https://lodel.appli.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=2538 Shakespeare en devenir N°16 — 2022 fr ven., 21 janv. 2022 14:42:18 +0100 ven., 21 janv. 2022 14:42:18 +0100 https://lodel.appli.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=2538 0 https://lodel.appli.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=2728 Si Henry V contient de nombreuses références aux jeux, deux pratiques ludiques ont tout particulièrement retenu l’attention : d’une part, le jeu de paume, qui occupe une place centrale dans la pièce, puisque le don de balles de jeu de paume par le Dauphin à l’acte 1 scène 2 donne lieu à une métaphore filée de la guerre qui réapparaît tout au long de la pièce; et, d’autre part, le tir à l’arc, dont l’absence paraît suspecte compte tenu du rôle déterminant joué par les arcs longs dans la victoire anglaise à Azincourt. Cet article propose ainsi de mettre en lumière le rôle des jeux de hasard qui sont également très présents dans la pièce. En effet, bien que ces références puissent sembler anecdotiques au premier abord, les débats et les controverses qui entouraient ce type de jeux au début de la période moderne les rendent beaucoup plus significatifs. À travers les jeux de hasard, les joueurs font l'expérience du risque et de la « chance » ou de la « fortune », notions alors souvent confondues avec l'une des manifestations possibles de la providence. Dans cette perspective, les références aux jeux de hasard éclairent le récit historique d'Azincourt et sa construction. Shakespeare’s Henry V contains many references to games. Critical attention has focused more closely on two ludic practices: tennis, which figures prominently in the play as the Dauphin’s gift of tennis balls in act 1 scene 2 gives rise to an extended metaphor for war which reappears in subsequent scenes; and archery, whose absence has been deemed particularly conspicuous considering the famously instrumental role played by the longbows in the English victory at Agincourt. In this paper, I wish to explore games of hazard, which are equally present throughout the play. Although these references may seem anecdotal at first, the debates and controversies that surrounded these games in the early modern period make them much more meaningful. Through games of hazard, players experience risk and “luck” or “fortune”, which were then often conflated with one of the possible manifestations of providence. In this perspective, references to games of hazard shed light on the historical narrative of Agincourt and its construction. mer., 26 janv. 2022 22:40:47 +0100 https://lodel.appli.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=2728 https://lodel.appli.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=2667 Agincourt is remembered as the decisive battle where Henry V’s “happy few” plucked the flower of French chivalry on battle-rich St Crispin’s Day, 25 October 1415. As celebrated as it is, however, this was no valiant chevauchée through Normandy in the style of Edward III. Decimated from their Pyrrhic victory at Harfleur, suffering from dysentery, fatigue and hunger, the English were essentially on retreat to the safety of Calais. But hemmed in near the castle of Azincourt, “with a weak and sickly guard” (III.6.157) Henry surmised that the French army grew stronger with each moment while, as Shakespeare put it, his own “numbers lessened.” Henry’s unorthodox surprise attack—leading with longbows—was therefore an act of desperation more than bravado, and its initial success can be attributed more to bad weather and obstinate French adherence to conventional rules of warfare than to superior military prowess. Indeed, Henry’s summary execution of all but the richest prisoners of war in sight of the enemy, a task his own knights considered so heinous that it fell to the archers, indicates how terrified he was of defeat. So although ultimately triumphant, Agincourt hardly shows the English in the best light. It was a victory born of desperation, achieved through luck, and consolidated in an act of butchery tempered only by the prospect of mammon. And while Agincourt is hailed as the moment when the English extinguished “the Flower of French chivalry,” such could just as well be said of Crecy (1346), where a similarly outnumbered and harassed English army also annihilated superior French forces. The honour could likewise go to Poitiers (1356), where the French king himself was captured and shipped back to London. In fact, Agincourt was not the first, but only the final great English upset. Furthermore, within ten years any gains it had made were definitively lost. In hindsight it therefore seems that Agincourt should be seen as the swansong of a lost cause more than a watershed victory. So why is Agincourt remembered more nostalgically than any other battle, most notably Crecy and Poitiers? Undoubtedly an important reason is that Agincourt was deliberately aggrandized in order to drum up support for an increasingly unpopular and costly war. Such glorification was hardly necessary for Edward III or the Black Prince, victors of Crecy and Poitiers, but Richard II’s subsequent neglect of the war meant that it had been all but ignored by that great quadrumvirate of medieval English writers—Chaucer, Langland, Gower and the Pearl Poet—while the usurping Henry IV had been more concerned with legitimizing his reign at home than with pursuing claims in France. In the meantime, attitudes towards war and nationhood had been changing; while war was losing its medieval cachet as a noble endeavour, the nascent national consciousness emerging in the early Renaissance was ripe for exploitation by the war’s old-school proponents. Indeed, the relatively immense outpouring of (decidedly mediocre) popular verse in English immediately following Agincourt seems to have found official sanction, ultimately augmenting the development of a sense of Englishness. In fact, despite evidence that the king himself later hoped to downplay overblown and inaccurate accounts of the battle when they became counterproductive, the die had been cast. Early commemorative accounts had already indissolubly imbued the emergent national psyche, rendering the myth a more consumable reality than actual facts. It is this legend of Agincourt more than historical truth which informed Shakespeare’s own highly politicized history, and through him that legend continues to be perpetuated and built upon up to the present day. mer., 26 janv. 2022 22:05:22 +0100 https://lodel.appli.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=2667 https://lodel.appli.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=2703 Le phénix, oiseau mythique originaire d’Arabie, est l’un des symboles royaux utilisés aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles dont les représentations fleurissent tant dans les textes que dans les images. Les livres d’emblèmes, par la conjugaison de deux codes sémiotiques différents – image et texte –, sont un terrain privilégié pour l’expansion du symbolisme du phénix qui en est venu à exprimer des idées morales et religieuses. La rara avia, par son habilité à renaître de ses cendres, a été utilisée pour symboliser la virginité, l’immortalité et, à cet égard, était souvent attribuée aux monarques et même revendiquée par ces derniers. Marie de Lorraine et sa fille Marie, reine d’Écosse, ont fait du phénix leur devise, ou impresa. Élisabeth Ire compte également parmi les têtes couronnées revendiquant le symbole du phénix. Nicholas Hilliard et le graveur Crispin van de Passe ont contribué à la construction de l’iconographie du phénix, également étendue aux œuvres littéraires. Lorsque Jacques Ier devient roi en 1603, c’est donc tout naturellement que les artistes utilisent le phénix pour célébrer le nouveau monarque, une manière de montrer la continuité royale à travers les symboles. Parmi ces artistes, Henry Peacham, maître d’école et théoricien du dessin, s’est saisi de l’occasion pour donner une version emblématique de certains passages du Basilikon Doron du roi, un traité sur l’éducation destiné à son fils, le prince héritier Henri. Dans les versions manuscrites de 1603 et 1604, Peacham n’hésite pas à flatter le roi Jacques en le comparant à l’oiseau mythique. Cependant, de 1603-1604, date des premiers manuscrits, et jusqu’à la publication du livre d'emblèmes Minerva Britanna en 1612 et à ses travaux ultérieurs, Peacham change continuellement le destinataire du symbole du phénix, hésitation qui témoigne à notre avis du divorce progressif de l’emblémiste avec la politique de Jacques Ier qu’il ne jugeait plus digne de l’insigne royal. Nous nous proposons d’analyser le symbole du phénix dans l’œuvre de Peacham afin de montrer l’évolution de son soutien politique dans le contexte du désenchantement croissant à l’égard du règne de Jacques. The phoenix, the mythical Arabian bird, is one of the most enduring royal symbols of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was frequently represented both in pictures and texts. Emblem books, through the combination of visual and textual semiotics, were a fertile ground for the symbolism of the phoenix that came to express moral and religious ideas. Thanks to the endless repetition of the death and rebirth cycle, the rara avia was used to symbolize virginity, agelessness, immortality and in that regard was a potent royal badge, both attributed to and claimed by the monarchs. Mary of Lorraine and her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, used the phoenix as an impresa. Elizabeth I herself was revered as the phoenix, a badge that she held dear. Nicholas Hilliard, but also engraver Crispin van de Passe contributed to the construction of the phoenix iconography that reverberated in literary works as well. When James I became king in 1603, it was only natural that writers used the phoenix to celebrate the new monarch as a way to show royal continuity through symbols, a thesis defended by Alan Young. Among them was Henry Peacham, a schoolmaster who took the opportunity to give an emblematic version of some passages from James’s Basilikon Doron, a treatise on education destined to his son and heir, Prince Henry. Peacham’s first impulse in the manuscript versions of 1603 and 1604 was to flatter King James by comparing him to the rare Arabian bird. However, I argue that from the manuscript versions to the published emblem book Minerva Britanna in 1612, and to his later works, the continual reallocation of the symbol of the phoenix testifies to the emblematist’s gradual divorce with James I’s policy which he no longer deemed worthy of the royal badge. Therefore, I intend to analyze the symbol of the phoenix in Peacham’s work in order to show his shifting political support in the context of the increasing disenchantment with James’s reign. mer., 26 janv. 2022 22:19:42 +0100 https://lodel.appli.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=2703