Dancing bears, sleight of hand tricks, the latest ballads, and comic skits: medieval Europe always had its traveling musicians, actors and acrobats. Their favorite gigs were at castles, where they were guaranteed a decent place to sleep (well, it was the stable, but okay). As towns grew, they performed there as well.
We call them minstrels, but the most common word at the time seems to be “jongleurs.” They often traveled together for safety on the roads and shared their skills to create new acts. The most serious musicians spent the Lent season in France at the annual convention, where new songs were shared.
We don’t have written accounts of the skits they put on. We can guess at what they included: perennials like slapstick and fart jokes, and simple stories like Robin Hood tales. A smart jongleur would have a variety of modes, suitable for the castle or the town.
Traveling showmen taught new songs, some suitable for casual singing, others long ballad stories. They were the radio; their songs were the pop music of the time. As paper became available, there was a side trade in song lyrics. First hand-copied, then printed, the songs were often single-sheet pages sold for a penny on the street by the entrepreneurs who also did the copying. We see this trade continuing into the 19th century and providing several characters to Dickens.
Jongleurs also became the first stand-up comics. It was one possible career for a university student who couldn’t afford to buy the degree at the end, and couldn’t get a nice tutoring gig. A good education enabled the stand-up comic to mimic and parody different classes of society. Again, we have no records of what they said. But when we get to the plays we do have, we’ll see some of them have witty and satirical lines that may have borrowed from this tradition.