Pastime with Good Company: When the King Is Bored

Pastime with Good Company is a song that sounds cheerful, innocent, and familiar. You may know it as The King's Ballad or King Henry's Madrigal by Jethro Tull. A Renaissance tune about pleasure, fellowship, and staying busy. It was written in 1513 by a young King Henry VIII, decades before history hardened him into a tyrant. At the time, Henry was everything a Renaissance king was supposed to be: athletic, educated, musical, and bored. This song was his defense of enjoyment, and his warning against idleness, which he called “the chief mistress of vices all.” The episode follows how this tune escaped the court and became a hit across Europe, then traces its strange afterlife. Over five centuries, the melody sheds its words, regains them, turns into dance music, atmosphere, historical signal, and finally a symbol of power rather than personality. Along the way, the episode asks what happens when pleasure stops being an argument and becomes a habit, and what it means when a song outlives the person who wrote it. The episode ends with a new version titled King’s Pastime.