Shakespeare's Military Language: A Dictionary (review)

180 Reviews Edelman, Charles, Shakespeare's Military Language: A Dictionary (Athlone Shakespeare Dictionary Series), London and N e w Brunswick, The Athlone Press, 2000; cloth; pp. ix, 423; R.R.P. £125.00; ISBN 0485115468. Edelman is an eminently qualified authority to offer us this dictionary, as h the author of the favourably received and learned Brawl Ridiculous: Swordfighting in Shakespeare s Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992) and related publications. As Amazon.co.uk puts the matter on its website: 'More than just a book of definitions, this dictionary provides a comprehensive account of Shakespeare's portrayal of military life, tactics and technology'. The book can, in fact, quite profitably be read straight through, literally from A-Y, and i t is invariably interesting and informative; I feel I have learned a great deal from perusing it thoroughly, and I will continue to leam from it in years to come. A m o n g the many instructive and persuasive entries I would mention as examples are bumbast (or bombast), lieutenant, falsefire,law of arms, and surgeon. It is useful to know that Elizabethan military experts objected to 'soldiers wearing "bumbastic", i.e. 'padded hose', and this may indeed, as Edelman suggests, provide special point to Hal's comments on Falstaff as a 'creature of bumbast' (/ Henry 4, 2.4.327, in The Riverside Shakespeare, from which Edelman quotes). Edelman's observation that law ofarms in King Lear, 5.3.153, as offered in the Quarto, is technically more correct than the Folio's law of war not only exhibits important military knowledge, but also, and no less significantly, contributes to our understanding of the relationship between Q and F as texts. In the case offalsefire(i.e. 'a blank charge'), it was particularly revealing to leam that inexperienced recruits would regularly 'flinch, or close their eyes, when firing their calivers'. Edelman believes that Hamlet has seen the King 'blench' (i.e. flinch) when he says, about Claudius's reaction to the 'Mousetrap', 'What, frighted with falsefire?'(3.2.266). This raises an interesting possibility about how readers/directors are to imagine Claudius's reaction (in the absence of a clear stage direction), but Edelman's confidence worries m e a little, as the closest thing to a stage direction that w e do have is Ophelia's statement in the preceding line, 'The Kingrises',and the word 'blench' which Edelman quotes does not appear in the immediate context but as far back as 2.2.597, where Hamlet speculates about what Claudius's reaction might be ('If 'a do blench ...') well before 'The Mousetrap' is actually performed. Surely it is possible that Claudius has enough self-control merely to rise, or, at least, that he does not close his eyes? But at least Edelman's interpretation has the merit of making us think, Reviews 181 and that is also true in another instance which will not inspire universal consent, namely where he discusses the word petar (ox petard) in Hamlet's 'For 'tis sport to have the enginer / Hoist with his own petar, an't shall go hard / But I will delve one yard below their mines /And blow them at the moon... ' (3.4.206-9). Edelman surmises that we are to think of two, separate explosions here: Claudius (the 'enginer') will be the victim ofthefirst,but their, he claims unhesitatingly, refers to Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, who will be 'dispatched when a much larger charge is placed beneath them by Hamlet himself. One reason for Edelman's beliefin two explosions is that 'Petards . . . would be useless as a mined or countermined explosive'. I think, however, that Hamlet has in mind a situation where so to speak Claudius is blown up by his own device, in that Hamlet's counter-mining will ironically hit his enemy - both Claudius and by extension his supporters by using the same kind o/method as Claudius had reserved for him. While these last two examples are matters for critical argument, I feel that there are also times - though not many - when Edelman is wrong from a scholarly point of view. Thus it is surely misleading to gloss Hollander as 'A soldier known...