392 ^r. Frederic!: PollocI: [June 1, 



rapier fight generally allowed, as a weapon because most perilous, 

 therefore^ most feared, and thereupon private quarrels and common 

 frays most shunned." On the other hand, some p:\rtisaDs of the old 

 sword and buckler play maintained its excellence on the express 

 ground that men skilled in it might fight as long as they pleased 

 without hurting one another ; and others denouuceil the rapier as 

 *'that mischievous and imperfect weapon which serves to kill our 

 friends in peace, but cannot much hurt our foes in war" (George 

 Silver. 'Paradoxes of Defence,' 1599). But they were soon dis- 

 comfited. In 1617 we fijid one Joseph Swetnam, a garrulous and not 

 orit^inal author, declaring that the short sword or back-sword (a stout 

 sword so called from having only one edge) is against the rapier 

 '•' little better than a tobacco pipe or a fox tail.'' "We must not sup- 

 pose that the rapier fight of the sixteenth century resembled modern 

 fencing. It was the commoner practice to hold a dagger in the left 

 hand for p»arrying ; this, by the way, has an odd analogy in China, 

 where instruments like blunt skewers are used for the same purpose. 

 And not only did the use of the dagger, or in its absence of the 

 aauntleted left hand, make the conditions different from those of the 

 modem fencing-sohool. but the principles and methods were as yet 

 crude and unformed. The fencing-match in ' Hamlet ' is now jirescnted 

 according to the modem fashion, and Dumas and Gautier, both of 

 whom Imew the historic truth well enough, freely introduce the 

 modem terms and rules into the single combats of their novels. In 

 each case this course is justified by artistic ne essity. But if we look 

 to the engravings in Saviolo or Grassi, we shall find that Hamlet and 

 Laertes, when the play was a novelty at the Globe Theatre, stood at 

 what would now be thought an absurdly short distance (for the lunge, 

 or delivery of the thrust bv a swift forward movement of the right 

 foot and body, with the left foot as a fixed point, was not yet invented), 

 with their sword-hands down at their knees, the points of their rapiers 

 directed not to the breast but to the f;ice of the adversary, and their 

 left hands held up in front of the shoulder in a singularly awkward 

 attitude. A great object was to seize the adversary's sword-hilt with 

 the left hand : and this perhaps explains the " scuffling " in which 

 Hamlet and Laertes change foils — a thing barely possible in a 

 fencing-match of the present day. An incidental illustration of the 

 part of the left hand in defence is given in ' Eomeo and Juliet,' where 

 it is related that Mercutio 



" with one hand beats 

 Co'd detth asiJe, and with the other sends 

 It back to Tybalt.'' 



The duel with rapier and dagger had particular rules of its ov^ti ; and 

 the handling of a " case of rapiers" (that is, a rapier in either hand) 

 was also taught, but, one would think, only for display. 



During this period the use of the tjdge was combined with that of 

 the point, but the point was preferred. '• To til the truth," says 



