Rapier Wit: (S)wordplay in Early Modern European Comedy and Material Culture (2009)

Undergraduate: Mary Borgo

Faculty Advisor: Inger Brodey
Department: English & Comparative Literature

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This presentation will examine Shakespeare’s As You Like It within the context of Vicentio Saviolo’s Practice in Two Books (1595), a popular Elizabethan fencing manual, to trace the rapier’s historical development as an international icon in early modern Europe. Master swordsmen, like Saviolo, used the fencing manual as a means to grapple with the violent nature of swordplay and its function within civilian society. Although swordplay became an integral part of the courtly gentleman’s education, the commodification and seeming democratization of the rapier through manuals like Saviolo’s encourage portrayals of atypical swordsmen (and swordswomen). Dramatists, like Shakespeare, extend swordsmanship beyond traditional boundaries of nationality, class, and gender. Yet these ostensibly comic portrayals of atypical swordsmen, especially Touchstone and Rosalind, exhibit nostalgic ideals of social hierarchy and courtly codes of conduct. Through the iconography of the rapier, Touchstone and Rosalind are able to grapple with the relationship between violence and refinement within society.