Four categories of evidence survive concerning minstrels in late medieval England: historical documents, visual images and artefacts, notated music, and references in literary works, primarily the romances. No category provides as much information as we might wish, and all are susceptible to misinterpretation. Iconography is most useful in delineating musical instruments, which we will leave for future chapters. Similarly, detailed discussion of music manuscripts will be meaningful only after an understanding of narrative performance has been developed. This leaves two categories to consider. Historical documents and literary depictions, taken together, establish a complex and plausible model for minstrel performance of narrative. The evidence is indirect, very much what we should expect for ephemeral performance. Yet clues do exist that have not yet been explored. When we step back from generic boundaries between narrative and drama, and put aside distinctions between actors, storytellers, and musicians, the traces of narrative performance become clearer.

We find evidence of a flexible storytelling tradition in which the same tales were read in books as romaunces and told by minstrels as gestes or lays. Minstrels operated in a wide range of venues, and their performance responded to diverse needs; both stories and music would have necessarily undergone radical transformation as a minstrel moved from competitive mirth at a noisy feast, to solo boredom aversion on a long journey, to narration with a colleague in a king's chamber. Similarly, the relationship between minstrels and their patrons may not have been as uniform as we have imagined; in addition to performing for patrons, minstrels may sometimes have collaborated with them or taught them.