2010 Theme

TIP: Join us for Opening Gate Ceremony every day at 9:45am outside the front gate!

For more details on the 2010 festival theme, please contact the festival Historian at: Historian@SarasotaMedievalFair.com

The question for what Arthur and his knights did was not for a moment in time. It is left to the historian to confront his profession. One must step into the legend to meet the historical Arthur. In a world of crisis and change, Arthur, with his men, confronted both. Arthur was a product of his times. With him gathered round a band of men who took their place around him. Arthur, his knights and Merlin’s importance lay not in the glory of battle against the Saxons and Angles. What he achieved was not measured by the hills they took but in their rightful place in legend. They walked off the pages of history in to myth.

They lived on the road between the chaos and a noble realm, between fact and fiction.

Their lives are the tale of how people live in a time where two worlds meet. They stood, in that distant past, for us – we who follow in time what would confronts us. We as much as Gildas through Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chretien De Troyes to Antoine Fuqua, in our day, face change. Men and women without whom the context would not make sense had they not lived. So much has been written of them. Through time they have become preeminent in the world of legend. For us, this is where we find them. In the fables of our day. So we continue their story to and for you. Step into legend and meet what history has given to you. You may find that legend is a place where you are at home. This is the matter of Britain we offer to you at this year’s Sarasota Medieval Fair!

ong, so long ago, in a remote corner of the world on the edge of a crumbling empire, a page in history was turning…

“King Arthur – Return to Avalon”