Domenico Angelo
THE SCHOOL OF FENCING
Edited by Jared Kirby
192pp. Greenhill Books. £17.50 (US $29.95).
1 8536 7626 8
It is wonderful that The School of Fencing should again be available. Decades ago, the scholar of the sword, the seriously historical theatre practitioner, the student of any European martial art had to track down such works in obscure collections; access was limited, transcription laborious. Egerton Castle’s compendium Schools and Masters of Fence (1885), though it gave a valuable overall view, was limited by Victorian confidence, when pragmatic experiment might have illuminated further. More recently, the internet has brought texts to us, but all-important illustrations and diagrams have been disappointing.
Domenico Angelo’s book, complete with diagrams, embodies the ideas of an era: indeed, on its original appearance in 1763, the book was faulted for lack of innovation, even for plagiarism. Critics complained there was nothing new in it. But how could there be? Consider: in the previous century, from Salvator Fabris’s ruthless establishment of the drawing of the sword, getting it into action readily and rapidly, as his premier postura guardia, and his deriving and defining other guards from that origin; from Nicoletto Giganti’s exposition of the Lunge, from Ridolfo Capo Ferro’s first illustration of it and their bringing posture and movement into an entirely logical “in-line” progression; from Francesco Alfieri’s refining of this; from the abandoning of the pseudo-arcane geometricized esoterica of the Spanish school; from the gradual reduction of the rapier to shorter and lighter, more manoeuvrable diamond section, then colichemarde; then hollow-ground, three-edged blade forms, and the exploitation of their potential, by Liancour, Labat and Thibault, for rotational movement from its long axis for greater and greater varieties of defence, and greater possibilities of deception and compound or composed attacking with ever more finesse, a high level of new development and knowledge had already been reached. Angelo’s function was different; his training with Gianfaldoni, and then with Teillagory (said never to have been a great fencer himself, but the finest of teachers), his extraordinary horsemanship, his enthusiastic dancing, training with Guerinière, taking lessons from Vestris of the Paris Opera, will have united to give him consummate style, in an age when style was all, and harmonized into a superior grasp and command of the realities of physique and the physicality of action. He produced his recognition of what is true, efficacious and deadly, with simplicity and clarity of expression. And wide practical application: another criticism at the time was of his delineating the obsolescent Spanish form, the Italian sword and dagger, and the strange styles of sword and cloak or sword and lantern. But he “gave explanation thereof that gentlemen may know how to defend themselves in countries where they are used”.
All the techniques are shown with admirable and accessible detail and understanding in Angelo’s textbook, with a logical progression from concept to concept. In this sixth edition, Maestro Jeanette Acosta-Martinez’s admirable notes elucidate the text for the modern reader. The first four editions were published in the author’s own lifetime, and the work forms the body of the “Escrime” section of the Encyclopédie Française. It really generated that much demand, and gained that level of recognition. Angelo’s school of equitation and fencing appears to have held the status of an academy for young gentlemen; perhaps he was not an innovator, but he was plainly a teacher and performer of genius “with perfect mastery of style conjoined with a gift for imparting it to a generation that valued poise above all”, in the words of J. de V. Aylward.
Angelo’s school and its work long continued. Captain Charles McGregor, writing of an experience in the 1850s, tells of being attacked by “a pretty tolerable swordsman. However I had not quite forgotten my lessons at Angelo’s, and besides these fellows don’t quite understand the point – he began cutting at me again, but couldn’t hold it. He received a long delayed No 3 in the stomach”. This might have been the sabre/cutlass drill introduced by Harry Angelo’s (fils) work with Master Taylor, but it reads so like Domenico’s “Against the Broad-sword” chapter, and as another stanza in the epic Point-versus-Edge debate.
Even today an area of this work has a direct practical and artistic usefulness in the theatre. Domenico Angelo was brought to Britain and to the Sheridans by his relationship with the actress Peg Woffington, a lady celebrated for her beauty (“Calypso, Circe, Armida, united in one person”), for her love affairs, and for her “breeches” performances. Fencing was certainly considered essential to the deportment of a young gentleman, or to a young lady pretending to be one. It may have been Angelo who gave Richard Brinsley Sheridan the level of skill that preserved him in two duels with the notorious Captain Matthews. We can be fairly certain that Thomas Sheridan’s sense of theatre promoted Angelo’s dramatic confrontation with the Irish champion, Dr Keyes, and precipitated him into a teaching career. We know Angelo worked with Garrick. Which “fight scenes” were involved? (And did they ever mention Peg, with whom Garrick had also been romantically involved?) We also know that Harry Angelo maintained his father’s technique and his circle of theatrical acquaintance, and that his pupils included Mrs Lyons, Mrs Daponti, Mrs Glover, whose fencing as Hamlet was applauded, and that he worked with Edmund Kean on his noted performance in that role. Hamlet fencing small-sword may be a major anachronism, but Shakespeare abounds in anachronisms; what would the Amleth of Saxo Grammaticus know of Rapier and Dagger styles? The object is recognizable symbols and signals for one’s audience; the method is combat training by a combat master, illuminated by experiences of stimulus and response, and by realities of technique.
The origins of theory and process of arms that evolved to this point can be seen in Jared Kirby’s estimable edition of Capo Ferro’s Gran Simulacro of 1609, published in 2004. Informedly followed through, Capo Ferro’s techniques are fully realizable as the actualities of fence, of offence against one’s enemy, defence of oneself still driving today’s classical fleuret and épée. Experience and facility in such dynamic forms enable the choreography and directing of today’s “fight scenes”, showing the realities, to increasingly aware audiences, of action, reaction and interaction. A rather more creative and fulfilling opportunity for actors, and more accessible, than the self-referential “Theatre Practice-Based” concept, which is always ready to fall into formulaic cliché, or sheer implausibility, because it has no roots in combat realities, and no engagement with the actualities of placing, timing and phrasing, nor with immediate personal defence and offence.
Today’s visually sophisticated audience, while not “every man a swordsman” as in Shakespeare’s or Sheridan’s time, have eyes trained by film and television, by sport and spectacle, and can readily grasp theatre performance of a physical, visible dialogue founded in Domenico Angelo’s realities of fencing and fighting, in the truths of finding victory or defeat. This book’s importance, in itself and as part of a whole process, is in its technical and historical demonstration of links with the origins of swordmanship, in what it makes possible now, and in pointing out doorways and avenues we may move through in future.
