Shakespeare's Prop Room by John Leland

Author:John Leland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2016-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

Benvolio fights with Italian fencing techniques, which the English favored over the Spanish. That Tybalt is “a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic” (3.1.102) paints “the complex geometrical system of passes painstakingly analyzed and diagrammed”25 in Spanish fencing books, a style Mercutio sneeringly says requires that Tybalt “fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance and proportion; rests me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom…” (1.4.20–22). Soens choreographs the fatal fight between the two, imagining an upright Tybalt, rapier fully extended at the crouching Mercutio’s face, turning in circles, while Mercutio, rapier by his knee, circles him, seeking an opening to thrust through. Both parried with daggers or gloves, as when Mercutio:

with one hand beats

Cold death aside, and with the other sends

It back to Tybalt [3.1.161–63].

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