Page 358 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

5.2. N O T E S 251

thrust with one's own. Testimony to the vogue is
afforded by Norden's Map of London (1600) which
shows two men duelling with rapiers and daggers in
St George's Fields. (I owe this evidence to the courtesy
of Dr Wieselgren of the Royal Library, Stockholm.)
Cf. Rom. 3. 1. 163-68:
he tilts
With piercing- steel at bold Mercutio's breast,
Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point,
And, with a martial scorn, ivith one hand beats
Cold death aside, and <with the other sends
It back to Tybalt.

The 'foil' for fence was not the buttoned fleuret of
modern fence (buttons prob. did not come in before
c. 1670), but the kind of sword used in duelling, though
with its edge and point blunted or 'bated.' Thus
Laer.'s 'shuffling' with the foils and choice of 'a sword
unbated' (4. 7. 136-37) or 'sharp,' as it was often
called, would be far easier than under modern condi-
tions. On the other hand, the type of sword, whether
bated or unbated, in favour both for duelling and sword-
play at this date, was not the English broadsword (used
with a target in the left hand), but the French or Italian
rapier, a longer weapon and designed for thrusting
rather than cutting or slashing. The comparative merits
of these two types were much debated, and Sh. is full
of echoes of the controversy (cf. note 4. 7. 74—6). The
classic on rapier-and-dagger play is Vincentio Saviolo his
Practise (1595), which informs us that gloves of mail
were worn on either hand, while shirts of mail or breast-
plates and a kind of skull-cap were generally used for
protection of the body and head. Sometime before the
middle of the 17th c. daggers were given up, and leather
gauntlets seem to have taken the place of mailed gloves.
For details v. G. di Grassi's True Arte of Defence,
1594; Saviolo (op. cit.); Silver's Paradoxes of Defence,
1599 (Shak. Assoc. 1933), a book written in support