Let us now return to prose fiction. We know that novels were read aloud and that lectors were expected to render a convincing and compelling reading, with variations in pitch and the use of different voices. The next question then would be: were they also expected to perform the songs from the novels? That might be the case. On the one hand, the prose fiction excerpts describe an ideal situation, a dreamed-of world in which people could immerse themselves imaginatively, to which they were able to turn for some relief from their everyday lives, and from which they could find inspiration. On the other hand, the texts also reflect social interactions at that time. Coming together for entertainment with books and music was not only a popular theme in literature but also an everyday activity in which speaking and singing often merged seamlessly with each other. In the course of an evening, people would read aloud from a novel, recite a few poems and, finally, sing a few songs or psalms.

The next step is to consider whether singing would occur during the reading. We do not yet know the answer to this question. However, there is evidence from an earlier period in which there was such a tradition: narrative texts from the Middle Ages are known to have been spoken and sung. However, Karl Reichl has pointed out, in his contribution to Vitz and Regalado's survey Performing Medieval Narrative (2005), that specific knowledge about the execution is still largely lacking for this repertoire. Maureen Barry McCann Boulton also addressed the issue in The Song in the Story: Lyric Insertions in French Narrative Fiction, 1200–1400 (1993): ‘Were the songs actually meant to be sung in these new contexts? An affirmative answer is indicated by much of the textual and manuscript evidence.’ She points, inter alia, to the presence of musical notation in a number of manuscripts, and observes that ‘even without notation […] lyric insertions differ from the surrounding narative in that they imply performance, even in the absence of performers’. She is unable, however, to provide a definitive answer: ‘It would be interesting to know to what extent those who read aloud narratives with lyric insertions differentiated their reading of narrative and lyric elements, but I have found no evidence to answer this question.’