Home » Reading & Literature » J.R.R. Tolkien » The Magic of the Minstrels

The Magic of the Minstrels

© Michael Martinez

Two things you won't find any mention of in Tolkien's Middle-earth are clowns and actors. Nor will you find any reference to plays, drama, jugglers, acrobats, or theaters, carnivals, fairs, and circuses. What did the people of Middle-earth do for their entertainment? They appear not to have had any great arenas like the Romans, no theatrical houses, nor travelling entertainers, nor any of the trappings of a tradition of drama or comedy. The two great forms of exposition in Middle-earth were story-telling and song. But though everyone seems to like a good story or song, there is little evidence of professional development for either form of exposition. In fact, only two professional minstrels are mentioned in The Lord of the Rings. Gleowine was Theoden's minstrel, and after he wrote the funeral song which the Riders of Rohan sang around Theoden's mound he never made another song again. And some unnamed minstrel of Gondor composed the lay of "Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom" (assisted with the title of the lay by Sam). For a book that is filled with songs and references to ancient lays, one might almost expect to see a scop or bard leap out of every chapter, roaming from town to town to keep the masses entertained. But instead there is no real indication of a roaming class of entertainers. In Eriador the Rangers occasionally bring stories to the Bree-folk, and the hobbits who travel between the Shire, the Buckland, and Bree share stories, but that's about it. The strong implication appears to be that professional entertainment was rare and limited to the larger societies. Rohan and Gondor could support minstrels but not the small populations of the northern countries. And so it may be that a royal or noble patronage was required to sustain professional entertainers. Patronage is an ancient custom which really only died out with the advent of copyright and mass production. Artists and writers can now generate their own incomes directly, but for millennia they had to rely on someone else to pay the bills. In a world like Tolkien's Middle-earth there could be no question of an artist making a living from the production of a song or picture except in a very large, very wealthy society such as Gondor. And yet, the Middle-earth portrayed by The Lord of the Rings is not the whole picture. Sauron had been at work for two thousand years, wearing down his enemies, estranging Elves, Men, and Dwarves from one another. There are, in fact, faint echoes of a richer tradition of entertainment in the story Tolkien tells us.

The copyright of the article The Magic of the Minstrels in J.R.R. Tolkien is owned by Michael Martinez. Permission to republish The Magic of the Minstrels in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.