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My sister-in-law has invited us to this year’s Renaissance Festival. This places me on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, I want to be sociable, and especially to continue getting to know her fiancé. On the other hand, the last time we attended the Ren Faire, it was abysmally bad.

Ren faires are conceived as a kind of re-enactment of Elizabethan England, with theater in the round, street theater, period costumes, period crafts, period food, whatever they can find someone to provide for the re-enactment. Unfortunately, historical accuracy is hard to come by in the modern world of mass production and the quick buck, so ren faires are subject to a certain minimum level of crap, including:

1. People playing dress-up without the slightest care for which period—if any—it comes from. The goth crowd is particularly guilty of this, but the die-hard D&D enthusiasts offer their own violations. Apparently, the rationale is that, since velvet and swords both existed in Elizabethan times, Elizabethans must have dressed like vampires and Vikings.
2. Souvenirs from the wrong era. The same melted-face crockery mugs and pewter wizard statues (complete with plastic “crystals”) that get schlepped to every two-bit craft show within driving distance do not magically become Renaissance-era because the words “ye olde” are painted on the storefront. Sword-makers always do a brisk business, including samurai swords and blades with chrome plating.
3. Just plain crap. Worse than the ahistorical crafts are the raw junk: sandwich board planks cut into shield-like shapes and decorated with neon green spray paint, for example, or cheap, ugly marionette birds mass-produced from kits.
4. Foods unknown to Elizabethans. Yes, Henry VIII is famed for a portrait with turkey drumstick, but I doubt he had Kansas City barbecue sauce on it. Ye Olde Italian Sausages and Gyros often make an appearance.

The business being what it is, it’s impossible to make a faire for purists. They’re expensive to put on, and organizers have to compromise their integrity for the extra cash Ye Olde dragon statuettes bring in. Most the visitors wouldn’t know Elizabethan from Dark Ages from early Victorian if you gave them a hint, and wouldn’t care if they did, so the ticket sales lost to discriminating visitors are more than made up for by the Disney-esque souvenir stall system. It’s hard, too, for organizers to draw a firm line. How can they bar (paying) visitors in grossly inappropriate costumes while allowing the masses to enter wearing t-shirts?

Still, there’s bad and there’s bad. A Robin Hood with good teeth is no sin; a Robin Hood swinging a cutlass mildly irksome; a Robin Hood who quotes Bart Simpson is right out. Silly-looking period hats are welcome; baseball-style caps labeled “I saw the Ren Faire!” best left at the souvenir stand near the exit gate; velvet-lined top hats for the goths who drop by destroy the mood. Some faires have six or seven shops selling just plain crap; others have dozens. In a good faire, the visitors practice gross anachronism; in a bad one, the staff does.

When last we attended this ren faire, it was bad. The shops weren’t even trying to fake a Renaissance look, and the street theater was like an imitation of that cheesy “Xena, Warrior Princess” show. A clumsy imitation, at that. Actors who couldn’t find real gigs held sword fights sprinkled with purple prose. Bad purple prose, the kind that doesn’t wink at itself. The women didn’t want to be left out, so they got to fence, too. In their lacy Louis XIV dresses. A lucky few got to wear sex club skintight black leather and high-heeled boots, the preferred footwear for fencing on muddy ground. Sometimes, the performers would switch sides for variety, in a sort of theater of betrayal that would make the WWF blush. The format of the fencing didn’t make any sense, either; at one point, one guy parried five overhead chops (delivered with rapiers) at once, all aimed by a remarkable coincidence at the same point. I say “parried,” but in fact, he held his sword up first, and then the damsels carefully tapped it in concert two seconds later. The fencing and jousting demonstrations came from people who hadn’t learned how to fence or joust, or even to fake it properly. We weren’t paying for a show; we were financing geeks who wanted to play dress-up, performing more for one another than for the audience.

So…yeah. The faire sucked a few years ago, and I doubt it will be any better this time around. Once a faire has lost its pride, it has a hard time attracting people who can restore it, because they still have theirs. If it weren’t for the demands of family cohesion, I might be able to keep mine.