The Sport of War

Even though the semester has ended, I’m still pondering Laws of War—and not just in the Middle Ages.  There’s a Matrix-like quality to this—once you become aware of these patterns, you see them everywhere!  Not surprising, since man has been at war pretty much constantly throughout the course of recorded history. Heck, the very first work of literature is about a war!  

Then Ares roared like a trumpet, as loud as nine thousand men could shout, aye, ten thousand men in the turmoil of battle! Trojans and Achaians alike trembled to hear the roar of the insatiate God of War!

 And of course the Bible is chock-FULL of warfare—David and Goliath, Judah Maccabee the Rock Star...

…even the endgame, Armageddon, is a battle scenario. (Interestingly Armageddon is a placename—Megiddo is the name of an ancient city.)  We tend to see war as this random, chaotic force of obliteration but there are recognizable, distinct patterns which emerge again and again, and not just in history.  

These patterns are perhaps most apparent in our sports culture—most forms of organized sports tend to be team vs. team, facing each other on opposing fields, much like the classic pitched battle.  You can see this in basketball, soccer, even tennis, but the classic sports metaphor for war is football, which shares the:

• terminology (blitzes, bombs)
• strategy           (front lines, flanking maneuvers)
• tactics (artillery vs. infantry) 

as well as protective armor.  What is a running game but an updated version of medieval jousting, with the players functioning as both destrier and knight?  Football fans are even referred to as weekend warriors!  And their latter-day woadwood would do any Celtic warrior proud.  

William Wallace, Woad Warrior…

I’ve found that reading Froissart’s Chronicles has brought a whole new appreciation to the playoffs.

And—cheerleaders, that peculiarly American contribution to team sports.  We love them, we fear them, we live vicariously through grrrlpower Kristen Dunst movies. (Full disclosure—I was never a cheerleader (3-sport varsity athlete here!) but I always thought it would be fun.) But, you ask,  how do cheerleaders fit into the football-as-war scenario?  Well, although women couldn’t actually fight in medieval battles* they did have a military function in chivalry—as an audience for the knight, to spur him to greater deeds, literally to see him off as he marched off to war.  Interestingly the first cheerleaders were actually men, so this possible parallel with medieval women has actually developed over time.  Of course nowadays cheerleaders are not content to merely watch and applaud--they take the field in their own right.

They even have a castle!

*Joan of Arc was clearly the ass-kicking and name-taking exception.

Macbeth Redux (Hey, is that a dagger I see before m-oof!)

Loyal readers may recall my entry in January about the Scottish play and laws of war in the Middle Ages.  Our production closed two weeks ago and turned out quite well, all things considered.  This production was set in the '30s, with a more militaristic angle than is perhaps usually taken.  For most of the final week of rehearsal I was either away from the theater or helping out backstage, so I saw it all the way through for the first time only on opening night--and was treated to a most interesting...anachronism?  No, an egregious violation of the very laws of war I'm currently studying at Columbia!

Most people remember the last scene of Macbeth for the famous showdown between Mackers and his nemesis, Macduff:



          Macd. 

          Turne Hell-hound, turne.

          Macb.

          Of all men else I haue auoyded thee:
          But get thee backe, my soule is too much charg'd
          With blood of thine already.

Macbeth doesn't want to fight because he's already wiped out most of Macduff's family--though he has damned himself through his murderous deeds, he yet retains some vestiges of humanity.  This is important because Macbeth believes himself to be invulnerable: as he tells Macduff I beare a charmed Life, which must not yeeld/To one of woman borne.  BUT.  Macduff is about to reveal he himself was not in fact "borne"--his mother had an impromptu (and undoubtedly fatal, in the 11th century) Caesarean section (so-called because Julius Caesar was supposedly delivered that way--this is suspect, however) and hence Shit is About to Get Real.

In classic tragic style, Good defeats Evil:  Macduff kills Macbeth and displays his head to the other nobles and the Scottish army...

This one's for the groundlings.  For our production I suggested displaying Macbeth and Lady Macbeth hanging upside,
like Mussolini and Claretta Petacci at the end, but it's a little difficult logistically

...Malcolm is hailed as King and the State is made whole again.


But soft!--we have skipped over another death in Act V.  Before encountering Macduff, Macbeth runs into Young Siward, the son of the English commander who is helping out Malcolm.  Young Siward brandishes his weapon and challenges the Thane and is promptly killed by him, uttering the classic put down "Thou wast borne of woman."  This death is referenced later in the scene just before Macduff enters--Ross* tells Siward of his son's death, Siward mourns but at least his son died like a soldier, and so forth.  But our production added something--they dragged in a bound-and gagged Seyton, Macbeth's lieutenant, whom they'd captured near Young Siward's body (our production staged it so that Seyton carried off the body--the single most constant challenge of every Shakespearean tragedy is GETTING RID OF THE BODIES).  And Siward hauls off and stabs Seyton to death.  While Malcolm is standing right there!  My jaw literally fell open.  So the new regime executes bound prisoners of war?  Since we've established that Malcolm is morally superior to Macbeth, isn't this sort of...awkward?**


Obviously killing a bound POW is a violation of the laws of war--certainly for our culture and time, and for the '30s when our production is set.  And definitely for Shakespeare's time as well--Shakespeare's play Henry VI, Part III has a rather lurid incident in which Lord Clifford murders his prisoner the Earl of Rutland in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Wakefield as the boy is begging for his life.  

This was seen as a Bad Thing by Shakespearean audiences.***

But the whole idea of laws of war, of regulating, through code and social expectation, how and when and whom to kill in warfare, is a dynamic construct.  In the actual Macbeth's time, the 11th century, laws of war were very much in a time of transition--the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well as Asser's Life of King Alfred are depressingly rife with descriptions of Anglo-Viking battles in which everyone on the losing side is killed.  

Prisoners, fleeing soldiers, soldiers who surrendered--everyone.   But customs of war were starting to emerge around this time--how and why this happened is still being debated but after the Norman Invasion in 1066, the bloodletting seemed to have subsided for a little while (if for no other reason than because everyone was DEAD who might've caused any trouble).  The emergence of chivalry as a professional and caste code also had something to do with this.


*I feel kind of bad for Ross--all he seems to do is inform people of important plot updates!  He tells Macbeth he's been made Thane of Cawdor, he tells Macduff his family is dunzo...he's like the Billy Kostecki of the Scottish Play!

Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughter'd.
Oh, and Penny's knocked up.

**I mentioned this to the actor who played Malcolm and he said he always looked away during that moment.


***Shakespeare's source was Hall's Chronicle, which changed Rutland's age from the verified 17 to a boy of 12.