Maryland Renaissance Festival

Maryland Renaissance Festival
Jousting at the Renaissance Festival
Location	Crownsville, Maryland
Opened	1977
Season	August – October
Area	25 acres (100,000 m2)
Stages	10
Average attendance	12,000 daily, 225,000 season
Official website

The Maryland Renaissance Festival is a Renaissance fair located in Crownsville, Maryland. Set in a fictional 16th century English village named Revel Grove, the festival is spread over 25 acres (100,000 m²) and is the second largest renaissance festival in the United States.^[1] The festival usually runs from the third week of August to the third week of October every year and includes a celebration of the autumn harvest.^[2]

As of 2008, American Renaissance festivals were much larger in scale than their European counterparts. Consuming History specifically mentions the Maryland Renaissance Festival for its high attendance, along with the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire, which draws 250,000 visitors over three weeks, and the Bristol Renaissance Faire, which reached a peak in 1990 with 400,000 visitors in seven weekends.^[3]

Revel Grove

The English Tudor village is 25 acres (0.10 km²) of woods and fields. There are more than 130 craft shops and 42 food outlets. Each season, more than half a million beverages are served at the Festival's eight soft drink stands, five beer stands, and five taverns.^[2]

Entertainment

There are generally 600 people employed by the fair every year and over 1,300 participants working in the various concessions and shows.^{[citation needed]}

Carolyn Spedden, the entertainment director for the Festival, leads a troupe of performers called "Shakespeare's Skum" in performances of short parodies of Shakespeare plays, such as "Macbeth in 20 Minutes or Less", "Richard III: Just Misunderstood", "Henry the Vee", "Shakespearean Jeopardy", "Tag Team Romeo & Juliet", "Othello: Having a Bad Day", "Leave it to Hamlet", "The Shrew Variations", and "Oh That Lear".

See also

• List of Renaissance fairs

References

1. ^ "More About the Maryland Reanissance Faire". http://www.rennfest.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10&Itemid=9. Retrieved September 30, 2009. 
2. ^ ^{a b} "Faire Information". Maryland Renaissance Festival. Archived from the original on September 11, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070911112157/http://www.rennfest.com/renaissance-festival-faire.shtml. Retrieved October 8, 2007. 
3. ^ De Groot, Jerome (2008). Consuming History. Taylor & Francis. p. 120. ISBN 0415399459. http://books.google.com/books?id=hexpdOj8t80C&pg=PA120&dq=%22Pennsylvania+Renaissance+Faire%22+-inpublisher:icon&as_brr=0&ei=l3V4SsvHAaWSywTYxLmSAw#v=onepage&q=%22Pennsylvania%20Renaissance%20Faire%22%20-inpublisher%3Aicon&f=false. 

External links

• Official website
• Friends of The Maryland Renaissance Festival
• MDRF Friends of Faire

Coordinates: 39°00′06″N 76°35′01″W / 39.00167°N 76.58361°W / 39.00167; -76.58361