Swords in Early Modern English Plays
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SWORDS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH PLAYS by TOMOKO WAKASA A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY Shakespeare Institute College of Arts and Law Graduate School University of Birmingham 3 September 2010 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Contents List of Abbrevia tions ....................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 4 Chapter 1: The Development in Style of Swords and Fencing ...................................... 17 Chapter 2: Sword Properties on the Early Modern English Stage ................................. 69 Chapter 3: Swords and Representations of Characteristics.......................................... 122 Conclusion.................................................................................................................... 183 Works Cited .................................................................................................................. 187 1 List of Abbreviations AYL Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. F1 First folio Ham. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. 2H4 Shakespeare, William. Henry IV, Part 2. H5 Shakespeare, William. Henry V. 3H6 Shakespeare, William. Henry VI, Part 3. LLL Shakespeare, William. Love’s Labour’s Lost. MV Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Oth. Shakespeare, William. Othello. Q1 First quarto Q2 Second quarto R2 Shakespeare, William. Richard II. R3 Shakespeare, William. Richard III. 1Tamb. Marlowe, Christopher. Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. 2Tamb. Marlowe, Christopher. Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. 2 Wiv. Shakespeare, William. The Merry Wives of Windsor. 3 Introduction In the late 1590s, the history of the sword in England reached a turning point both in real and fictional worlds. According to Egerton Castle, the rapier, the thin and light bladed sword in the latest Continental fashion, was introduced into England in the late 1570s and gained popularity after 1580, especially among the fashion-conscious young gentlemen and aristocrats.1 With the success of the Italian fencing school in London, the English schools of the art of defence began to go into decline and, along with this, the rapier suitable for the Continental fencing style rapidly replaced the traditional English sword and buckler. However, it was almost at the turn of the century when the transition to the new type of the sword and sword fighting was emotionally accepted among Londoners and was reflected in dramatic works performed in the London playhouse. When tackling primary sources, it is recognized that voices that claim or approve this rapid change are heard in a variety of documents of the period. For example, there were published two fairly contrasting fencing manuals both of which were dedicated to 1 Egerton Castle, Schools and Masters of Fence: From the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century (1893, London: Arms and Armour, 1969) 28-29. See also Jay P. Anglin, “The Schools of Defense in Elizabethan London,” Renaissance Quarterly 37.3 (1984): 407. 4 the same person, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex: first, Vincentio Saviolo’s His Practice published in 1595, the first treatise of the Italian fencing style originally written in the English language, and second, George Silver’s Paradoxes of Defence in 1599, the only manual of the traditional English art of defence in the sixteenth century. The former is a “simple Discourse, of managing weapons, and dealing in honorable Quarrels” which the author claims to have been induced to give pains to write.2 Saviolo further insists the advantage of the rapier and dagger fight over any other military exercise of the body, “because there is very great and necessarie vse thereof, not onely in generall warres, but also in particular combats, & many other accidents.”3 It is “the perfect knowledge and practise” that makes a man of small stature without physical strength able to subdue and overcome “the fierce brauing pride of tall and strong bodies” with quick movements of his body and fine skills in manipulating his rapier and dagger.4 On the contrary, Silver laments in the epistle to Essex that “Fencing… in this new fangled age, is like our fashions, euerie daye a change, resembling the Camelion, who altereth himselfe into all colours saue white: so Fencing changeth into all wards saue the right” and claims “that there is no certaine defence in the Rapier, and that there 2 Vincentio Saviolo, Vincentio Saviolo His Practice. In two bookes. The first intreating of the use of the rapier and dagger. The second, of honor and honourable quarrels (1595) A3r, B1v. 3 Saviolo B1v. 4 Saviolo B1v. 5 is great aduantage in the short Sword against the long Rapier, or all maner of Rapiers in generall, of what length soeuer.”5 His following admonishment to English readers urges them not to follow the Continental fashion, condemning its weakness and harmfulness, and to go back to the art of defence that their own forefathers admitted to be “true.”6 This conflict is naturally reflected in dramatic works of the period. J. Dover Wilson considers that Tybalt and Mercutio in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, first performed in 1595, can be representatives of each fencing school. “Tybalt… is evidently meant to represent a disciple of Saviolo’s, and Silver’s complaint of ‘the great losse of our English gallants…’ might almost be a reference to the death of Mercutio.”7 Noting how Shakespeare adapts his references to fencing accordingly, Wilson asserts that his “sympathies are clearly with the old fashion that George Silver loved,” but the change is marked by “Hotspur’s contemptuous reference to Prince Hal as ‘that same sword-and-buckler Prince of Wales’” in the first part of Henry IV,8 first performed in 1597. The increasing popularity of the rapier may explain the fact that the word, rapier, is found only once in the surviving works of Christopher Marlowe who died in 1593, whereas it is used twenty nine times in Shakespeare’s works. 5 George Silver, Paradoxes of Defence (London, 1599; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1933) A3r, A6r. 6 Silver, Paradoxes B1r-B2r. 7 J. Dover Wilson, introduction, Paradoxes of Defence, by George Silver (1599, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1933) ix. 8 Wilson, introduction ix. 6 Charles Edelman sheds light on Shakespeare’s transformation of “the playhouse’s traditional connection with swordfighting into a versatile and important poetic element within the great poetry of his plays.”9 Based on his close examination of sword fighting scenes supported by his practical experience in the theatre, he aims to “show that Shakespeare intended the swordfighting sequences in his plays to be an integral part of them as poetic works, and that this intention was achieved by his bringing together of several previously separate elements”: first, “the already-existent tradition of combat sport in the playhouses, and the Elizabethans’ enthusiasm for it,” second, “the excitement of something new,” and third, “the cult of Elizabeth, the neo-medieval orientation of so much of Elizabethan art and society.”10 His attempts to reconstruct the original staging is quite suggestive when we enquire into the transition of the sword, but he are interested mainly in stage fights and not so much in the sword itself, which is the main concern of this dissertation. Jennifer A. Low focuses on the popularity of the duel, “a form of ritualized violence,” in the new imported fencing style with the rapier, as an instrument of learning “a great deal about English society between 1580 and 1620”11 and of enquiring 9 Charles Edelman, Brawl ridiculous: Swordfighting in Shakespeare’s Plays (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1992) 10. 10 Edelman 192. 11 Jennifer A. Low, Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) 5. 7 into the changing sense of gender, rank, and nationality of the period. She further shows the interrelationship between the social phenomenon and theatrical representation of the duel and duellists. Her argument on the representation of duellists can be expanded into the changing representation of the characteristics of each sword’s carrier. This dissertation attempts to grasp the changing vogue of the sword along with the sword fighting in the late 1590s and their influence, which will also serve to bridge the social and theatrical worlds, discussing first the sword in contemporary English society and then the visual and verbal representation of the sword in Early Modern English drama. The first chapter examines the sword outside of the theatre. The transition from the warlike sword toward the rapier first took place on the Continent at around the beginning of the sixteenth century. The direct cause of this movement was the invention of firearms. The improvement of the new technology into a practical and powerful weapon and the following development of armour and military