Beowulf and the "Mud Beggars" - Renaissance Faire Reflection

I had an amazing time at the annual Renaissance Faire at Greenbulff. As Katie said (below), I am sure that I would have had lots of fun regardless of my ability to contextualize and connect certain pieces of the faire to the literature and culture we have studied. But, it was the background that I had in Medieval Lit that allowed for me to feel connected to the faire in a whole new way. I also felt the urge to try and speak to others in the Middle English pronunciation we learned… but didn’t want to embarrass Hannah’s boyfriend Craig that went to the faire with us.

The main aspect of the faire that I want to discuss was a performance called “Mud Show”. The “Mud Beggars” were described in the faire’s informational pamphlet as, “lowly peasants who will delight and entertain you with traditional stories of Shakespeare and classic tales of adventures such as Beowulf and the Odyssey.” They perform their tales in what is essentially an oversized kiddy pool filled with mud. I thought this was a rather brilliant production for the faire to provide – it exposes people to a deeper form of the culture other than just jousting and funny costumes.

Luckily for us, the beggars put on a performance of Beowulf. But, unfortunately, the performance could barely be considered a rendition of Beowulf. The central characters– Beowulf, Grendel, and Grendel’s mother – were present, but there was so much missing from the story such as the destruction of Heorot (Beowulf came to slay Grendel because he was “agitating the townspeople”) and the character Hrothgar was completely absent. Instead of giving the audience exposure to this “classic tale of adventure”, they presented to us a rather meaningless, mud-covered caricature of the story of Beowulf.

I could, however, see a reason for the performers’ decision to present the story in this way. Perhaps this presentation of Beowulf is what the laypeople really thought the stories were about. After all, Anglo-Saxon literature was usually recited to the aristocracy by a scheop in the mead-halls. How could a layperson possibly have access to the entire story? And if a layperson did have knowledge of Beowulf, it would quite possibly be like the caricatured version I witnessed at the Renaissance Faire.

The Mud Beggars also had a slogan of sorts that they yelled and was written on the backdrop of the stage – “Mud is Truth!” At first I did not understand what was meant by this phrase, and to be honest, I found it fairly stupid. But, if the performers behind the Mud Show had the intentions for the performance that I discussed in the previous paragraph, perhaps their slogan was actually incredibly intelligent. If the Mud Beggars were presenting Beowulf from the layperson’s perspective, then the phrase “Mud is Truth!” could be in reference to the fact that this version of Beowulf is all they know. And, because the laypeople were the majority of the population, the caricatured version of Beowulf was most likely the version told the most. And therefore, it was “truth” to the majority of the people during that time.

But, because of the way the performance was described in the pamphlet, I doubt that the performance was this in depth. It was probably just an over-simplified Beowulf so that people could be exposed – and see people dressed as beggars thrash around in mud. Regardless, I enjoyed the performance until Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s Mother got a little messy. At that point I stood up and booked it to the caramel apple stand for another round of free samples.