The bane of gunpowder

"The soldiers' music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot."

                                   Hamlet    (V, ii)

These last lines of Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece, a reaction to unexpected slaughter at the court of Elsinore, could have been written today, April 23rd, a day we traditionally mark as the playwright's birthday. We've just witnessed slaughter and fearlessness in a place we wouldn't ordinarily expect: near the finish line of a storied footrace in Boston. The brand of courage that usually emerges in battle became evident on Boylston Street, as a festive occasion became a war zone with one tick of the stopwatch, one gasping breath, one thump of the heart.

Terrorism plagued Shakespeare's age as it plagues ours. The spectacularly memorable Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was an attempt on the part of a group of Roman Catholic conspirators to pack gunpowder in the cellar below the English Parliament chambers and blow it all sky-high with King James I and lords in attendance on the session's opening day, November 5th. Shortly before that day, a conspirator warned one Lord Monteagle not to be present that day, hoping to see his life spared.

Evidently, this ominous hint created a heightened state of alert. A professional soldier and conspirator by the name of Guido (Guy) Fawkes was allegedly caught in the cellar with the incriminating gunpowder and related paraphernalia. In the weeks following, other alleged conspirators were captured or killed in the course of  an extensive manhunt. Trials (promptly forthcoming by today's standards) and the inevitable grisly executions followed.

The entire plot had been conceived by Robert Catesby, like Shakespeare a native of Warwickshire. A number of other conspirators also had ties to the area. They were drawn together by frustration after seeing James succeed Elizabeth I on the English throne in 1603 but only continue the persecution of Catholics. For Shakespeare the playwright and his extended family in and around Stratford-Upon-Avon, the plotters' local connections were uncomfortably close to home. Suspicion had become the coinage of the realm.

Pictured above is the breech end of a wheellock musket, made c1620 in Italy, that is exhibited in Agecroft's Great Hall. Gunpowder's use in weaponry had made its way into Europe from the Far East by the 13th century. The English used large charges of gunpowder in siege cannons at Calais in 1346; the development of these types of weapons literally changed the face and even the spirit of warfare.
Castles and armor became obsolete, and so, for that matter, did the concept of the honorable confrontation in battle.

Codes of medieval chivalry valued bravery shown in face-to-face combat with an opponent. Nothing could have been more foreign to this code than the idea of killing someone from a distance while hiding behind protective cover. The longbow or the crossbow, although effective, were not the English nobleman's weapons of choice. Gunpowder weapons were in large measure responsible for changing such chivalrous modes of thinking, and the world has been hearing the blast ever since.

The type of wheellock mechanism on this particular musket was invented c1509, about the same time Henry VIII came to the English throne. Curatorial records indicate that its firing mechanism "worked on the same principle as the modern cigarette lighter - a serrated metal wheel revolved against a piece of flint, or pyrite, thus creating a spark. This enabled the gun to be fired without using a light from another source. The works of the wheellock gun are similar to those of a clock."  A clock that tolled very loudly, no doubt.