Study of a gentleman carrying sword and daggers, by Jan van de Velde II, 1608–42. A rapier and dagger was an essential accessory for any early modern gentleman. Here the outline of weaponry is clear, despite the cloak drawn decorously around the body.
So the Montagues are good, true, solid Englishmen in their sword-fighting, while the Capulets – as the audience would have understood – are shown as suspect, modish and foreign.
For the man of fashion, the quality of his rapier and dagger set, like his watch or his trainers today, was crucial. In Hamlet, when the prissy courtier Osric announces a bet between the King and Laertes, the blades he mentions are as much status symbols as weapons:
OSRIC: The King, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary horses, against the which he has impawned, as I take it, six French rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle, hangers, and so. Three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of very liberal conceit.
Betting half a dozen rapiers and daggers against six Barbary horses shows just how enormously valuable a ‘delicate’ rapier and dagger could be.
But it was not just a question of fashion. Rapiers and daggers were about causing serious bodily harm: they proclaimed honour and defended it. The problem of street violence in sixteenth-century Europe was met with regulations to restrict the use of swords:
ROMEO: Tybalt, Mercutio, the prince expressly hath Forbid this bandying in Verona streets.
Some military experts despised fencing as a waste of time, ‘that men might butcher one another here at home in peace’, and poor preparation for the serious business of war. Others, such as the clergyman William Harrison, felt the rapier and dagger needlessly raised the stakes in civilian violence among fight-happy men who ‘carry two daggers or two rapiers in a sheath always about them, wherewith in every drunken fray they are known to work much mischief’. In an attempt to curb such violent brawls, an English law of 1562 limited the length of rapiers: those over a yard long were physically broken at the city gates. It seems to have made little difference: it was rather like saying you could carry only a small gun. Other laws were no more successful. According to a 1573 proclamation:
None shall wear spurs, swords, rapiers, daggers, skeans, wood knives, or hangers, buckles or girdles, gilt, silvered or damasked…except knights and baron’s sons, and others of higher degree and place.
Illustration from George Silver’s Paradoxes of Defence, 1599. Silver championed the English school of fencing against Saviolo’s Italian model – though both techniques involved using rapier and dagger together.
But such prohibitions were widely disregarded, and virtually every adult male carried at least a dagger.
Rather like boxing matches today, the sword fights that Elizabethans saw in the theatre were a hugely popular spectacle, and, barring the odd special-effect creation (like the arrows in Clifford’s neck in Henry VI, Part 3), the actors used real weapons. In daylight, in the open air, swordplay showed to particular advantage in the new playhouses like the Globe. Some actors became excellent fencers; the great comic actor Richard Tarleton, who could famously get an Elizabethan audience into hysterics simply by poking his face into view, also became a Master of Fencing, which meant he had defeated seven recognized masters in contests. There are over a dozen Shakespeare plays where swords are specifically required in the stage directions or in the action – among them are the great duels between Hal and Hotspur in Henry IV, Part 1, between Hamlet and Laertes, the battles in Henry V and the fight scenes of Romeo and Juliet. Comedy duels, as seen in Twelfth Night between Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sebastian, were also hit scenes. Watching a proper fight, like the one between Hamlet and Laertes, was a two-for-the-price-of-one bargain: you got not only Shakespeare’s new play, but an excellent swordfight that the audience would willingly have paid to see on its own; indeed, when theatres were not staging plays they often offered fencing displays instead.
‘The Thyrde Dayes Discourse, of Rapier and Dagger’, from Vincentio Saviolo his Practise, 1595. The Italian fencing master Saviolo came to London in 1590, opened a school and published a manual in English. His techniques and terminology are quoted in Romeo and Juliet.
The fencing school of the University of Leiden, by Willem van Swanenburg, 1610. This Dutch engraving gives a sense of what the various fencing academies of Shakespeare’s London, including those of Saviolo and Silver, would have been like.
Among those watching Hamlet must have been many young men carrying rapiers and daggers like those they saw on stage. Unsurprisingly, they mirrored in real life what they saw in the theatre: in 1600 it was reported that gentlemen about town were fashionably copying the famous actor Burbage’s performance as Richard III, ‘That had his hand continuall on his dagger.’ Indeed, some members of the audience even fought duels as a result of incidents at the theatre, as when a young Irish lord blocked the view of the Countess of Essex at the Blackfriars Theatre and precipitated a duel with her escort.
Inevitably, actors and playwrights joined in the action off stage. Most famously, in 1593, a knife thrust in a Deptford tavern killed Shakespeare’s friend Christopher Marlowe, but there were several other theatrical casualties of the age. Gabriel Spencer, a rising actor in the Admiral’s Men, killed a man in a fight in 1596, and two years later he was himself killed in a duel by the playwright Ben Jonson, another good friend of Shakespeare. Philip Henslowe, the theatrical impresario, reported the event to the actor Edward Alleyn:
Now to let you understand the news, I will tell you some, but it is for me hard and heavy; since you were with me I have lost one of my company, that is Gabriel, for he is slain in Hoxton Fields by the hand of Benjamin Jonson; therefore I would fain have a little of your counsel if I could.
Jonson was indicted for murder but pleaded benefit of clergy; as a pardoned offender, he was branded on the thumb with T for Tyburn.
When it came to sword fighting, life imitated art and art imitated life. So it is perhaps not surprising that in 1596 a man called William Wayte claimed to have been set upon by four assailants outside the Swan Theatre and swore before the Court of Queen’s Bench that he had been in ‘fear of death’. Among the accused was the author of Romeo and Juliet, one William Shakespeare.
CHAPTER SIX
Europe: Triumphs of the Past
BATTLE GEAR OF HENRY V
KING HENRY: Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
A generation ago, Laurence Olivier created the Henry V that everyone knew. In his film version, made during the Second World War, Olivier’s King Henry was a handsome, valiant Englishman taking his people onward into battle.
KING HENRY: In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage…
For a country at war Shakespeare’s dashing young Henry was an inspiring figure. He is a king who mingles with commoners, walks among his soldiers on the eve of battle showing ‘a little touch of Harry in the night’. The whole nation is united in arms and becomes one great family, a band of brothers: ‘For he today that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, / This day shall gentle his condition’.
Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, 1943–4. For a generation it was Olivier’s version of Henry V that dominated the English imagination.
The young hero leads his men to victory against the French, and against the odds, first at Harfleur and then at Agincourt.
KING HENRY: I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot!
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’
In t
he Crypt Museum at Westminster Abbey there remain some of the objects that Henry would have needed, and may actually have used, in 1415 as he led those greyhounds out of the slips and into battle at Agincourt. There is a battered shield and sword, a sturdy helmet and a saddle for a warhorse. They are known as Henry V’s ‘funeral achievements’ – the heraldic term signifying the armour, weapons and banners of a medieval lord, traditionally displayed over his tomb. Henry’s shield is made of lime-wood. It has the shape of a garden spade, but is much larger, twenty-four inches high, curved to fit round and protect the body that held it. The sword is hefty and unadorned, a brute of a weapon about three feet long. The wooden saddle still has some of its original hessian padding and leather; the dark metal helmet is battered but edged with gold.
The tomb of Henry V in Westminster Abbey was positioned, as he intended, next to the tomb of St Edward the Confessor. The current effigy is a modern reconstruction.
For centuries, these instruments of battle were on public display in Westminster Abbey, hung over Henry V’s tomb, and they are, in their way, props in the great theatre of national history that Westminster Abbey has become – emblems of royal display, military might and patriotism. They arrived at the Abbey on 7 November 1422 at Henry V’s funeral, after his early death at the age of thirty-five. That spectacular funeral opens Henry VI, Part 1:
BEDFORD: Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry’s death –
King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!
England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.
In the 1590s, when Shakespeare and his audiences came to visit Westminster Abbey, Henry V’s military memorials were still colourful and bright. Although the original, splendid statue had been despoiled at least twice – most recently in January 1546, when thieves removed the silver head in a night-time raid – the wooden core of the effigy remained on view. The painted arms of the King, the blue and gold velvet, were still on the sumptuously covered saddle; the blue figured Chinese silks that lined his shield had not yet faded, and a painted leopard crest was still in place on the dented helmet. This display of armour – brightly coloured, elaborate and obviously used – offered an emphatic reminder of the martial prowess of the figure in the tomb beneath.
Tourists have been visiting the tombs and monuments of Westminster Abbey for over 400 years, and this sepulchral tourism was already thriving under Elizabeth and her successor James. In 1599 a German visitor to London paid to see the tombs and dutifully recorded them in his diary. Unable to snap a quick photo of Henry V’s tomb on his phone as today’s visitors can, he carefully transcribed the epitaph: ‘Henry, the scourge of France, lies in this tomb. Virtue subdues all things. A.D. 1422.’
Jonathan Bate explains more about the Westminster sightseers:
It is quite a surprise to discover that Westminster Abbey was a real tourist attraction in London round about 1600. Indeed by 1612, Westminster Abbey had become such a popular tourist attraction that there were actually guides employed there who would give you the guided tour. You would pay a penny (which is exactly what you would pay to get into the theatre), and the guide would take you around the tombs and give you a little history lesson. You would go from tomb to tomb, and on each tomb there would be an effigy of the monarch. There would be a description in Latin of who they were, what their relations were, what their achievements were, and one imagines the guide would have translated these for you. The tombs and effigies of the English kings were the main attractions. So there is an extraordinary parallel between the process of going to the theatre to see the history plays and going to the Abbey to see the ‘living monuments’, as they called them, the lively statues of the kings and queens in question.
So there were two ways of learning about national history in Shakespeare’s time, if you did not want to resort to books: you could go to Westminster Abbey, pay a penny and be instructed about the ‘living monuments’ of dead kings or you could go to the theatre, pay a penny and see the great kings stride out in front of you. And in each case the hero of the story was most likely to be Henry V. It might seem strange that a king whose reign was so short, and whose conquests vanished so swiftly under his successor, should be given superstar status in the 1590s. Historian Susan Doran explains why Henry V was elevated to the position of national icon and how far Shakespeare’s version of him corresponded to the real historical Henry:
The gap between the myth and reality in the presentation of Henry V was not as wide as it might be, compared, for example, with Macbeth or Richard III. Henry V was presented as the exemplary figure of chivalry. He was seen as magnanimous, he had martial courage, he was someone who could rally his troops to join him in a band of brothers. His value in Elizabethan times, particularly in the 1580s and 1590s, was as a figure that rallied the English against their ancient enemy. And in the late Elizabethan period, of course, England was at war, not against France, but against Spain and in Ireland. The most important aspect of Henry V’s character and the myths surrounding him was that he had united Englishmen successfully in war.
Portrait of Henry V, by an unknown artist, late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. What is perhaps now the most familiar portrait of Henry V was in fact painted during Shakespeare’s lifetime.
Bronze Seal matrix of Henry, Prince of Wales (later Henry V), for the lordship of Carmarthen, around 1410. The seal shows the Prince on horseback surrounded by his titles: Prince of Wales, Duke of Aquitaine, Lancaster and Cornwall, Earl of Chester and Lord of Carmarthen.
The monument of Henry V, with the evocative helmet, shield and saddle hanging high above it, was immensely popular. Many of those in Shakespeare’s audience at the playhouse, watching his play Henry V, would have seen the funeral achievements at the Abbey. They would have understood that here were memorials of unsurpassed military triumph, but also of admirable, and unusual, royal humility – because for many people these would have been the very sword and helmet mentioned in Shakespeare’s account of King Henry’s refusal to parade vaingloriously through the streets of London when he came back from his triumphs in France:
CHORUS: You may imagine him upon Blackheath,
Where that his lords desire him to have borne
His bruisèd helmet and bended sword
Before him through the city. He forbids it,
Being free from vainness and self-glorious pride,
Giving full trophy, signal and ostent
Quite from himself to God.
Henry V is Shakespeare’s only history play of the 1590s about a successful king, one in which the story does not focus on conspiracy and revolt. Instead, Henry V’s reign is described as one of virtually unadulterated triumph, in which English forces, though ostensibly weaker than their foes, still end victorious. It is true that the king – although charismatic and admirable – is not altogether whitewashed; events such as the massacre of prisoners during Agincourt are included, and some have sought to see a subversive, anti-war message in the play. But the fact remains that it is nearly impossible, during a live performance, not to be caught up in admiration and patriotism.
The two popular ways of learning national history were closely connected. The playhouses and Westminster’s tourist attractions both drew large and diverse audiences. Thanks to Shakespeare and to Christopher Marlowe, the history play as a genre took off in the 1590s and indeed it came to define Elizabethan theatre. Jonathan Bate again:
The public theatre was a new thing in Shakespeare’s lifetime, and one of the big innovations that it brought to the cultural life of the nation was plays about English history. You can roughly trace this from the time of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. This was really the first opportunity that ordinary people had to discover about the history of their own nation. For ordinary
people to get a sense of the history of the nation, the theatre was the place to go.
The history on offer was exhilaratingly jingoistic. Henry V contrives to be not just anti-French, but blisteringly anti-Scots.
ELY : But there’s a saying very old and true:
‘If that you will France win,
Then with Scotland first begin.’
For once the eagle England being in prey,
The Kings and Queens of England, by Hendrik Goltzius, 1584, depicting some of the leading figures of Shakespeare’s history plays of the 1590s: Richard II and the Lancastrians Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI.
To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot
Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs.
The tabloid nationalism of the history plays was certainly a hit: they made Shakespeare’s reputation and eventually his fortune. Printers knew there was a strong market for them: the histories appear in print as much as all the other Shakespeare plays put together. Their popularity was further buoyed because they were seen as useful, they were based on fact and – it was argued – made the people watching them better citizens. This gave those running the theatres ammunition to defend the stage against its puritanical critics, a line of reasoning the playwright Thomas Heywood ingeniously set out in 1612 in his Apology for Actors:
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