Brawl Ridiculous: Swordfighting in Shakespeare's Plays

‘Two Armies flye in…’: Battle scenes in English Renaissance theatre

“…Modern scholarship has often tended to treat combat scenes as a historical curiosity, a relic of parochial militarism, and similarly, contemporary audiences tend to find them disturbing and clumsy, more fit for film adaptations than for stage performance. As Edelman points out in his book on swordfights in Shakespeare: ‘combat scenes on the modern Shakespearian stage are all too often a cause for merriment rather than intense excitement’ (Edelman, 1992, 1).…”

“…4 Many of the fight scenes preserved in playbooks must have been technically demanding, not least because the companies sought to render war as convincingly as possible. Shakespeare's fight scenes are particularly challenging for actors, because he, as Edelman has discovered, introduced speech parts in his sword fights as a way of integrating violent action with poetic speech (Edelman, 1992).…”

“… 3 3 Edelman is also the author of a work on Shakespearean swordfights and Elizabethan poetics (Edelman, 1992). …”

“…Edelman is also the author of a work on Shakespearean swordfights and Elizabethan poetics(Edelman, 1992).4 Nonetheless, one of the most staunchly militaristic companies, the Queen'sMen, remained predominantly a touring company and thus maintained a middle position between early and late Tudor dramaturgy (seeMcMillin & MacLean, 1998).5 These reservations, however, did not prevent Sir Philip from acting soon after in a highly stylised siege play, The Castle…”