This ethnographic study of contemporary American Renaissance fairs focuses on the Maryland Renaissance Festival, in which participants recreate sixteenth-century England through performances of theater, combat-at-arms, processions, street hawking, and meticulously faithful historical reconstructions. It is also partly an autobiographical account of interactive improvisation, subcultures within the festival framework, the delineation between living history and historical elaboration, and a new understanding of performers and patrons.

The Renaissance Faire—a 50 year-long party, communal ritual, political challenge and cultural wellspring—receives its first sustained historical attention with Well Met. Beginning with the chaotic communal moment of its founding and early development in the 1960s through its incorporation as a major “family friendly” leisure site in the 2000s, Well Met tells the story of the thinkers, artists, clowns, mimes, and others performers who make the Faire. Well Met approaches the Faire from the perspective of labor, education, aesthetics, business, the opposition it faced, and the key figures involved. Drawing upon vibrant interview material and deep archival research, Rachel Lee Rubin reveals the way the faires established themselves as a pioneering and highly visible counter cultural referendum on how we live now—our family and sexual arrangements, our relationship to consumer goods, and our corporate entertainments. In order to understand the meaning of the faire to its devoted participants,both workers and visitors, Rubin has compiled a dazzling array of testimony, from extensive conversations with Faire founder Phyllis Patterson to interviews regarding the contemporary scene with performers, crafters, booth workers and “playtrons.” Well Met pays equal attention what came out of the faire—the transforming gifts bestowed by the faire’s innovations and experiments upon the broader American culture: the underground press of the 1960s and 1970s, experimentation with “ethnic” musical instruments and styles in popular music, the craft revival, and various forms of immersive theater are all connected back to their roots in the faire. Original, intrepid, and richly illustrated, Well Met puts the Renaissance Faire back at the historical center of the American counterculture.

Players of all kinds of instruments including flute, fiddle, mandolin, recorder, whistle, guitar, harp and more can use this collection of music which is popular at modern renaissance festivals. the music is presented simply, with melody lines and chord symbols, allowing for a wide range of interpretation. In addition to many period dance tunes, the book contains a selection of vocal numbers with lyrics included. Each selection is accompanied by text to suggest ideas for performance, place the music in a modern festival context and provide useful information to those interested in studying historical sources of early music. Cantiga's arrangements of some of the tunes in this book can be heard on the companion recording. They are played at a listening tempo by the ensemble: Wooden flute or recorder, fiddle, cello, harp and percussion.

When her mother dies, fifteen-year-old Keelie Heartwood must leave California to live with her nomadic father at a renaissance festival. Playacting the Dark Ages is an L.A. girl’s worst nightmare. But then Keelie starts seeing fairies and uncovers her connection to a community of elves.

19 Ephemeral Ceremonial Architecture in Prague, Vienna and Cracow in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries -- Index of Names

After breaking up with her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Rowena takes an out-of-town summer job at a Renaissance fair, but romantic entanglements soon follow.