England s Double Reign :

The Sword and the Rapier in

1 Henry IV and Hamlet
-

Michael Ovens
Supervisor: Andrew Lynch
2012
Dissertation submitted to Medieval and Early Modern Studies in the School of
Humanities at the University of Western Australia in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours.

I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research, written in the full
knowledge of what constitutes plagiarism and documented accordingly, and
contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a
degree at any university. I consent to the publication of this document on the
internet via a UWA site.

Contents

Introduction .

The Worthy Temper of the Sword in 1 Henry IV

17

35

Abstract

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:
The Envenomed Point of the Rapier in Hamlet

Conclusion .

54

58

Bibliography.

59

Glossary

3
Abstract: The presence of the rapier, explicit or implied, in 1 Henry IV and Hamlet
disturbs the representation of the broadsword as an aristocratic and chivalric
symbol. The broadsword had served as a symbol of the medieval knights honour,
virtue, and piety. The rapier, together with the duel of honour, offered the English
gentleman an alternative raison d'tre for the exercise of arms which weakened his
claim to what was a predominantly martial chivalric heritage. A tension was created
between the symbolic properties of the sword, which the English gentleman claimed
as his chivalric heritage, and the physical exercise of the sword, which became
associated with the serving-man tradition of the sword and buckler. In I Henry IV,
Shakespeare constructs a contemporary Elizabethan imagining of Englands
chivalric past. Hals surpassing of both Hotspur and Falstaff represents the
emergence of the ideal of the English gentleman from the fusion of the traditions of
chivalry and civil courtesy, while Hotspur is constructed as a tragic hero flawed by his
lack of civil grace. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gives the rapier centre-stage. This
marginalises the broadsword within the play and diminishes its capability to act as a
symbol of the gentlemans chivalric heritage. The Italian theory of the superiority of
the thrust over the cut further troubles Shakespeares evaluation of the broadsword
when compared to the rapier. In spite of, and in some ways because of, its superior
lethality in civil duels, the rapier is depicted as a tainted symbol associated with the
epidemic of deaths from duels in both England and continental Europe. In both 1
Henry IV and Hamlet, Shakespeare engages with and reflects on the conflicting
(re)appropriations of the sword as a symbol of upper-class identity through his
representations of the broadsword and the rapier.

Introduction
For worms, brave Percy: fare thee well, great heart!
Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
But now two paces of the vilest earth
Is room enough: this earth that bears thee dead
Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.
If thou wert sensible of courtesy,
I should not make so dear a show of zeal...
(1 Henry IV, 5.3.88-96)1
The English gentleman of the latter sixteenth century had little in common with the
battlefield chivalry of Henry Percy. Although the ideal gentleman believed himself
to be chivalric in his great heart , he was in fact a chimera pieced together from

the pieces of classical Greece, medieval England, and renaissance Italy. Competing
for space within this composite exemplar was the gentleman s desire to be

"sensible of the civil courtesy rippling from the )talian nacion, whiche semeth to
flourishe in ciuilitee moste of all other at this date. 2 Arriving on English shores in
the middle of the sixteenth century, this Italian civil courtesy re-imagined the

medieval knight s first and true profession of arms as the means by which a
William Shakespeare, The First Part of (enry the Fourth , Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Bate, Eric
Rasmussen, Royal Shakespeare Company, Hampshire: Macmillian, 2008.
2 William Thomas, The historie of Italie, London, 1549, sig. A2r.

5
good reputation , rather than a battle, could be won.3 The antiquated chivalric life

gave way to a vibrant chivalric imagination able to inspire Edmund Spenser s epic
The Faerie Queen, animate the latter-day heroism of Sir Philip Sidney, and

invigorate the spectacle of Elizabeth s Accession Day tournaments. Although the

outcomes of the new civil courtesy were in many ways better met by the rapier

than by the broadsword, the chimeric gentleman could not lay the sword to rest
entirely: the White Arm had bred the very spirit of chivalry, serving as the knight s

ancestral badge of rank and personal crucifix.4 The movement from broadsword to
rapier strained the relationship between the symbolic properties of the sword and
its practical qualities as a weapon. This tension manifested in an uneasy
ambivalence towards the representation of the broadsword in Shakespeare s
dramatic text, especially when contrasted with the rapier.

In this dissertation I will examine the representations of the broadsword and the
rapier in 1 Henry IV and Hamlet. I have chosen these two plays because they
demonstrate how the representation of the broadsword changes in the presence
and absence of the rapier. In 1 Henry IV, the absence of the physical rapier allows
Shakespeare to depict the broadsword in its knightly splendour as a chivalric and
aristocratic symbol able to quash Falstaff s pedestrian appropriation. In Hamlet,
the broadsword is sidelined in favour of a gentleman s duel with rapiers that

manifests the poison infecting the state of Denmark; however, the broadsword s
brief depiction in the tale of Priam s slaughter

Hamlet 2.2.395-459) and its

Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1528), trans. George Bull, Middlesex: Penguin
Books Ltd, 1967, p. 57.
4 Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Sword, London: Chatto and Windus, 1884, p. xv-xxvi ; Mike
Loades, Swords and Swordsmen, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military, 2010, p. 247 ; R. Ewart
Oakeshott, The Archaeology of Weapons, London: Lutterworth Press, 1960, p. 200.

6
curious absence from the warlike form of Old (amlet Hamlet 1.1.53)5 suggest a

symbolic value worlds apart from 1 Henry IV. By examining the representation of
the double reign 1 Henry IV 5.3.66) of the broadsword and the rapier in these
two plays I hope to open up a new understanding of the sword in both
Shakespeare s plays and the Elizabethan society in which they were introduced.

Our society takes a fairly dim view of the medieval swordsman. Ser Vardis Egan, a
knight from the multi-award winning HBO series Game of Thrones, is so clumsy
that he strikes the very walls with his wild, brutish blows; 6 his dance is the

knight s dance, hacking and hammering. 7 We can read in generalist books that the
medieval broadsword tipped the scales in excess of ten kilograms,8 that they were
wielded as little more than glorified can openers , and that it was only when

armor finally fell into disuse in the 1500s... that complex offensive and defensive
systems of swordplay began to appear. 9 The broadsword straddles an awkward

three-way divide between its historic value as the queen of weapons , its symbolic

worth as the emblem of a knight s chivalry, and its (perceived) practical

insufficiency as a martial instrument, which has been likened to carrying a piece

of log and trying to wield it like a steak knife.

10

William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of (amlet, Prince of Denmark , Complete Works, ed. Jonathan
Bate, Eric Rasmussen, Royal Shakespeare Company, Hampshire: Macmillian, 2008.
6 A Golden Crown , Game of Thrones: The Complete First Season, writ. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss,
HBO, 2012.
7 Lord Snow , Game of Thrones: The Complete First Season, writ. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, HBO,
2012.
8 Paul Williams, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Crusades, U.S.A.: Alpha, 2002, p. 20. More
knowledgeable authors, like the fencer Richard Cohen, are more conservative in their estimates
Cohen merely claims well in excess of three pounds , or over . kilograms but are just as
dismissive. Richard Cohen, By the Sword : a history of gladiators, musketeers, samurai,
swashbucklers, and Olympic champions, New York: Random House, 2002, p. 14 .
9 Nick Evangelista, The Encyclopedia of the Sword, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995,
p.26.
10 The Medieval Broadsword , Conquest, The History Channel, New York, July 6, 2003.
5

7
The reality is that the average broadsword weighed between one and two
kilograms and required a high degree of dexterity to use correctly.11 Superbly
designed to defeat the strongest armour of the early medieval period, the mail
hauberk, the broadsword continued to adapt and keep pace with developments in
defensive technology, transitioning into great swords and swords of war.12 Even
these two-handed swords were light and balanced enough to be used gracefully in
one hand.13 The surviving works of the medieval masters at arms require students
of the art to execute feints, thrusts, and rapid changes of direction with their
weapon. In order to execute these techniques, a swordsman requires a weapon
wholly inconsistent with many modern caricatures of the medieval sword.
The negative view owes a lot to the authors and fencers of nineteenth-century
England. The history of the sword is the history of humanity , wrote Richard F.
Burton in 1884, but it is a history that many Victorian authors saw in reverse.14

Beginning with the sport of nineteenth-century small-sword fencing with masks

and foils, a system as nearly perfect as can be hoped for in an imperfect world , 15

the history of the sword was traced backwards through increasing imperfection to
the rapier and point, the peculiar and especial weapon, offensive and defensive, of
Southern Europe, Spain, )taly, and France,

was the development of fencing.

17

16

in order to show clearly how tardy

Medieval swordsmanship was hardly

considered an art at all, but rather a rough, untutored fighting which

11

Ewart Oakeshott, Sword in Hand: A History of the Medieval Sword, London: Arms & Armor Press,
, p. . Original units )mperial, between . lbs and . lbs .
12 R. Ewart Oakeshott, The Sword in the Age of Chivalry, London: Lutterworth Press, 1964, p. 17
13 Mike Loades, Swords and Swordsmen, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2010, pp. 167-71.
14 Burton, The Book of the Sword, p. xv.
15 Walter H. Pollock, Edward B. Michell, Walter Armstrong, The Badminton Library: Fencing, Boxing
& Wrestling, London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1889, p. 36.
16 Burton, The Book of the Sword, pp. xvii-xix.
17 Pollock, Michell, Armstrong, Fencing, Boxing and Wrestling, pp. 3-4.

8
represented faithfully the reign of brute force in social life as well as in politics

18.

Walter Scott translated this belief into narrative in his novel The Talisman (1825),
where Richard the Lionheart severs an inch-and-a-half thick iron bar with his
broadsword as a woodsman would sever a sapling with a hedging-bill. Saladin

makes a modest show of being impressed before bisecting a light cushion and a

falling silk scarf with his scimitar, feats which Richard had only moments before
claimed impossible to achieve with his own sword.19
Shakespeare s audience, and Shakespeare himself, would have had a much

different understanding of the broadsword and its relationship to the rapier.

English society was suffused with both swords and rapiers at the turn of the
seventeenth century; it had become an article of fashion among gentlemen to wear
a rapier with everyday dress 20 and a matter of honour to be skilled in its use.21
Below him, the gentleman s serving-man preferred to carry a broadsword

typically a backsword22 - as he had done for centuries, typically paired with a

buckler which hung from its hilt or pommel. 23 Duels with rapiers among

18

Egerton Castle, Schools and Masters of Fencing: From the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century
(1885), New York: Dover Publications, 2003, pp. 3-5.
19 Sir Walter Scott, The Talisman (1825), Cosimo Classics, 2005, pp.327-9.
20 Tudor Royal Proclamations, eds. P.L. Hughes and J.F. Larkin, 3 vols., New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1964-9, vol. 1, no. 30.
21 Vincentio Saviolo, His practise, in two bookes, the first intreating of the use of the Rapier and
Dagger, the second of Honor and honorable quarrels, London, 1595, sig. P1r-P2v.
22 Loades, Swords and Swordsmen, pp. 164-5. Compare with the sword pictured in George Silver,
The Works of George Silver, comprising Paradoxes of Defence [Printed in 1599 and now reprinted]
and Brief Instructions upon my Paradoxes of Defence [Printed for the first time from the MS. In the
British Museum], ed. Cyril G. R. Matthey, London: George Bell and Sons, 1898, sig. E3v.
23 The earliest record we have for common-born men causing mischief with the sword and buckler
is a writ from the Edward I to the Mayors and Sheriffs of London in the thirteenth century,
enjoining them to punish all bakers, brewers, and other misdoers walking the City by night with
swords and bucklers and assaulting those they met . Calendar of letter-books of the city of London:
A: 1275-1298, Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., 1899, fol. 127. URL: http://www.britishhistory.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33031 Date accessed: 20 April 2012.

9
gentlemen increased in both number and publicity from the 1580s,24 while the
aspiring students of the corporation of four ancient masters of the noble science

of Defence within the City of London , who controlled instruction in the English art
of the broadsword and buckler, demonstrated their skills at crowded public

competitions in order to progress through the ranks from scholar to free scholar,
provost, and master.25 These competitions were often held at playhouses like
Richard Burbage s Curtain and the (olywell Theatre ,26 as well as inns like the

Bell Savage and the Bull, both of which doubled as playhouses.27 It seems unlikely
that an audience who sat down to watch a spirited and skilful exchange of blows at
a corporation prize in the Curtain one week would be satisfied with a lacklustre or
clearly scripted theatrical fight the next, especially when many of the audience
would be proficient with either sword or rapier themselves.
It should thus come as no surprise to find Shakespeare investing deep meaning in
his swords beyond the level of simple satire. The sheer volume of technical
references within his plays Falstaff s exaggeration of the buckler to target 1
Henry IV 2.4.124-70), the hints of Spanish destreza in Thibault s book of

arithmetic (Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.84-99),28 (amlet and Laertes skilful exchange of
weapons (Hamlet, 5.2.244)29 suggests that his audience must have been at least

somewhat familiar with the exercise of swords. I contend that Shakespeare took

24

Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965, pp. 245,
770; Markku Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 82-4.
25 BL Sloane MS 2530, fol. 21. See Jay P. Anglin, The Schools of Defense in Elizabethan London ,
Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 3, 1984, pp.393-410.
26 BL Sloane MS 2530, fols. 6, II, I2, 13, 33, 34, 44, 46.
27 Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, 1300 to 1660, 2 vols., London, 1963, vol. 2, pt. 1, p.190.
28
William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet , Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Bate, Eric
Rasmussen, Royal Shakespeare Company, Hampshire: Macmillian, 2008.
29 Charles Edelman, Brawl Ridiculous: Swordfighting in Shakespeares Plays, New York: Manchester
University Press, 1992, pp.184 .

10
advantage of this familiarity to manipulate his weapons as symbols of chivalry,
civic courtesy, and social class.
With this in mind, it is worth remembering that the belted rapier worn in Hamlet
did not fashion a gentleman from a social void. He was crafted at least partly in
negative, defined by virtue of what he was not lowe .

) should thinke my Lords that men of birth and quality will leaue the

practise [of fencing with the rapier], when it begins to bee vilified and come
so lowe as to Barbers - surgeons and butchers, and such base mechanicall
persons.

30

Confronted with unprecedented social mobility and an increasingly broad

definition of gentility, the English gentleman was keen to carve out his own social
niche.31 In 1583, after an unprecedented flurry of close to two thousand grants of
arms over the previous thirty years,32 Thomas Smith observed that gentlemen

be made good cheap in England. For whosoever can live idly and without manual
labour and will bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman shall be
taken for a gentleman.

33

Although the Elizabethan chivalric revival took place

relatively independently of the heraldic surge, when it eventually did occur the
broadened criteria for gentility necessitated a new understanding of the sword as a
symbol of the armigerous class.34

30

Sir Francis Bacon, The Charge Touching Duells, London, 1614, p. 6.

A.L. Rowse, The England of Elizabeth, London: Reprint Society, 1953, pp. 279-86.
32 Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, pp. 67, 754.
33 Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum (1583), ed. L. Alston, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1906, pp. 39-41.
34 Arthur B. Ferguson, The Chivalric Tradition in Renaissance England, London: Associated
University Presses, 1986, pp. 67-8.

31

11
The introduction of Italian civil courtesy in the middle of the sixteenth century
gave outward form to many of the inward changes that had been wrought by the
rise of the gentry. The Italian code of civility was primarily concerned with the
manner in which courtiers should conduct themselves in civil life and conversation
in order to purchase worthy prayse of their inferiours: and estimation and credit
amonge theyr betters .35 Paramount was the emphasis upon surfaces and

appearances which were thought to reflect the inner life and virtues of an
individual; 36 civility was considered to be the Outwarde honestie which
mirrored and projected the virtue of the soul, while the body and its

accoutrements were as the habyte and apparayle of the inwarde mynde.

37

The

private life of an individual was considered secondary to his public life insofar as
reputation and honour were concerned, to the extent that if a person became
aware of a conflict between the private and public lives of another then [he] ought
to satisfie rather others than [himself], and giue place to the common custome.

38

This emphasis upon the exterior displays of a gentleman s civil life indicated a

significant change in the role that martial training played for the English gentry.
Warfare had been the medieval knight s business, and he would have learned to

[w]restle well and wield lance, spear, sword, and dagger manfully in order to win
honour in wars

39

which were decided by the strength of his mounted charge.

Although George Silver praised the vantages and sufficiency of the short sword
35

S[imon] R[obson], The covrte of ciuill courtesie, London, 1577, title page. See Anna Bryson, From
Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England, Clarendon Press: Oxford,
1998, pp.107-11, 121-2.
36 Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England, pp.30-35.
37 Desiderius Erasmus, De Civilitate Morum Puerilium, Antwerp, 1526, sig. A2v; B2v.
38 Stephano Guazzo, The civile conversation, trans. George pettie and Barth. Young, London, 1586
sig. 25r.
39 Paulus Kal, In Service of the Duke (1460), ed. and trans. Christian Henry Tobler, Texas: The
Chivalry Bookshelf, 2006, p. 237 ; F. Warre Cornish, Chivalry, New York: Macmillan, 1908, p. 15.

12
fight in battle when men are clustering and hurling together

40

and Baldassare

Castiglione maintained that the first and true profession of the courtier must be
that of arms

41

well into the sixteenth century, developments in tactics and

technology had made the early modern battlefield hostile to the chivalric mode of
warfare. The year before George Silver penned his Paradoxes of Defence (1599),
martial theorist Robert Barrett wrote in The Theory and Practike of Moderne
Warres (1598) that
it is rarely seen in our days, that men come often to hand-blowes, as in
old time they did: For now in this age, the shot so employeth and busieth
the field (being well-backed with a resolute band of pikes) that the most
valientest and skilfullest therein do commonly import the victories, or the
best, at the least wise, before men come to many hand-blowes.42
The common soldier, armed with pike and musket, had supplanted the knight with
his broadsword as the defining force of the battlefield. This is not to say that the
English gentleman had no place on the battlefield; Sir Robert Dudley wrote in awe
of the young gentleman Edward Stanley who stormed a breach at the fort of
Zutphen alone and fought first with his pike, then with the stumpes of his pike,

and afterward his sword, against at the least ix or x, and everie man either brake
his pike uppon his brest, or hit him with the shott of their muskett, yet would he
not back a foot .43 Such heroics could be the chiefe cause [of] honour ,44 but the
outcome of the battle was no longer in the gentleman s hands.

40

Silver, The Works of George Silver, sig. F1r.

Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, p. 57.
42 Robert Barret, The Theory and Practicke of Modern Warres, London, 1598, p.75.
43 Robert Dudley, Correspondence of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leycester, During his Government of the
Low Counrties, in the yeares 1585 and 1586, John Bruce, ed., New York, London: Johnson Reprint
41

13
Training in the law had in fact supplanted military skills for anyone likely to serve
in the administrative affairs of the country.45 These romanticized skills became
chiefly the means for a gentleman to win a good reputation and to defend himself
when differences arise between one gentleman and another and lead to duels . 46
Perhaps a better example of the martially inclined English gentleman of the
sixteenth century is the Faire branch of (onor, flower of Cheualrie

47

Robert

Devereux, Earl of Essex, who thrust his pike into the gate of Lisbon, demanding
alowd if any Spaniard mewed therein, durst adventure forth in favour of his
Mistress to breake a [lance] with him.

48

Essex s challenge contains little of the

chivalric tradition of combat between champions in lieu of a pitched battle in order

to save the blood on either side (1 Henry IV, 5.1.100). Although he wears the
trappings of chivalry, his goal is to win a good reputation and pluck bright

honour 1 Henry IV, 1.3.205) from his adversaries. Unsurprisingly, the bemused
Spaniards declined the challenge.

Although Renaissance men like Essex suggest that the Elizabethan gentleman was
able to reconcile their steeld Hamlet 1.1.72)49 chivalry with the tune of the

Company, 1844, pp.427- . Stanley s heroics were significant enough to attract a mention in William
Campden s Annales; see William Camden, Annales or, the history of the most renowned and victorious
Princesse Elezabeth, late Queen of England: Contaying all the important and remarkable passages of
state, both at home and abroad, during her long and prosperous reigne, trans. R.N. Gene, London:
printed by Thomas Harper, 1635, p.295.
44 Dudley, Correspondence of Robert Dudley, p.427-9.
45 Ferguson, The Chivalric Tradition in Renaissance England, p.61-2.
46 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, p. 57-8, 61-2.
47 Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion , The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, eds. Edwin
Greenlaw, Charles Osgood, Frederick Padelford, Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1932-49, vol. 8,
p.261.
48 John Speed, The historie of Great Britaine : vnder the conqvests of the Romans, Saxons, Danes and
Normans, their originals, manners, habits, warres, coines, and seales. With the successions, liues, acts
and issues of the English monarchs from Ivlivs Caesar, vnto the raigne of King Iames, of famous
memorie. London,
, p.
. See also Ray (effner, Essex, The )deal Courtier , English Literary
History, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1934, pp.7-36.
49 From Old (amlet s steeld pole-axe in Shakespeare, Complete Works, modernised from the
original sledded pollacks . For a discussion of the meaning of the original phrase see David (aley,

14
time and outward habit of encounter Hamlet 5.2.137-8), the latter sixteenth

century saw a rift grow between the symbolic properties of the broadsword, which
the gentleman claimed as his chivalric heritage, and its physical exercise, which
became predominantly associated with the serving-man tradition. The tradition of
plebeian swordsmanship had been smothered during the medieval period by the
exceptionally strong association of the sword with the chivalric knight. As the
chivalric life ebbed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the serving-man s
tradition gradually came to the fore.

Interestingly, most of the evidence we have for swordsmanship among the lower
orders of society comes from official attempts to ban the practice. In 1281, Edward
) directed a writ to the Mayor and Sheriffs of London enjoining them to punish all
bakers, brewers, and other misdoers walking the City by night with swords and

bucklers and assaulting those they met .50 This was followed by a statute in 1285

providing that none shall keep school for, nor teach the art of fence within the City
of London under pain of imprisonment for forty days,

51

which lead to the

for holding a

imprisonment of the aptly named Roger le Skirmisour in 1310-

school for fencing and drawing young men together, sons of respectable parents, to
the wasting of their property and injury of their own characters.

52

This image of

the serving-man as a swaggering, machismo swashbuckler persisted even beyond

the eventual recognition of an organisation of English masters of defence in

Gothic Armaments and King (amlet s Poleaxe , Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol 29., No. 3, 1978, pp.
407-13.
50 Calendar of letter-books of the city of London: A: 1275-1298, Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., 1899, fol. 127.
URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33031 Date accessed: 02 May 2012
51 Statutes for the City of London
, Statutes of the Realm (1810), 11 vols., London: Dawsons,
1963, vol. 1, pp. 102-4.
52 Calendar of letter-books of the city of London: D: 1309-1314, Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., 1902, fol.
cxxxiii. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33086 Date accessed: 02 May
2012.

15
1540,53 and the more troublesome swordsmen found themselves condemned in a
series of Vagrancy Acts which classed them as rogues and vagabonds, along with
players of interludes, bearwards, gipsies, and other undesirables. 54
The gentleman s receding relationship to the broadsword as a result of the

decreasing need for day-to-day exercise of battlefield skills was compounded by

the principles of the fashionable new Italian swordsmanship. The new Italian
swordsmanship was bound up intrinsically with the honour culture which
accompanied Italian courtesy and was predicated on a belief that the thrust was an
inherently superior form of offence to the cut. This belief rested on an anatomical
understanding of the human body moving in arcs (the arc of the shoulder, the
elbow, the wrist) and a geometrical understanding that a straight line covered a
shorter distance than a curved line. The thrust was thereby demonstrated to be a
faster attack than the cut, which was believed to make it an inherently superior
form of offence.55
This belief married well with the thrusting rapier, but diminished the value of the
cutting broadsword as an effective weapon.56 Often, this derogation was disguised
as contempt for the buckler which invariably accompanied the serving-man s

sword: in First Fruits, which yield Familiar Speech, Merry Proverbs, Witty Sentences,

53

Sydney Anglo, The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe, New Haven and London: Yale University
Press,
, p. . See Anglin, The Schools of Defense in Elizabethan London , pp.
.
54 Tudor Royal Proclamations, nos. 16-809, especially 16, 30, 274, 493, 542.
55 Giacomo di Grassi, His True arte of defence plainlie teaching by infallable demonstrations, apt
figures and perfect rules the manner and forme how a man without other teacher or master may
safelie handle all sortes of weapons aswell offensiue as defensiue: vvith a treatise of disceit or falsinge:
and with a waie or meane by priuate industrie to obtaine strength, iudgement and actiuitie. First
written in Italian by the foresaid author, and Englished by I.G. gentleman, London, 1594, sig.B3r-C3v.
56 )t is important to recognise that the distinction between a thrusting rapier and a cutting sword
is not absolute. Almost every master, English and Italian, from the thirteenth to early seventeenth
century advocated a combination of cuts and thrusts with all weapons. Nevertheless, fencers of the
sixteenth century drew a distinction between the down right blows of the sword and the
foyning or thrusting play of the rapier.

16
and Golden Sayings

, John Florio derides the buckler as a clownish,

dastardly weapon which Englishmen use [b]ecause they are vsed to them.

57

This

is a strange thing for Florio to argue when only eight years prior the Italian master
Giacomo di Grassi described the buckler as a weapon very commodious and much
used , a statement born out by other continental masters.58 It appears likely that
authors like Florio used the especially close association of the buckler with the

English serving-man s tradition of swordsmanship to belittle the common man s

exercise of the broadsword without impugning the gentleman s symbol. This

careful manipulation of the broadsword as a symbol of both gentile and plebeian

class identity came to characterise the representation of the broadsword at the
turn of the seventeenth century.
Shakespeare traces the threads of this slender web with a delicacy that the often
polemic manuals, proclamations, and chronicles rarely achieve. Switching
metaphors, the texts that have been considered so far have the straight edges that
frame the jigsaw puzzle of the Sword as it existed toward the end of Elizabeth s

reign, but these edge pieces alone do not form a complete picture. It is the small,
irregular pieces the contrast of feathered Mercury 1 Henry IV 4.1.111) and
Mars in swaddling clothes 1 Henry IV 3.2.115), the ghost that strides with

martial stalk Hamlet 1.1.75), the identity of the enigmatic Norman (Hamlet

4.6.81) that, oriented within the larger pieces of history, allow us to fill in the
heart of the puzzle that is the troubled representation of the broadsword in
Shakespeare s England.

57

John Florio, First Fruits, which yield Familiar Speech, Merry Proverbs, Witty Sentences, and Golden
Sayings (1578), as cited in Frances Yates, John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare's England,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934, p. 32
58 Di Grassi, His True arte of defence, sig. L4r. The buckler could be used offensively as well as
defensively by striking the opponent with the boss or rim of the buckler.

17

The Worthy Temper of the

Sword in 1 Henry IV
I will redeem all this on Percy s head

And in the closing of some glorious day

Be bold to tell you that I am your son,
When I will wear a garment all of blood
And stain my favours in a bloody mask,
Which, washed away, shall scour my shame with it.
(1 Henry IV, 3.2.133-8)

Standing furnished, all in arms 1 Henry IV 4.1.102) over the body of slain

Hotspur, the wounded but triumphant Prince of Wales presents the searing
portrait of a chivalric knight breaking through the foul and ugly mists of time as
the sun breaks through base contagious clouds 1 Henry IV 1.3.135- . (al s

metamorphic journey from tavern-slumming truant to feathered Mercury 1

Henry IV 4.1.111) has formed a thick, if somewhat frayed, thread within the

tapestry of critical literature surrounding 1 Henry IV. Who exactly is this man at the
end of the play? Is he as his image appears a chivalric prince who has defeated
his knightly opponent in a chivalric test of valour and martial prowess with his

broadsword? Or could this be nothing more than a faade wrought by a master of

linguistic agility that is comparable to the agility of a rapier fencer?59 What of
Jennifer Low, Those Proud Titles Thou (ast Won: Sovereignty, Power, and Combat in
Shakespeare s Second Tetralogy , Comparative Drama, Vol. 34, No. 3, Fall 2000, pp. 269-290.

59

18
(otspur, (al s opponent does he make a religion of chivalric virtues ,60 or is he

more like an early-modern [rapier] duellist himself?61 The difficulty of

characterising these two ostensibly knightly characters is perhaps best illustrated

by the way Grace Tiffany was able to use (arold E. Toliver s description of

(otspur s vision of honour as an aggressive, individual dream, like those of

romance knights

62

to suggest some likeness between an early-modern duellist and

the (otspur of [ (enry )V] .63 If we are even to hope to understand the

significance of (al s metamorphosis for the Elizabethan audience we must tread

very carefully indeed.

My tentative argument is that the feathered Mercury which stands over the

fallen shapes of both Hotspur and Falstaff in the final act of 1 Henry IV is the ideal
of the English gentleman as he existed at the end of the sixteenth century, forged
from the fiery steel of chivalry and tempered in the graceful water of civility. First, I
will first sketch out the problems created by considering Hal to be wholly chivalric
or wholly civil, concluding with evidence suggesting (al s characterisation as a

gentleman of mixed heritage. Second, I will argue that Hotspur is constructed as

(al s flawed mirror, a demonstration of the superiority of the contemporary

Elizabethan gentleman over the antiquated knight. Third, I will identify Falstaff
with both the plebeian tradition of sword-and-buckler fence and the civil code of
conduct that was adopted (and abused) by men across the breadth of the
Elizabethan social spectrum. Finally, I will slot these pieces together to illustrate

(arold E. Toliver, Falstaff, the Prince, and the (istory Play , Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1,
Winter 1965, p. 63-80.
61 Grace Tiffany, Rank, )nsults, and Weaponry in Shakespeare s Second Tetralogy , Papers on
Language & Literature, Vol. 47, No. 3, Summer 2011, pp. 295-317.
62 Toliver, Falstaff, the Prince, and the (istory Play , p.
, my italics.
63 Tiffany, Rank, )nsults, and Weaponry, p.
, my italics.
60

19
how 1 Henry IV casts the shadow of a physically absent rapier over its
representations of the broadsword in order to create a new symbol for the English
gentleman and how this complicates Shakespeare s symbolic evaluation of the
sword in Elizabethan society.

Regardless of his final nature, it is generally agreed that Hal is portrayed as a

truant from chivalry 1 Henry IV 5.1.95) within the first half of the play. He

engages with Falstaff in very un-chivalric word games, exchanging insults with the
corpulent knight as they casually give one another the lie. To give the lie to

another man was, quite simply, to call him a liar, usually because he has made
some kind of remark that the giver of the lie thought was insulting or untrue. There
were many variations upon the lie such as Lies certaine , conditionall Lyes ,
and the Lye in general but in most cases, being given the lie was considered

ground for a duel.64 Saviolo explains that this is because it is thought that everie

man is honest, just, and honourable untill the contrarie bee proved.

65

Calling

another man a liar when both men were presumed honest until the contrary was
proved created an impasse, and threatened both men s status as gentlemen.66 The

fact that Hal and Falstaff so easily give the lie to one another suggests both a

familiarity with and light regard for the code of civil courtesy, as well as indicating
the resilient nature of their friendship.
From Falstaff, Hal learns the kind of rhetorical flexibility that characterised the
civil courtier. Toliver likens this education to the way a morality-play hero is able
to overcome antitypes and absorb their strength ; (al s robbery prank upon
64

Saviolo, His practise, sig. S3v-V1v.

Saviolo, His practise, sig. R4r.
66 Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England, p. 60.
65

20
Falstaff enables him to take the older man s powers of linguistic agility for

himself.67 Shakespeare s audience would likely have identified this flexibility with

the physical agility of the rapier fencer, helped along by a judicious use of analogy
Falstaff derides Hal as a "tailor's yard", a "sheath", a "bowcase" and a "vile
standing-tuck

68

(1 Henry IV 2.4.185-7), all of which double as degrading phallic

puns, while later in Henry V the Archbishop of Canterbury claims (al s tongue can
unloose the Gordion knot of any cause of policy Henry V 1.1.45-8).69

Jennifer Low and Grace Tiffany argue that (al s rhetorical flexibility persists
beyond the first half of 1 Henry IV and that it is (al s mastery of rhetorical
possibility which, corporealised , allows him to defeat the comparatively

inarticulate (otspur, who is speaking thick 2 Henry IV 2.3.24)70 and would

rather hear a brazen candlestick turned / [than listen to] mincing poetry (1

Henry IV 3.1.127-35).71 However, neither Low nor Tiffany is able to account

adequately for the strong chivalric notes that resonate within (al s character in the
second half of the play. )n order to redeem his father s good thought so that he

can be proud to call himself his father s son, (al promises to wear a garment all of

blood / And stain [his] favours in a bloody mask, / Which, washed away, shall

scour [his] shame with it. 1 Henry IV 3.2.130-8) There was, admittedly, a lot of

bleeding involved in a civil duel, probably enough to wear a garment of it, but
67

Toliver, Falstaff, the Prince, and the History Play, pp. 70-74.
A tuck is the anglicised version of the estoc, a stiff and often edgeless thrusting sword of the
later medieval period. This weapon was to a certain extent similar in appearance and use to the
rapier, but adapted for a wholly different environment.
69 Camillo Agrippa's 1553 Treatise on the Science of Arms with Philosophical Dialogue, includes
several instructions for the rapier fencer to void his opponent's strike by pivoting away from the
blade and delivering a return thrust while leaning backwards and looking in the opposite direction
- an impressive feat of gymnastics as well as arms, and indicative of the kind of flexibility Hal's
rhetoric skill is being compared to. See Camillo, Agrippa, Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise, ed. and
trans. Ken Mondschein, New York: Ithaca Press, 2009.
70
William Shakespeare, The Second Part of (enry the Fourth , Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Bate,
Eric Rasmussen, Royal Shakespeare Company, Hampshire: Macmillian, 2008.
71 Low, Those Proud Titles, pp. 284-5; Tiffany, Rank, Insults, and Weaponry, pp. 301-3.

68

21
(al s battlefield injury 1 Henry IV 5.3.1-

and the earlier image of (otspur dry

with rage and extreme toil, / Breathless and faint, leaning upon [his] sword /

with [his] wounds being cold 1 Henry IV 1.3.30-54) suggests a more martial bent
for (al s thoughts. The idea that (al is grounded in the mire of tavern dirt a

metaphoric infantryman who is opposed to (otspur, prince of honor, [who] is a

horseman, a soldier on horseback, a chevalier ,72 holds true for the first half of the

play, but by the time we reach the Shrewsbury battlefield, Hal has undergone a
radical transformation:
HOTSPUR:

Where is his son,

The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales,

And his comrades that daffed the world aside
And bid it pass?
VERNON:

All furnished, all in arms

) saw young (arry with his beaver on,

His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly armed,

Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat,
As if an angel dropped down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.
(1 Henry IV, 4.1.98-115)73

72

Low, Those Proud Titles, pp. 281-2.

A beaver , or bevor, is a piece of armour protecting part of the upper chest, the throat, and the
lower part of the face; however, Shakespeare may have followed other sixteenth-century authors in
confusing it with the visor of a helmet. This would explain how, in Hamlet, Horatio was able to see
Old (amlet s face because the ghost wore his beaver up. Hamlet 1.2.238) The cuisses are plate
armour for the thighs.
73

22
It is as if Hal has become an image of the very man he sought to fight. Nor is this a
sudden about-face, for even as (al mocked (otspur as he that kills me some six or

seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife Fie
upon this quiet life! ) want work

1 Henry IV 2.4.80-2), he hints at their eventual

similarity: ) am not yet of Percy s mind 1 Henry IV 2.4.80), he says, with its silent
corollary of But ) may yet be . )t is tempting to argue that perhaps this is another

example of (al employing his ability to pick up another s language in one quarter
of an hour 1 Henry IV 2.4.4-22) in this case, the speech, mannerisms and

fashion that comprise the language of (otspur s chivalric heritage - but then we

would have to ask ourselves why Hal maintains this faade even after he believes
himself to be alone on the Shrewsbury battlefield, believing both Hotspur and
Falstaff dead yet lamenting that the earth that bears [(otspur] dead / Bears not

alive so stout a gentleman (1 Henry IV 5.3.93-4). Instead, it appears that the nature

which he allowed base contagious clouds / To smother up 1 Henry IV 1.2.132-

was chivalric, part of the heritage of being the Prince of Wales. (al s challenge

to (otspur to engage in single combat in order to save the blood on either side 1
Henry IV 5.1.100) is magnanimous and issued in accordance with the chivalric

pattern; Charles Edelman remarks that this challenge imitated the challenges of
John Lydgate s Troy Book and Caxton s translation of Raoul Lefevre s The Recuyell

of the Historyes of Troy, and that in pulling from these works [Shakespeare] draws

a parallel between Hal and another of the great chivalric models, perhaps the
greatest in that medieval chivalry looked to Troy for exemplars of the code.
(owever, we should be wary of putting too much of an emphasis on (al s

74

newfound chivalric heritage as there is evidence within the play to suggest that Hal
74

Edelman, Brawl Ridiculous, pp. 98-100.

23
retains the rhetorical flexibility learnt from Falstaff even after his reformation 1

Henry IV 1.3.150). (al maintains a princely tongue 1 Henry IV 5.2.58) throughout

the rest of the play, prompting Vernon to remark of (al s challenge that he never

in [his] life / Did hear a challenge urged more modestly. 1 Henry IV 5.2.53-4) Hal
uses this tongue to lash Hotspur before their fight at Shrewsbury until the latter
can no longer brook [the former s] vanities 1 Henry IV 5.3.75) and engages him

in armed combat. The classical art of rhetoric was considered to be a form of battle
often considered in terms of actual combat; in Cicero s De Oratore, Crassus tells his

companions Sulpicius and Cotta that

there is to my mind no more excellent thing than the power, by means of

oratory, to get hold on assemblies of men, win their good will, direct their

inclinations wherever the speaker wishes, or divert them from whatever he

wishes [For what] is so indispensable as to have always in your grasp

weapons wherewith you can defend yourself, or challenge the wicked man,
or when provoked take your revenge?

75

If we are to imagine, as the Elizabethans did, rhetoric to be a form of combat, then

the encounter between Hal and Hotspur at Shrewsbury contains not one, but two
combats one verbal, one physical. The verbal combat between Hal and Hotspur
begins as soon as they lay eyes on one another:
Enter Hotspur

75

HOTSPUR:

If I mistake not, thou art Harry Monmouth.

HAL:

Thou speak st as if ) would deny my name.

Cicero, De Oratore, trans. E. W. Sutton, 2 vols., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967, vol. 1,
viii.30-32.

24
HOTSPUR:

My name is Harry Percy.

HAL:

Why, then I see

A very valiant rebel of that name.
(1 Henry IV 5.3.59-63)

Hotspur opens the exchange by identifying his opponent and himself even though
the two men had met previously and would likely have had no problem
recognising one another; in Richard II, Hotspur says
My lord, some two days since I saw the Prince
And told him of those triumphs held at Oxford.
(Richard II 5.3.13-14)
(otspur s twofold identification appears to be more formal than practical,

reminiscent of Malory s tournaments with their closed helms that conceal the

combatant s identity.76 )f we are to take a hint from (al s Thou speak st as if )

would deny my name then (otspur s manner may have suggested that (al ought
to be ashamed at his identification, alluding to (al s reputation as a truant from
chivalry . Whether (otspur actually assumed such a manner or not is open to

speculation. The real purpose behind (al s interjection is to set-up the cutting
remark that follows Why, then ) see / A very valiant rebel of the name. (al

turns the tables on Hotspur by suggesting that it is he who ought to feel ashamed
of his past; through his rebellion, it is (otspur who is now a truant from chivalry .
The twofold nature of the Shrewsbury combat serves to illustrate (al s position as
an English gentleman blending chivalry and civility, sword and rapier. The

76

Edelman, Brawl Ridiculous, pp. 109-111.

25
broadsword which Hal carries through the play is, alone, insufficient as a symbol of
the new gentry when contrasted with a monument of the old knightly order like
Hotspur. In order to update the broadsword for the sixteenth century, Shakespeare
weaves in allusions to the duel with rapiers which functioned as a metaphor for
the linguistic flexibility that formed such a large part of the courteous civil life.
Although the spectre of anachronism flirts around the edges of this depiction of the
sword, interpretations of the sword as heavy and rigid , inferior to the more

modern military opponent, rapierlike and flexible, have more in common with the
Victorian perception of the regressive history of the sword than the complex
relationship of the sword to Elizabethan society. 77
That said, to what extent can we actually consider (otspur to be a monument of

the old knightly order ? Despite my bald assertion, (otspur s identity as a chivalric
knight has been contended on two grounds.78 The first is the nature of the

Shrewsbury combat itself; if we accept that Bolingbroke denied consent to single

combat between Hal and Hotspur79 then it is possible to argue that this combat had
more in common with a Renaissance duel with rapiers than a knightly challenge.
The second is the question of honour; Shakespeare s audience would have likely

drawn a parallel between (otspur s aggressive, individual dream of honour and

the very individual concern of the Renaissance duellist, which may compromise

the characterisation of Hotspur as a chivalric knight. 80 Both of these contentions

have their merits, but are better explained by an exploration of the chivalric
tradition than an appeal to the duellist s code.
Tiffany, Rank, )nsults, and Weaponry, p.
.
Tiffany, Rank, )nsults, and Weaponry , p.
-3.
79 Edelman, Brawl Ridiculous, pp.102-3.
80 Toliver, Falstaff, the Prince, and the (istory Play , p.

77

78

26
Edelman argues that Bolingbroke forbids (al s challenge to single combat, noting
that the Shakespearean albeit is much closer to the modern however than
although :

And, Prince of Wales, so dare we venture thee,

Albeit considerations infinite
Do make against it.
(1 Henry IV 5.1.102-4)
Further, he notes that there is no break in Bolingbroke s thought as he continues
No, good Worcester, no 1 Henry IV 5.1.105). The single combat which Hal

proposes is a substitute for open battle, to save the blood on either side

1 Henry

IV 5.1.100); if the combat were to go ahead, then the rebellion would have
occurred in a formal sense. This would be incongruous with Bolingbroke s offer of

amnesty, and explains why he does not allow the combat to continue. However, we
should be careful of assuming that this means that the combat bespeaks the more
narrow and personal rivalry that was characteristic of the early modern duel.

81

duel was defined less by personal rivalry and more by its role within civil courtesy
as a formal refutation of an insult through a display of arms, and could in fact occur
between complete strangers. Prior to the verbal sparring at Shrewsbury itself no
insult had passed between Hal and Hotspur. Hotspur could have construed the
label of valiant rebel as an insult, but instead let the remark slip either through
choice or an inability to recognise the slight. Without (perceived) insult, the lie

could not be given, but the combat proceeds nonetheless. It would seem difficult,

81

Tiffany, Rank, )nsults, and Weaponry , p.

27
therefore, to argue that the Shrewsbury combat occurred within the context of a
Renaissance duel.
Likewise, (otspur s concern for honour bears some resemblance to a civil duellist,

but any similarities are outweighed by the differences. Where chivalric honour was
concerned with who had the greatest name in arms 1 Henry IV 5.3.62), civil

honour dealt with the right to have such a name at all. A gentleman s honour was
not something which could be won because man bringeth it from his mother s

wombe ; a man could only preserve it unspotted, except through some greevous
offence or suspition, he loose[s] this good opinion.

82

This is what Frank

(enderson Stewart calls horizontal honour , the gentleman s right to respect

among his peers; in other words, his reputation. 83 In this regard, the duellist s

conception of honour seems incompatible with (otspur s acquisitive desire for

glory, his need to pluck up drowned honour by the locks (1 Henry IV 1.3.208).

Even if we were to grant a resemblance between (otspur s individuality and the

individuality of the duellist, asserting that this individualism is a Renaissance

anachronism within a feudal era combat puts the horse before the cart, so to speak.
The radical individualism which flavoured the Renaissance English conception of
honour was derived from the Elizabethan fascination with late medieval knighterrantry.84 In other words, Hotspur does not so much resemble an early-modern
duellist as he does anticipate one; he is still very much a knight.
Yet the Shrewsbury combat nevertheless contains a profoundly tragic and
potentially anti-chivalric zero-sum factor. In chivalric romances, a kind of

82

Annibale Romei, The courtiers academie, trans. J[ohn] K[epers], London, 1598, pp. 78-9.
Frank Henderston Stewart, Honor, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 54.
84 Ferguson, The Chivalric Tradition in Renaissance England, pp. 31-6.
83

28
gregarious competition prevails which permits the winning of honour without
taking it from someone else. Why, then, does Hotspur insist on the acquisitive act
of pluck[ing] bright honour from the pale-faced moon (1 Henry IV 1.3.205)? The

answer lies within an earlier scene in the play where Hotspur, Glendower,

Mortimer, and Worcester are dividing up England amongst themselves on a map.

When an argument between Hotspur and Glendower erupts over the impact of the
river Trent upon their lands, Hotspur exclaims
)'ll give thrice so much land

To any well-deserving friend;

But in the way of bargain, mark ye me,

I'll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.
(1 Henry IV 3.1.137-40)
It is Hotspur's unwillingness to "bargain" or give a hair's leeway to his adversaries
which forces the zero-sum nature of the Shrewsbury combat - since Hotspur will
not share his honour, Hal is forced to take it with Hotspur's life. This explains (in
part) why Hal tells dead Hotspur, "If thou wert sensible of courtesy, / I should not
make so great a show of zeal"; (1 Henry IV 5.3.95-6) if Hotspur had been more
courteous towards his adversaries, Hal may have been able to spare his life.
Hotspur's mores and actions represent more than mere selfishness, however;
within the panoply of chivalric virtues, they represent a lack of magnanimity the
complex virtue inseparable from the service to the common good which formed
the overriding virtue of the knight-errant.85

85

See Margaret Greaves, The Blazon of Honor, London: Methuen & Co, 1964, p. 18.

29
The primary vector for the transmission of chivalric values to Elizabethan society
was the figure of the knight-errant, the lonely knight who wandered the
countryside in search of adventure. The promise of personal justice and individual
responsibility inherent in the knight-errant s travels must have proved alluring to
an England wracked by civil wars. 86 At the very least it served to fire the

imagination of Sir Thomas Malory, whose knights are a close fit in the mould of the
knight-errant. Sir Ector s eulogy for Lancelot provides a useful outline of the

importance of individualism, magnanimity and love for the knight-errant:

Ah Launcelot, thou were head of all Christian knights thou were never

matched of earthly knight s hand. And thou were the courteoust knight that
ever bore shield. And thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever
bestrad horse. And thou were the truest lover of a sinful man that ever
loved woman. And thou were the kindest man that ever struck with sword.
And thou were the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights.
And thou were the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among
ladies. And thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put
spear in the rest.87
Hotspur lacks not only the virtue of magnanimity, but his duty to love ladies as
well. We are given a singularly penetrating look into Hotspur s mind when he is

alone with his wife, Kate, in the second act. Kate questions Hotspur as to why she
has this fortnight been / A banished woman from [her] (arry s bed 1 Henry IV

2.3.26- , confessing that she is fearful when she hears him murmur tales of iron

86

Ferguson, The Chivalric Tradition in Renaissance England, pp. 31-36.

Sir Thomas Malory, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugene Vinaver, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1947, pp. 1259.
87

30
wars 1 Henry IV 2.3.36) that bestir his sleep. Hotspur evades the question, and

when pressed for a direct answer he loses his temper:

Away, you trifler! Love? I love thee not.
I care not for thee, Kate. This is no world
To play with mammets and to tilt with lips.

We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns,

And pass them current too.

(1 Henry IV 2.3.80-4)

Only when (otspur is a-horseback will he swear / [to] love [Kate] infinitely ,

echoing in negative Sir Ector s praise that Launcelot was the truest friend to [his]

love that ever bestrad horse ; only through war and the pursuit of glory can

(otspur s passions be stirred 1 Henry IV 2.3.90-2). From this perspective, Hotspur

is a deeply flawed knight. He values courage and prowess as the guarantors of

justice and honour and possesses the knight-errant's radical individualism, but he
lacks magnanimity and an idealisation of love. Because of his own shortcomings,
Hotspur serves as a mirror to the deeply flawed prince of the first half of the play.
Where the two men - Hal and Hotspur - diverge is in their education. Hal learns
from the mock-schoolroom of the tavern to converse with his fellow man and to
wield language and wit with rapierlike agility, which he adds to his concealed
chivalric virtues to emerge as a portrait of the English gentleman. Despite his
blemish of speaking thick , (otspur is given the opportunity to receive this same

education and undergo this same transformation. Hotspur's companions

Glendower, Mortimer and Worcester recognize that Hotspur is "not tempered to

attend" (1 Henry IV 1.3.241) to the "secret book" (1 Henry IV 1.3.191) of linguistic

31
subterfuge, and attempt to educate him in the art of rhetorical and intellectual
flexibility that Falstaff is busy imparting to Hal. They tell him that his impetuosity
may give him "greatness, courage, blood", but without temperance it leads to
"harsh rage, / Defect of manners, want of government, / Pride, haughtiness,
opinion and disdain", to which Hotspur flippantly replies "Well I am schooled.
Good manners be your speed!" (1 Henry IV 3.1.179-90)
)n acknowledging (otspur s potential to be as heroic as (al, we transform him

from a caricature of a warlike knight to a tragic hero flawed by his hot temper and
brash manner. This is consistent with the positive nostalgia with which earlymodern England viewed its chivalric heritage - not as a remnant from a brutal,
warlike time dominated by the kind of duelling rogues that would continue to strut
the London streets into the sixteenth century, but as a time of great men who sadly
lacked the kind of 'roundness' that defined early-modern knights like Sidney. This
roundness is the other part of the courtesy that (al wished (otspur to be
sensible of. The worthy temper 1 Henry IV 5. .

of (otspur s sword comes

not from civil courtesy, but from battle; where Hal shifts attention away from the
sword by promising to wear a garment all of blood (1 Henry IV 3.2.136), Hotspur

intend[s] to stain [his sword] / With the best blood that [he] can meet (1 Henry IV

5.2.95-7). For Hotspur, the sword becomes a complete emblem of his incomplete
chivalry.
)n contrast to the heroic image of (otspur dry with rage and extreme toil, /
Breathless and faint, leaning on [his] sword (1 Henry IV 1.3.32-3) upon the

battlefield of (olmedon, we are given the mundane ruin of Falstaff s buckler cut
through and through, [his] sword hacked like a hand-saw 1 Henry IV 2.4.124-

32
129). Falstaff s sword was physically indistinguishable from (otspur s sword -

battle damage and cosmetic differences aside - but the addition of the buckler

inverted the sword s symbolic value, transforming it from a knight s aristocratic

emblem to a plebeian badge. The lower class associations of the sword and buckler
makes intelligible (otspur s taunting characterisation of pre-reformation Hal as
that same sword-and-buckler Prince of Wales 1 Henry IV 1.3.236) by linking

him, and Falstaff, to the tradition of ruffians, vagabonds, and serving-men who had
constituted the symbolic underclass of the sword during the medieval period.
These serving-men had a reputation for thievery, violence, and mischief; in 1547, a
proclamation was issue that
... commandeth that no serving man nor apprentice of any other person,
whatsoever he or they be, shall use hereafter such insolence and evil
demeanor towards priests, as reviling, tossing of them, taking violently their
caps and tippets from them without just title or cause, not otherwise to use
them than as becometh the King s most loving subjects one to do toward
another...88

The antics of these serving-men would have provided Shakespeare s audience an

immediately recognisable parallel to Falstaff. Despite his noble birth, this

horseback-breaker 1 Henry IV 2.4.184) is procured a charge of foot and

identified with the same (1 Henry IV 3.1.399-404), becoming essentially pedestrian

in contrast to (al s noble horsemanship 1 Henry IV . .

and (otspur s

desire to meet his opponent hot horse to horse (1 Henry IV 4.1.127). As Mistress

Quickly put it, setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave (1 Henry IV 3.3.86).
88

Tudor Royal Proclamations, vol. 1, no. 292.

33
That (al should learn civil conversation from a man who is gross as a mountain,
open, palpable 1 Henry IV 2.4.171-3) must seem strange unless we understand

that civil courtesy was not a code that unilaterally promoted peaceable relations
between gentlemen; the flexibility of civil conversation could in fact be twisted to
uncivil ends. Vincentio Saviolo, in the second part of His Practise which dealt with

the matter of Honor and honorable quarrels , describes the manner of certaine
undiscreet men who either stand or go in streets, so to stare and looke men

passing by them in the fact which breedeth such an offence unto some men so
marked, that they cannot take it in good part . (aving caused offence, these

quarrelsome men would then fan the flames of insult through speech, in one case
claiming to look because they had eies , provoking the other men to reply [that]
is the crowes fault, in that they have not picked them out.

89

Speech was accorded a

central role in civil conduct, but its strict prohibitions (and the linguistic agility
required to observe them) provided broad scope for insult. The opportunity for
insult and injury raised by the code of civil conduct was in fact so great that some
writers claimed civil courtesy actually made for more quarrels. 90 The peculiar
blend of the medieval and Renaissance in 1 Henry IV allows Shakespeare to graft
the association of the sword and buckler with discourteous civility onto the
medieval pattern of the sword and buckler as a symbol of the common man in the
same way that the rapier is grafted onto the sword alone for Hal.
The swords of Hal, Hotspur, and Falstaff in 1 Henry IV may be physically similar,
but they are symbolically disparate. (al s victory over the sum of his chivalric and
(un)civil parts is reflected in the fusion of the symbolic values of his chivalric

89
90

Saviolo, His practise, sig. P3v-P4v.

Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England, pp. 114-131.

34
sword with the rhetorical flexibility of the civil rapier, which is contrasted with the
pure symbols of the sword alone and the sword-and-buckler. There are four

different depictions of swords within the play. The first is the sword alone, which
functions as a symbol of (otspur s martial chivalry. The second is the rapier, which
appears only through allusions to the duel with rapiers but represents the

courteous aims of flexible, civil speech that Hal attains upon his reformation. The
third is the Renaissance tradition of the sword and buckler, which is opposed to
the rapier and represents the discourteous incivility of sixteenth-century men,
both gentle and common. The fourth and final is the medieval tradition of the
sword and buckler, which is opposed to the tradition of the sword alone and
represents the medieval commoner s unchivalric tendency for peacetime brawls
and mischief. The shadow of the rapier does not oppose the sword alone but

completes it, creating a hybrid symbol to match (al s hybrid character as the

feathered Mercury (1 Henry IV 4.1.111) who is opposed to the purely chivalric

Mars in swaddling clothes 1 Henry IV 3.2.115).

35

The Envenomed Point of the

Rapier in Hamlet
LAERTES:

) will do t,

And for that purpose ) ll anoint my sword.

I bought an unction of a mountebank

So mortal I but dipped a knife in it,

Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare

Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratched withal: ) ll touch my point

With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly,

It may be death.

(Hamlet 4.6.121-30)
Laertes use of the word gall to indicate a physical injury evokes the close

relationship between physical and verbal injury within the fashionable tradition of
civil courtesy that surrounded the rapier. An injury could be offered by words or

by deeds , but to the civil gentleman it was the word which did the greater harm.91
Being called a liar was considered so severe that the only way to repel the blemish

on the questioned gentleman s honour was to challenge the offending gentleman to

a duel. The particular sensitivity of the civil-minded translated to an association of
the rapier with the epidemic of deaths it inflicted in duels across Europe, which
91

[Anon], The booke of honor and armes, London, 1590, B2r.

36
resonates in the depiction of the rapier in Hamlet. In spite of the growing hostility
of official authorities to the duel, the rapier was considered to be an essential
accessory and emblem of the contemporary gentleman. The centre-staging of the
rapier in Hamlet displaces the broadsword from its own role as a symbol of the
armigerous class by invoking contemporary debates over the efficacy of the
broadsword as a practical weapon.
English fashions at the broad turn of the seventeenth century were notoriously
fickle, and sought their inspiration from a procession of foreign courts. Spanish,
French, and Italian costumes adorned the public body in turn, changing so fast that
the physician Andrew Bourd found himself naked with indecision;
I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here,
Musing in my mind what garment I shall wear,
For now I will wear this, now I will wear that,
Now I will wear I can not tell what:
All new fashions be pleasant to me,
) will have them whether ) thrive or thee92

These three capitols of fashion Spain, France, and Italy were also the home of
the three fencing traditions that most influenced the exercise of the rapier in

England. The rapier was in fact as much a fashion accessory as a weapon of self
defence, and it was commonly believed that he was held the greatest gallant, that

92

Abraham Mills, The Literature and the Literary Men of Great Britain and Ireland, 2 vols. New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1870, Vol. 1, p.94. See also Lewis Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England,
New York: Columbia University Press, 1902, pp. 79-80.

37
had the deepest Ruffe, and longest Rapier .93 Thus Osric, in describing the six
French rapiers and poniards , took pains to emphasise that [t]hree of the

carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very responsive to the hilts, most delicate
carriages, and of liberal conceit. Hamlet 5.2.110-3)
Even the method of fencing with the rapier was subject to the whims of fashion.
George Silver bitterly observed that Fencing in this new fangled age, is like our

fashions, everie daye a change, resembling the Camelion, who altereth himself into
all colours save white; so Fencing changeth into all wards save the right.

94

Despite

this inherent mutability, the three schools of fencing were united by their use of
the rapier in civil conflicts; Silver s emphasis on the Italian Teachers of Offence

should be read only as an idiosyncrasy of his professional rivalry with Vincentio

and Jeronimo Saviolo, and his comments taken as critical of the rapier in all its
contexts.95

When Silver thus condemned the )talian masters for teaching Offence, not

Defence , he resonated with the powerful association of the French rapier with

death in Hamlet.96 Laertes, like his rapier, is constructed as French. His first words
on stage are a request for leave and favour to return to France , where his

thoughts and wishes bend (Hamlet 1.2.51-7). His skill at fence is likewise praised

by a Norman (Hamlet 4.6.62-94), and he wagers six French rapiers with their
carriages upon his duel with (amlet Hamlet 4.6.121-30).

93

John Stow, Annals or a Generall Chronicle of England. Begun by John Stow: Continued and
Augmented with matters Foraigne and Domestique, Ancient and Moderne, unto the end of this present
year, 1631. By Edmund Howes. Gent. London, 1637, p. 869.
94 Silver, The Works of George Silver, sig. A3r.
95 Silver, The Works of George Silver, sig. B1r.
96 Silver, The Works of George Silver, sig. A5r.

38
At the time Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, French fashions were in the ascendancy,
their influence so powerful that by 1614 Sir Francis Bacon was lead to
(mistakenly) assert that it was from France that the tradition of the duel with
rapiers seemeth chiefely to have flowne.

97

The duel had reached a particularly

vicious intensity in France by this time, with an estimated total of 6,000 to 10,000
deaths, or an average of 350 a year, under the reign of Henri IV (1553-1610).
Assuming a conservative estimate that only half of these duels were fought
between gentlemen, from a population of 100,000 gentlemen in France in 1560
Stuart Carroll has calculated an approximate of 175 deaths per 100,000 gentlemen
and puts this into context by comparison with the highest murder rate in the world
in the year 2000, which was just over 50 deaths per 100,000 in South Africa.98
The epidemic of French duelling-related deaths in the years leading up to 1600
lends support to the reading of the mysterious Norman s name according to the

Second Quarto s spelling of Lamord, with its punning hint upon la mort, or death .
This French punning is echoed in the English pun on Norman in the next scene;

What man dost thou dig it for? asks (amlet, and the gravedigger replies For no

man, sir. Hamlet 5.1.98-

The phrase Upon my life, Lamord Hamlet 4.6.81)

also parallels (oratio s discussion of Old (amlet s ghost:

Let us impart what we have seen tonight
Unto young Hamlet; for upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.

(Hamlet 1.1.162-4; my italics)

97

Bacon, The Charge Touching Duells, p. 25

Stuart Carroll, Blood and Violence in Early Modern France, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006,
pp. 257-61.
98

39
)n discussing the identity of Lamord, Margaret Fergusson has argued that the

spirit of Death, whether in the ghostly figure of Old Hamlet or in the figure of

Lamord, sits upon the lives of all the characters in the play.

99

I wish to extend

Fergusson s argument by suggesting that one of the primary manifestations of this

spirit is the murderous reputation of the rapier.

The efficiency of the duel with rapiers in ending another man s life was rarely

questioned in Shakespeare s day. Even Silver recognised the potential for the

rapier to allow men to butcher one another here at home in peace , 100 but claimed
this was not by reason of their dangerous thrusts, nor cunningnesse of that
)talienated fight, but in the length and unweildinesse thereof.

101

The idea that the

rapier was too focussed on offence was frequently discussed by those in favour of
controlling or abolishing the duel, and received a mention in the 1562
proclamation Enforcing Statutes of Apparel :

an usage has crept in, contrary to former orders, of wearing of long

swords and rapiers, sharpened in such sort as many appear the usage of
them can not tend to defense, which ought to be the very meaning of
wearing of weapons in times of peace, but to murder and evident death,
when the same shall be occupied102

The former orders which the proclamation alludes to are, ironically, likely to be

the troublesome serving-men with their swords and bucklers. There is some truth
to Lawrence Stone s condescending assertion that the sword and buckler allowed
Margaret Fergusson, (amlet: Letters and Spirits , in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, eds.
Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman, Metheun: New York and London, 1985, pp. 300-304.
100 Silver, The Works of George Silver, sig. A5r.
101 Silver, The Works of George Silver, sig. C1r.
102 Tudor Royal Proclamations, no. 493.

99

40
the maximum muscular effort and the most spectacular show of violence with the
minimum threat to life and limb ;103 while Stow tells us that great mobs of serving-

men clashed at Ruffian s (all every weekend with a great clattering and swashing
of bucklers, there were surprisingly few deaths from these brawls.

This outcome was not an accidental by-product of an ineffective combination of

weapons, but the intentional product of an English tradition which discouraged
civil combats to the death. True skill did not involve slaying the opponent, but
demonstrating one s valour and skill; as Silver argued, yf both have the full

perfection of true fight, then the one will not be able to hurt the other at what
perfyt weapon so ever .104
This theme was given a historical treatment by Lodowick Bryskett, the author of A
Discourse of civill life (1606). Bryskett argues that auncient tradition held that

honour should be proved through competition with one s rival against common

foes, and that the direct confrontation of the duel of honour was a recent invention:
For in histories it is not to be found, that for revenge of injury, for want of

proofes, for points of honour, or for any such like causes, this wicked and

unlawfull kinde of fight, was ever granted or allowed in auncient time. For
when any difference or controversie fell out among men of honor which
might concerne their credit and reputation for matter of valor, they never
tried the quarrel by combat betweene themselves, but strove to shew which

103

Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, p. 242.

George Silver, The Works of George Silver, Sig.L3r. See also Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern
England, pp. 95-6.
104

41
of them was most worthy honor, by making their valour well knowne in
fight against their common enemies

105

Although many modern authors have seen the duel as the evolution of a medieval
English tradition or as chivalric honour gone rotten , contemporary authors like
Bryskett explicitly contrasted the duel with English traditions like the trial by

combat.106 Unlike the trial by combat, which was introduced to England with the
Norman Conquest in 1066 and naturalised shortly thereafter, the duel was
considered to be a foreign phenomenon; according to Thomas Churchyard, writing
in

, it scarcely was known, till our youth beganne to travel straunge

Countreys, and so brought home strange manners.

107

For the fashionable

duellists, the foreignness of the duel only added to its appeal; but for the selfproclaimed English patriots, it went hand-in-hand with its murderous tendencies:
O )talie, the Academie of manslaughter, the sporting place of murther, the

Apothecary-shop of poison for all Nations: how many kind of weapons hast
thou invented for malice?

108

Laertes thus embodies the foreign, murderous shadow of the duellist in England.
(is thoughts and wishes bend to France Hamlet 1.2.51-7), where Death himself

resides and offers a masterly report of his skill with the rapier (Hamlet 4.6.85-

94). Though satisfied in nature , he is driven to slay (amlet by honour s demand

to keep [his] name ungored (Hamlet 5.2.174-82). The contagion which Laertes
105

Lodowick Bryskett, A discourse of civill life containing the ethike part of morall philosophie. Fit for
the instructing of a gentleman in the course of a vertuous life, London, 1606, pp. 66-8.
106 Sydney Anglo, Chivalry in the Renaissance, Woodbridge: Boydel Press, 1990, p.xiii. See Peltonen,
The Duel in Early Modern England, pp. 1-16, for an overview of the historiography.
107 Thomas Churchyard, Churchyards Challenge, London, 1593, p. 59.
108 Thomas Nashe, The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. Ronald B. McKerrow, 5 vols., London: Sidgwick
and Jackson, 1988, vol. 1, p. 186.

42
uses to anoint [his] sword is the drive to murder that lies behind the French

epidemic of the duel which plagues Shakespeare s England (Hamlet 4.6.121-30).

Laertes may be the darling of the fencing world, but it is Hamlet who slays
Polonius, Laertes, and Claudius with the bare bodkin Hamlet 3.1.82) that, in

turn, ends his own life. The morbid associations of the rapier inform (amlet s use

of the rapier, but they do not define his character in the way they do Laertes . ) will
suggest that (amlet s continual practice with the rapier since Act of the play
(Hamlet 5.2.142-4) represents the growth of the murderous revenge which

consumes him and overthrow[s] [t]h expectancy and rose of the fair state of

England (Hamlet 3.1.148-159).

Laertes departure coincides almost exactly with the first stirrings of revenge in

the book and volume of (amlet s brain (Hamlet 1.5.97-118). Save for Polonius

brief advice on love to Ophelia, the play moves directly from Laertes departure to
the introduction of the ghost and the revelation of Old (amlet s foul and most

unnatural murder (Hamlet 1.5.29). In the final scene of the play, we learn that

Laertes departure to France coincided not only with Old (amlet s revelation, but
young (amlet s practice with the rapier; speaking of the upcoming passes
between Hamlet and Laertes, Horatio cautions the former of the odds:
HORATIO:

You will lose this wager, my lord.

HAMLET:

I do not think so: since [Laertes] went into France, I have

been in continual practice; I shall win at the odds.

43
Revenge and the rapier are sown in the same field, but they share more than just
common roots; they are entwined in such a way that as one grows, so does the
other.
Hamlet is associated with the rapier five times over the course of the play. The first
time is when he asks Horatio and Marcellus to swear on his sword hic et ubique,
here and everywhere:
Come hither, gentlemen,
And lay your hands again upon my sword:
Never to speak of this that you have heard,
Swear by my sword.
(Hamlet 1.5.175-8)
The chivalric tradition of swearing upon the sword is (amlet s thematic starting
point. (ere, he is still of noble mind ; Laertes has only departed for France two

scenes earlier (Hamlet 1.3.85-91), and he has not yet been in practice of either
revenge or the rapier for very long. Swearing upon the sword lays on (amlet s

rapier the symbolic trappings of chivalry s association with virtue and justice and
provides the audience a glimpse of the height from which Hamlet is to fall.

The next four connections of the rapier with (amlet chart (amlet s gradual decline
into murderous revenge. The next time Hamlet draws his sword, he has found

Claudius at prayer. Although he has the opportunity to slay his uncle, he is able to
restrain himself, albeit for reasons that are less than noble; Up, sword, and know
thou a more horrid hent (Hamlet 3.4.91). The third time Hamlet draws he

commits a rash and bloody deed , slaying Polonius by accident; ) took thee for

44
thy better, says (amlet, his mind on Claudius Hamlet 3.4.27-43). The fourth time,
Hamlet slays Laertes by accident as well his exclamation, The point envenomed
too! Hamlet 5.2.266) indicating surprise that the blade was poisoned), but in

anger this time; he is incensed with Laertes Hamlet 5.2.245). Finally, Hamlet

murders the defenceless Claudius with full knowledge of his actions; venom, to
thy work Follow my mother. Hamlet 5.2.266-72)

These five connections chart (amlet s continual decline into the spiral of

murderous revenge which correlates with his continual practice at the rapier.
From the chivalric act of swearing on the sword, to his self-restraint from

committing murder in the church, to the accidental murder of the innocent

bystander Polonius, to the accidental murder of Laertes while enraged, to the
outright murder of Claudius, the rapier s presence in each situation lends its
association with death to (amlet s downward spiral.

Yet Hamlet is not left to die a murderous villain, but finds redemption through his
associations with England, chivalry, and soldiery in the final moments of the play.
If Laertes is associated with France, then Hamlet is associated with England;
acceding to Claudius request, he departs with speed to England Hamlet
. .

, while his dying words express regret that he cannot live to hear the

news from England (Hamlet 5.2.303). (amlet s university schooling in

Wittenberg, where Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, further associate him with
Protestant England (Hamlet 1.2.160-8).
England itself is constructed as the home of martial chivalry within Hamlet. The
contrast drawn by Shakespeare s contemporaries between the duel with rapiers

and the medieval trial by combat is mapped onto England s traditional rivalry with

45
France, as the strong association of the duel with France elicits an equally strong
association of the medieval trial by combat with England. The trial by combat in
Hamlet is imagined as the special case of the single combat between monarchs,
which we have already seen in 1 Henry IV;109 because medieval warfare was
considered to be the extension of a personal conflict between two rulers, it could
in theory be decided by single combat. This is the context of the combat between

Old (amlet and Old Fortinbras, who fought by a sealed compact, / Well ratified by
law and heraldry Hamlet 1.1.96-7). The pairing of Old Hamlet with Old

Fortinbras is echoed with the return of the younger Fortinbras at the end of the
play, with th ambassadors of England and a warlike volley of gunfire Hamlet

5.2.299-300). The idea of England becomes tied up with the martial-chivalric trial
by combat and opposed to the French association with the duel.
(amlet s association with England and the martial chivalric tradition follows a

pattern of estrangement and reconciliation. Although he is sent to England in the

middle of the play, he never arrives; by this point in the play (amlet s continual
practice with the rapier is well under way, and the tide of murderous revenge

draws him away from the noble aspirations that are indicated by England. It is only
once his revenge is spent and he exchanges forgiveness with Laertes that Hamlet
reaches England although in this case, it is England which comes to him in the

form of the Ambassador. Fortinbras offers the final words of redemption, claiming
that (amlet was likely to have proved most royally if he had been given the

chance to be king (Hamlet 5.2.351-2). The symbol of (amlet s redemption becomes

the soldiers music and the rites of war Hamlet 5.2.333); Hamlet is not just

109

See page 22 of this dissertation.

46
purged of the murderous association of the rapier, he is elevated to the status of
martial hero.
Yet (amlet s breed of martial heroism is clearly very different from the martial

heroism of Hal in 1 Henry IV. Whereas Hal is a practical soldier, literally involved in
the business of warfare, Hamlet is a romantic soldier. The English gentleman of the
sixteenth century, it will be recalled, continued to imagine that his primary
profession was the exercise of arms in the service of his monarch.110 Although the
changing face of warfare had squeezed the gentleman from the battlefield almost
completely, the romanticised ideal of a fighting aristocracy persisted well into the
seventeenth century. It is with this romantic aspect of soldiery that Hamlet is
identified, rather than the more pragmatic soldiery which dominates 1 Henry IV.
Unlike 1 Henry IV, where the shadows and allusions of the rapier tempered without
destroying the symbol of the broadsword, the dominance of the rapier and the
idealisation of the romantic (rather than pragmatic) soldier-gentleman severely
compromises the symbol of the broadsword in Hamlet. The broadsword appears
only twice in the play: the first in the footsteps of Old (amlet s martial stalk , the
second in Aeneas tale to Dido as recited by (amlet and one of the Players.
The ghost of Old (amlet s fair and warlike form Hamlet . .

, [a]rmed at all

points exactly, cap-a-pie Hamlet 1.3.203),111 cuts a figure of martial chivalry that
would not be amiss on the Shrewsbury battlefield in 1 Henry IV. Old Hamlet is a
mature warrior who has found an equilibrium between his temper and his beliefs;
though he is pricked on by a most emulate pride to engage in combat with Old

110
111

Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, p. 57.

Ie. Dressed in armour from head to toe.

47
Fortinbras, their combat proceeds by the letter and order of law and heraldry

(Hamlet 1.1.89-105). Even when roused in an angry parle , he chose to take his

anger out on the ice (Hamlet 1.1.68-73); the whimsical reader may even see in this
an element of the auncient tradition of pursuing a rivalry through competition

with one s common enemies in this case, the elements.112 Old Hamlet is even able

to find time for love and the respectful treatment of women that the knight s

calling requires; he tells his son that his love was that of dignity Hamlet 1.5.53),
and forbids Hamlet from seeking revenge on the Queen despite having every

reason to feel betrayed. Old Hamlet, in this regard, is much closer to the ideal
chivalric knight than 1 Henry IV s hybrid Hal or flawed Hotspur.
As a character constructed in the mould of chivalry, it would not be amiss to expect
Old Hamlet to carry a sword. For centuries, the sword had been a symbol of power
and authority, the very emblem and fount of the knight s virtue and honour.113 The

sword s two edges were associated with truth and falsehood, and its guard formed
the shape of a crucifix.114 It represented respect, dignity, loyalty, courage, and

freedom,115 and was so entwined with a knight s honour that a thirteenth-century

preacher of abstinence could think of no more wounding insult than to tell the
drunk that he hath dronke away his sword, and thereby lost his honour.

116

Given

the efforts to which Shakespeare has gone to present Old Hamlet as an exemplar of

I have interpreted Shakespeare s sleaded pollax to be a reference to a weighted poleaxe, a

hafted chivalric weapon with a beak-like fluke balanced by a small, but heavy, hammer. See Haley,
Gothic Armaments and King (amlet s Poleaxe , pp.
-13.
113 David Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000-1300, London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 145152.
114 R. Ewart Oakeshott, The Sword in the Age of Chivalry, London: Lutterworth Press, 1964, p. 25.
115 Burton, The Book of the Sword, pp. xv-xxvi.
116 As cited in J. D. Aylward, The English Master of Arms, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956, p.
7.
112

48
chivalry, it could be expected that the ghost would carry what was historically the
very symbol of his ideal.
This expectation is upset when Horatio remembers Old Hamlet not with a sword in
hand but with the poleaxe with which he smote the ice. The pollaxe was a weapon
popular in late medieval and Renaissance aristocratic foot tournaments. This
certainly furthers the link between Old Hamlet and the chivalric tradition, but the
poleaxe has nothing of the sword s symbolic strength and timbre; if Shakespeare
was attempting to paint Old Hamlet in as chivalric a light as possible, as I have

argued, then the poleaxe seems a strange choice of weapon. Even stranger is the
truncheon

117

which Old Hamlet carries when he appears in the flesh (so to

speak) to his son (Hamlet 1.2.199-215). This official baton carries overtones of
martial authority which does advance the construction of Old Hamlet as a hero of
martial chivalry, but it once again has nothing of the depth of meaning invested in
the sword.
My suggestion is that Shakespeare chose not to depict Old Hamlet with a sword
because of the symbolic disturbance caused by the dominance of the rapier and
young (amlet s association with romantic soldiery. The Elizabethan gentleman
was caught between the fashion and day-to-day exercise of the rapier and his
romanticised conception of himself as the inheritor of the chivalric tradition
exemplified by the broadsword. The rapier was expressly designed as a civilian
weapon, while the broadsword was adapted for the rigours of the battlefield.
Although the gentleman claimed the profession of military service to be the raison
d'tre for his social class, he was increasingly occupied with civil matters. This
117

Truncheon; staff carried as a symbol of military authority. From William Shakespeare, Complete
Works, p. 1932.

49
tension between romantic ideal and pragmatic reality was exacerbated by the
ongoing conflict between the English and Italian masters at arms and the servingmen s vigorous use of the sword and buckler into the seventeenth century, which
transformed the relationship of the rapier and the broadsword into an issue of

class: the rapier became the symbol of the gentleman, while the sword occupied a
troubled middle ground between gentle and plebeian.
The troubled nature of the broadsword implied by Old (amlet s lack of a sword is

given positive form in the tale of Priam s slaughter recited by (amlet and one of
the Players. The swords here are a far cry from the vessels of virtue found in

romantic literature. Priam, the hero-victim of the short tale, finds his weapon
unruly, more a liability than an asset: we find him
Striking too short at Greeks: his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command.
(Hamlet 2.2.411-3)
His opponent, Pyrrhus, is a figure out of nightmare. Clad in sable arms / Black as
his purpose and gored with the blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons , he

brutally murders the reverend Priam, mincing with his sword [Priam s] limbs
(Hamlet 2.2.382-459).

The malevolent spirit of these swords owes some of its murderous taste to the
shadow of death which hangs upon the whole play, but the way in which they are
used suggests a clumsiness which contrasts with the dexterity of the passes with
rapiers between Hamlet and Laertes. The swords used by Priam and Pyrrhus are,

50
for the most part, largely ineffective as weapons; Priam is depicted as [s]triking
too short at Greeks , while Pyrrhus in rage strikes wide (Hamlet 2.2.411-414).
Even when Pyrrhus ends up hitting his opponent, his strokes have more in
common with the Cylops hammers than a sword Hamlet 2.2.431).
The duel between Hamlet and Laertes, by contrast, is crowned by a dextrous and
advanced manoeuvre that could not have failed to impress Shakespearean
audiences. The left-hand seizure, by which the exchange of weapons is commonly
considered to take place, was a technique common to a number of rapier masters,
but it is Henri de Saint-Didier s instruction which is commonly referenced in the

critical literature.118 The technique involved closing with the opponent and seizing
the hilt of their rapier with your left hand (dropping your dagger in the process if
you were using one , before twisting the weapon to free it from your opponent s
grasp. The opponent s best recourse was to mirror the action and grasp your
rapier s hilt and twist. Both men would thus lose their rapier and gain their

adversary s, enacting a skilful exchange of weapons. )f this manoeuvre is indicative

of the skill of Hamlet and Laertes in general, then the actors playing their parts
would have had their work cut out for them.
The contrast between the dexterity of the rapier and the clumsiness of the sword
in Hamlet ties in to broader Elizabethan doubts over the efficacy of the sword
which prompted George Silver to write his defence of what he saw as the true

fight of the sword.119 The Italian masters, whose techniques formed the basis of

the English exercise of the rapier, considered the thrust to be an inherently

118

For a brief discussion of the critical literature, see Edelman, Brawl Ridiculous, p. 184. For SaintDidier s technique, see (enry de Saint-Didier, Traicte contenant les secrets dv premier livre svr
l'espee sevle, Paris, 1573, fol. 65v.
119 Silver, The Works of George Silver, sig.L3r.

51
superior form of offence to the cut, but the logical correlation that the thrusting
rapier was therefore an inherently superior weapon to the cut-oriented
broadsword only emerged in England well after the fact in the nineteenth century.
The appeal of romanticised martial chivalry meant that the English gentry could
not leave the sword behind entirely, but were forced to find some kind of
compromise.
On the surface of things, the compromise would be simple: all the gentry needed to
do was recognise that the rapier was the more lethal duelling weapon while the
sword was the more lethal battlefield weapon. The two weapons would then fall
within two separate worlds, voiding their conflict. While the benefits of superior
lethality for a battlefield weapon are fairly straightforward, the benefits of superior
lethality for a duelling weapon require an understanding that the deadly earnest of
the duel was intended to frighten gentlemen into civility; Churchyard wrote that
for slaunders, naughtie reports in absence, and present spiteful speaches,
men ought for the mayntenance of good name, sometimes use an lawfull
manner of correction (this spoken not of the scripture) for the sharpe
sworde makes a blunt blockhead beware how hee useth his tongue, and if
bold babblers were not snibbed for their [lawlessness], this world would be
full of talkative merchants, and no man would care what he spoke120

The idea that the duel promoted civility was born within the cauldron of mad

blood which defined the vendetta culture of Renaissance Italy. The vendetta was

part of the greater Mediterranean culture of the feud which embodied a principle
of compensation for insult or injury through a loose eye for an eye, tooth for a
120

Churchyard, Churchyards Challenge, pp.58-9.

52
tooth exchange. Whenever possible, however, the compensation sought was

incrementally greater than the insult or injury received. This incremental increase,
combined with a marketplace mentality where every transaction of insult or

injury increased the chance of future transactions , invariably lead to an escalation

of vendettas and of the bloodshed they engendered. Not even death could stop the

progression of the vendetta, for the burden of vengeance would commonly pass on
to the closest blood relative of the victim. Within such a feuding culture, the duel
served a very practical purpose of limiting interpersonal violence. 121
Though England had shared in the broader European feuding culture prior to
1066, by the twelfth century the violent pursuit of aristocratic quarrels had been
forbidden.122 The feud thrived in and was engendered by a society with a weak
rule of law, but the ability of the post-Conquest English monarchs to enforce their
will across their relatively small realm proved inhospitable to a feuding society.123
Without the rampant interpersonal violence that had justified the duel s creation in
the first place there was no practical reason for it to exist in England beyond the

dictates of fashion, and it was argued by some contemporary critics that the duel in
fact increased incidences of violence by encouraging a particular sensitivity to
insult among gentlemen.124 This meant that the rapier s superior lethality in a duel

did not necessarily correlate to a superior worth as a weapon.

121

Edward Muir, Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta & Factions in Friuli during the Renaissance, Baltimore:
The John Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp.67-76.
122 Paul (yams, Feud and the State in Anglo-Saxon England , Journal of British Studies, Vol. 40, No.
1, 2001, pp.1-43 ; John G. (. (udson, Feud, Vengeance and Violence in England from the Tenth to
the Twelfth Centuries , Feud, Violence and Practice: Essays in Medieval Studies in Honor of Stephen D.
White, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2010, p.45.
123 (udson, Feud, Vengeance and Violence , pp.
-53.
124 Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England, pp.114-131.

53
The English gentry adopted the rapier after the fashion for all things Italian (and,
later, French) and sought to justify this as a pragmatic choice, but with only limited
success. The murderous spirit that hangs over Hamlet is testament to the troubled
relationship of the rapier to civil violence in England, where it arguably caused
more bloodshed than it prevented. Despite this, the rapier had become the
Renaissance gentleman s badge of class in the same way that the sword had been

the medieval knight s. The debate over the practical efficacy and symbolic value of
the broadsword compromised its previous title as queen of weapons and emblem
of chivalry, setting up a slow decline in the social value of the sword. (amlet s

much more rapid decline into a spiral of revenge and murder was driven on by the
contagion of the French death which anointed the rapiers within the play, a
contagion potent enough to lay up even Old (amlet s sword within the hospice of
its scabbard.

54

Conclusion
Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere
Nor can England brook a double reign

(1 Henry IV 5.3.66-7)

Throughout medieval and Renaissance England, the armigerous class those

individuals entitled to bear a coat of arms invested the sword with their honour,
authority, and ideals. Men would live, die, love, and pray according to the beliefs

and traditions embodied in three feet of steel, but as society changed so too did the
sword. The rapid introduction of the Renaissance rapier to late medieval England
created a unique situation whereby the English gentleman was torn between two
different social ideals by the double reign of the broadsword and the rapier,
together with all the values and traditions that these symbolically-charged
weapons entailed.
In 1 Henry IV, Shakespeare explores the sword within an Elizabethan perception of
England s chivalric past. The broadsword is given centre stage in this play,

dominating the on-stage exercise of arms and shaping the audience s perception of
Hal, Hotspur, and Falstaff. As the protagonist of the play, Hal is aligned with the
audience s perception of themselves as both inheritors of a chivalric past and

individuals of their own age. His sword, like himself for the two become one

within the agile wordplay of the text becomes a fusion of the broadsword and the
rapier, mirroring the fusion of chivalric past and civil present.

55
(otspur is a much more pure character than Hal, but his single-minded devotion
to the sword and the battlefield arts of chivalry becomes his twofold downfall:

Hotspur not only falls short of ideal knighthood through his lack of magnanimity
and his neglect for love, he also falls short of ideal gentility through his lack of
gentle speech. Shakespeare avoids a construction of Hotspur and his chivalric
ideals as inherently flawed by portraying Hotspur as sadly lacking in the education
Hal received, turning the ill-tempered knight into a tragic hero and suggesting that
Renaissance civility was the way to complete the ideal of the chivalric knight.
The heroic warriors of 1 Henry IV are transformed into a murdering butcher and
an impotent old man with the centre-staging of the rapier in Hamlet. The
broadsword appears in only one scene within the text of the play, and even then it
is only a verbal picture rather than a physical depiction on-stage. Hamlet and the
Player s recitation of the story of Priam s death describes Priam s sword as

rebellious to his arm, while Pyrrhus wild swings seem better suited to a butcher s

cleaver than a sword. The ineffectiveness of the broadsword is only heightened by

the skilful passes between Hamlet and Laertes in the final scene of the play, which
culminates with an advanced disarm technique.
The rapier itself was the site of a great deal of debate over the role of civil violence
at the turn of the seventeenth century. The rising number of mortal duels in France
had thrown new wood on the fire of the English debate, with authors defending
and attacking the nature and perceived necessity of the duel. The duel was
originally intended to minimize the impact of Renaissance )taly s feuding culture
by restricting violence to individuals rather than families, while its lethal

consequences acted as a deterrent to the kind of uncivil behaviour which ignited

56
feuds in the first place. However, the relatively strong government in England had
proven inimical to the Mediterranean feuding culture, which resulted in a society
without a tradition of civil violence. Because of this, many critics of the duel saw
duelling culture as increasing, rather than decreasing, civil violence. This leant the
rapier an aura of murderous menace which Shakespeare exploited to further the
theme of revenge in Hamlet.
Shakespeare s contrast between the broadsword and the rapier in Hamlet reflected
a broader Elizabethan debate over the practical efficacy of the broadsword in civil
combat. The Italian masters, who introduced the art of the rapier to England and
founded the first rapier schools in London in the sixteenth century, maintained
that a thrust was an inherently superior attack to a cut due, in part, to the
geometrical truth that the straight line of a thrust covers a shorter distance than
the circumference of a cut. The corollary of this claim was the thrusting rapier was
therefore superior to the cutting sword, a conclusion that jarred with Elizabethan
nostalgia for their chivalric past. The civil gentleman could neither praise nor
condemn the practical exercise of the broadsword outright, creating a tension that
was not relaxed until the Elizabethan chivalric revival had begun to cool in the
later seventeenth century.
I have only been able to piece together the smallest part of the jigsaw puzzle that is
Shakespeare s relationship to the sword in Elizabethan society, and there is much
work which still needs to be done in this little explored field. One topic which is
sorely in need of further analysis is the depiction of the buckler in both
Shakespeare and Elizabethan society. In the chapter on 1 Henry IV, I briefly
sketched out the way Falstaff s use of the sword and buckler ties him to the

57
serving-man s tradition and suggested that criticism of the buckler provided

Elizabethan society with a method of justifying the superiority of the rapier over
the broadsword without impugning the symbol of the aristocracy. A full discussion
of this topic would require a full dissertation in itself, but may hold answers to how
Elizabethan society attempted to reconcile the tension that I have outlined in this
discussion.
I like to imagine Shakespeare s relationship to the sword as that of a Rosetta stone
carved across two sets of Russian dolls. Each doll can be taken apart and

interpreted individually, but it is only through comparison with the other doll that
the full value of the set emerges. The more we understand the history of the sword,
the more we understand the literature of Shakespeare; and the more we
understand the literature of Shakespeare, the more we understand the history of
the sword. History and literature, literature and history; the two are one.

58

Glossary
Backsword A single-edged cutting blade popular among common-born
swordsmen in medieval and Renaissance England.

Broadsword A sub-category of swords characterised by broad blades and the

capacity to deliver strong cuts. )ncludes the knightly sword and the backsword,
but excludes the rapier.

Buckler A small round shield gripped in the fist, usually made of metal. Typically
used for defence, but could be used like a steel fist to punch the opponent.
Knightly Sword The sword popular among knights from the twelfth to

fourteenth century, possessing two edges, a sharpened point, and a cruciform

guard with a counterbalancing pommel.
Poleaxe A hafted weapon typically as tall as the man wielding it, with a metal
head on one end that carried a beak-like fluke balanced by a hammer on the
opposite side of the head.
Rapier A specialised civilian weapon originating from Italy in the sixteenth

century. Optimised to deliver dangerous thrusts, but still capable of deliver

wounding cuts.

Sword A weapon with a long metal blade that can be either blunt or sharpened
with one or two edges, with a sharpened or rounded point and a guard for
protecting the hand. The blade can be used for cuts, thrusts, or both.

59

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