Medieval fairs blended commerce with rich popular entertainment: troubadours, minstrels and street performers supplied music, poetry, storytelling and short drama that drew crowds, relayed news and shaped public taste before the spread of print culture.
Performers and their roles
Travelling musicians and entertainers filled multiple social roles. Troubadours and trouveres composed and performed lyrical songs often linked to courtly love, while minstrels and jongleurs presented versatile repertoires of ballads, instrumental music, jokes, physical comedy and acrobatics for mixed urban and rural audiences.
Why they drew crowds
Fairs concentrated thousands of people for days or weeks, creating an ideal captive audience. Performers attracted buyers to stalls, provided amusements between transactions and created memorable spectacles whose reputations spread, increasing footfall and commerce for host towns.
Communication and culture
In largely oral societies entertainers were informal news carriers; their songs and stories incorporated recent events, local gossip, political satire and moral lessons. Through repetition and travel, these performances transmitted fashions, idioms and political ideas across wide regions in ways that complemented merchant networks.
Legacy
The work of troubadours and minstrels influenced later vernacular literature and popular theatre, preserving oral traditions and musical forms that became foundations for Renaissance and modern European cultural expression.