The Spoils of War: 'Arms and Armor in Shakespeare'

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

IF YOU'RE INTO lances, longswords, helmets and chain mail, you could get thee to Medieval Times. But that's potentially embarrassing, not to mention costly. Those who require the imprimatur of high culture to justify their lust for bladed battle should duck into the Folger Shakespeare Library, where "Now Thrive the Armorers: Arms and Armor in Shakespeare" offers ample license to ogle a small sampling of the holdings of the Higgins Armory Museum.

Based in Worcester, Mass., the HAM is the "only museum in the Western Hemisphere solely dedicated to arms and armor." Among the magnificent pieces currently on loan is a richly worked fingered gauntlet worn by King Philip of Spain.

With a sawtoothed blade for hacking cables and a more lightly serrated edge possibly for cutting thinner lines, not to mention an armor-piercing reinforced tip, an Italian boarding sword was the ultimate in hand-to-hand combat tech for the cinquecento seafarer. A topologically complex 16th-century German couter (or elbow guard) negotiates the flexible curves of the body while granting protection to one of its most vulnerable joints.

The exhibit also features treatises and training manuals that would have served aspiring lancers, fencers and career military men. Providing historical context to the setting of "Othello," these books lead us to understand why a field-tested commander such as Iago would be so irked by being named to the flag-waving ceremonial post of ensign while book-smart Cassio was promoted right past him.

By Shakespeare's day, firearms were rendering the traditional trappings of medieval-style combat increasingly obsolete. One early 17th-century siege helmet bears a large dent — evidence, according to Higgins curator Jeffrey Forgeng, that its owner requested a pre-purchase demonstration that it could actually stop a musket ball.

You can't help but wonder, though, whether sporting such impressively scarred headgear wouldn't translate into massive battlefield cred.

» Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol St. SE; through Sept. 9, free; 202-544-7077. (Union Station/Capitol South)

Written by Express contributor Glenn Dixon
Photo courtesy Higgins Armory Museum, Worcester, Mass.