in her stroller,
trying to read the map
from the newsletter they’d given us, and feeling almost instantly overwhelmed.
It was obvious this place was much bigger than we’d anticipated. We stopped in the square to get our bearings
and look at the schedule of shows in the newsletter. For some reason we didn’t see the section that actually described
each show, so we were guessing based on the sometimes abstract names –
Tartan Terrors, Empty Hats, Prunella’s Witches, Burly Minstrels – what
shows we thought we might want to see.
Less than ten minutes through the gate, we began asking the two
maddening questions that would plague the first half of our day: “What
do you want to do? I don’t know what do you want to do?”
We
decided to watch a show that was already going on at the stage right near
us; something called “Renaissance Vaudeville”. The husband-and-wife team of Rick and Janet
Stratton combined several of the traditional elements of vaudeville
– juggling, balancing stunts, dog tricks, bad jokes, witty self-depreciating
banter and a healthy dose of audience participation – into a performance
that was impressive but not mind-blowing, funny but not side splitting,
and enjoyable but forgettable – the way most good vaudeville generally
is. These days, with the exception
of children’s birthday parties and the occasional county fair, Renaissance
Faires are pretty much the only places left where you can still see authentic
vaudeville acts. Because really,
between television, cinema and “legitimate” theater, who’s going to pay
money to sit in an auditorium and watch a bunch of jugglers, musical comedians
and slapstick artists? Who’s going
to sit for an hour outside their own home, watching a magician perform
tricks that involve traditional sleight-of-hand rather than elaborate
arrangements of wires, smoke and trance music?
That’s why Renaissance Faires are the perfect setting for this
old style of entertainment. First of all, vaudeville acts are exactly the
kind of low-tech entertainment you would expect out of medieval
times. And second, since it’s
all just part of the atmosphere – and the ticket price – you feel no reservation
about spending a half-hour watching a sword swallower or a puppeteer or
a Buster Keaton-esque stunt show. And
what’s more, since you’re not paying a fee for each individual show, you
feel no reservation about slipping out early when one of them starts to
bore you.
And
that’s just what we did to Rick and Janet. While we truly did enjoy the show for the low-level
entertainment and excitement it was designed to elicit, Allison was just
a little too young to appreciate the danger of juggling knives or the
charm of dogs jumping through flaming hoops.
She kept trying to amuse herself by climbing up on the bench we
were sitting on, using other patrons as handholds, and jumping off. After about five minutes of that, it was clearly
time to move on.
For
the next hour or so we wandered more or less aimlessly, again asking the
dreaded rhetorical question with its anticipated reply: “What to you want
to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do?” As we passed by stages, we would walk up and
watch the show for a few minutes, but I felt like a man who has just gotten
his first taste of satellite television and all its nine hundred channels. I just couldn’t bring myself to sit through
an entire show without wondering what else I was missing at the next stage
over… or even just on the streets in between.
The thing I’d personally come to the Renaissance Faire hoping to
see most of all was the impromptu “street theater” I’d always heard about. The Pennsylvania Faire employs seventy people
known as “The Blackfryars”
who are skilled in 
improvisational
theater and whose jobs it is to walk the streets and just “be Renaissance.” They get into lively conversations with patrons
and with each other, and while they’re not a part of any official show,
they in effect are the show. They
are the lifeblood of the Faire, the ultimate dose of realism and atmosphere.
These were the “acts” I longed to see, and any time I sat
for more than a few minutes at one of the outdoor stages, I felt the urge
to leave and be out amongst the crowds with their “chance meetings” of
the Blackfryars.
But
every time we got back on the streets, it was more of the same aimless
wandering, the same non-commitment to anything the Faire had to offer,
and the same exchanges of, “What do you want to do?” I looked around at the laughing groups of Renaissance
clad friends – young people, old people, people my age, people who were
feeding of each other’s excitement and eccentricities and absorbing this
day and this place in a way that Lauren and I just couldn’t seem to do
– and I felt a sullen cloud descend over my demeanor.
Before it could take hold, my glumness turned to annoyance. Annoyance at my own inability to let this place
in, my inability to own this place the way these people were doing
so effortlessly. Annoyance turned
then to anger. Anger at Lauren
for her indecision and for not being more like the people in those groups. It was, of course, a stupid emotional leap to make. It has always been easier for me to be angry
with someone else than disappointed in myself, so Lauren
and Allison caught the brunt of my curt snippy remarks and general foul
mood. By one o’clock, less than two hours into our
time here, I was ready to go home. Not
just back to the campsite. Home. If we left soon, we could go pack up, head
home and just be done with it all.
Then
Lauren spotted an elephant on the other side of one of the stages and
suggested we go over and let Allison take a ride. I mumbled a lackluster, “Sure,” but told Lauren
she would have to be the one to ride with her. I preferred to stay on the ground where I could stew and wallow.
As it turns out, the two minutes or so that Lauren and Allison
spent on that elephant ended up salvaging the rest of our day.
While they waited in a short line, I overheard a bearded guy next to me (dressed all in black, he appeared to be either a monk or an executioner without his mask) talking about the beer being served. Raving about the beer being served actually. Interest piqued, I butted in and asked him which beer he recommended. He told me to check out the Scottish Ale claiming it was “seven and a half.” I understood the shorthand immediately as meaning seven and a half percent alcohol, which is over twice the amount you’ll find in any conventional beer. So when the elephant ride was finished I went looking for one of those giant yellow signs proclaiming, ALE. We made our way over to the Swashbuckler Brewpub and I promptly asked for the Scottish Ale. They served me a dark brown beer, which tasted heavily of sweet malts. I paid the $4.75 with dollar tip and considered it a bargain, seeing as how I had the alcohol equivalent of two non-piss-water-tasting Budweisers in my cup.
