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The article deals with visual presentation of the mounted shock combat with couched lance in the famous French manuscript MS M.638, known as Morgan Old Testament (Macejowski Bible), which is widely regarded as the most famous artifact of the middle 13th century chivalric culture. This manuscript is preserved in Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum in New York. Iconographic program of Morgan Old Testament shows large battle narrations where biblical characters are presented as medieval chivalry, equipped according to the western medieval military fashion of the 13th century. This article is devoted to analyzing Morgan Old Testament’s presentations of mounted shock combat with couched lance. Out of 32 battle scenes in the manuscript only 8 scenes contain images with mounted shock attacks, which proves the unique nature of this technique. Each scene depicts an individual, rather than a collective use of this technique. Such proportions and form of visual narration confirm the exclusivity of this battle technique, and its effectiveness in personal collisions, which supports John France’s conclusions. The program of miniatures’ visual narration in small details corresponds to the battles’ narrations from the XIII century text sources written in popular languages (chansons de gestes and rhymed and prose chroniques). The following conclusion is made: the probability of the Morgan Testament as a historical source for warfare reconstruction is closely linked to the probability of the whole body of such text sources and cannot be considered in isolation. The military authenticity of the texts quoted above and the competence of their authors and recipients in the military affair are beyond doubt, and, therefore, the miniatures of the Bible of Morgan can help recognize presentations of a mounted shock combat with couched lance as correct and accurate as regards to the Middle Ages warfare realities in 13th century.

The legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table is immemorial. The heroic knights and their king’s tales contribute western society a great literature that is still well- known today. King Arthur along with the theme of chivalry greatly impacted not only western civilization, but all of society throughout the centuries. King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have been around for thousands of years but are only legends. The first reference to King Arthur was in the Historia Brittonum written by Nennius a Welsh monk around 830A.D. The fascinating legends however did not come until 1133 A.D in the work Historia Regum Britaniae written by a Welsh cleric, Geoffrey of Monmouth. His work was actually meant to be a historical document, but over time many other writers added on fictional tales. The Round Table was added in 1155 A.D by a French poet Maistre Wace. Both the English and French cycles of Arthurian Legend are controlled by three inter-related themes

This article rethinks the importance played by Romanitas in the thought and imagination of early Duecento Italian civic knights. The starting point is the household inventory of a knight and civic ...

The article is devoted to the oldest Italian illustrated fencing manual as of the beginning of the 15 th century entitled “Fior di Battaglia” (“the Flower of Battle”). The author, a North-Italian nobleman Fiore dei Liberi da Premariacco, was born in the middle of the 14 th century and studied martial arts from his early years throughout Western Europe. His manual consists of a series of dynamic drawings, presenting the highly sophisticated system of gestures or body movements necessary to use various kinds of melee weapons (swords, daggers, poll-axes, and spears) in mounted and unmounted close combat. Fiori operated within the frames of firmly established pan-European medieval martial arts tradition. His advice concerned both tournament duels (called “combatter in Sbarra”) and far less ritualized forms of armed combat: war, battle and duel. The main purpose of this article is to analyse Fiore’s manual as a historical source for studying chivalric melee weapons martial techniques, to define their characteristic features and to build understanding of their efficiency. “The Flower of Battle” clearly demonstrates that chivalry in the second half of the 14 th century and the first decades of the 15 th century continued ignoring missile weapons and distant techniques in favour of close combat tradition. The latter required from a noble combatant a fairly wide range of fighting skills, ranging from hand-to-hand and unarmed combat to complicated fencing evolutions on foot and on horseback, and finally, the special psychological training that Fiore called "militancy" (“valente”). In a battle, no matter how noble and honorable it might seem, no courtesy was expected from a knight. On the contrary, any martial technique which potentially might bring victory for a combatant, followed by honour, fame and benefit, was regarded appropriate and acceptable.

This chapter focuses primarily on Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819) and the novels—including Scott’s subsequent crusading fictions—that paid tribute to it through their engagement with roughly the same period of English history. In the hands of writers such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Charles Kingsley, the historical novel after Scott tended to present the Norman invasion as an enduringly formative moment in the making of modern imperial Britain. Popular fictions by Charlotte Yonge and G. A. Henty, composed for child readers, were similarly inspired by Scott, though in their reductive rewriting of Ivanhoe they further contributed to Scott’s ‘descent to the school-room’. Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Black Arrow (1883), by contrast, I will argue in conclusion, recovers the playfully reflexive scepticism of Ivanhoe and detaches the adolescence of its confused hero from any idea of an analogous national emergence.

The paper focuses on the iconic chivalric formal combat that took place in Bretagne on March 26th, 1351, during the War of the Breton Succession. Conflicts between the French and English small castles of Josselin and Ploermel were resolved in a duel between thirty Montfortist knights led by Robert Bemborough, and thirty supporters of Charles de Blois led by Jean de Beaumanoir. Thirty fighters by each side clashed in fierce unmounted melee. Victory of French party had not any tactical impact upon the war, but took air far beyond of the Duchy of Brittany as exemplary deed of arms. The article aims to investigate martial practices and tools of combat and its receptions in texts and images of the Hundred Years War period. Another discussing question is the Combat of Thirty’s reproduction in East-Central Europe – the battle of Koronovo (October 10th, 1410), which has striking similarities with conflict between Josselin and Ploermel. “Flos duellatorum”, illustrated fighting manual of north Italian master Fiore dei Liberi are exploring for research of fighting techniques with Combat of Thirty’s principal weapons: lance, sword, pollaxe, and dagger. I express my deep gratitude to Professor Steven Muhlberger for giving me opportunity to acquaint with updated version of his article on the Combat of Thirty. Key words: formal combat, chivalry, European arms and armour in 14th century, medieval fighting manuals.

This article examines two explorations of the theory expounded in Lord Bolingbroke's The Idea of a Patriot King (written 1738, published 1749), Gilbert West's 1742 dramatic poem The Institution of ...

CHIVALRIC FRIENDSHIP IN FRENCH MEDIEVAL LITERATUREThe emergence in the Middle Ages of literature in the vernacular paralleled the emergence of the new, lay social elite — the chivalry. The new literature did not so much reflect as it shaped the attitudes and the axiological system embraced by medieval knights. This fact has been recognized by historians, however they seem to take atoo homogenic view of various narrative forms of ver­nacular literature. Thus, the article is an attempt to identify some crucial differences between how the two key literary genres of the times — chanson de geste and romance — represent the values crucial to the medieval knight. Chanson de geste praises communal values, and the tale’s hero, rather than an individual knight, is ablood-related family of which he is an integral member. His world is founded on values such as family solidarity and asense of responsibility for the family’s well-being. The romance, on the other hand, champions an individualistic hero, seen in isolation from his ancestral context. In the romance it is friendship, born of asense of shared social mission, that represents human relationships. Admittedly, friendship does play acertain role in the world of chanson de geste, and so do the ancestral ties in the romance. However, their role in either case is disproportionately smaller and, occasionally, both are represented unfavorably. Unlike chanson de geste and the romance, 13th century mystical roman in prose questions the value of both friendship and ancestral ties, unless they are founded on exemplary religiosity.

On Good Friday, 1626, Franciscus Quaresmius delivered a sermon in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem calling on King Philip IV of Spain to undertake a crusade to ‘liberate’ the Holy Land. Jerusalem Afflicted: Quaresmius, Spain, and the Idea of a 17th-century Crusade introduces readers to this unique call to arms with the first-ever edition of the work since its publication in 1631. Aside from an annotated English translation of the sermon, this book also includes a series of introductory chapters providing historical context and textual commentary, followed by an anthology of Spanish crusading texts that testify to the persistence of the idea of crusade throughout the 17th century. Quaresmius’ impassioned and thoroughly reasoned plea is expressed through the voice of Jerusalem herself, personified as a woman in bondage. The friar draws on many of the same rhetorical traditions and theological assumptions that first launched the crusading movement at Clermont in 1095, while also bending those traditions to meet the unique concerns of 17th-century geopolitics in Europe and the Mediterranean. Quaresmius depicts the rescue of the Holy City from Turkish abuse as a just and necessary cause. Perhaps more unexpectedly, he also presents Jerusalem as sovereign Spanish territory, boldly calling on Philip as King of Jerusalem and Patron of the Holy Places to embrace his royal duty and reclaim what is rightly his on behalf of the universal faithful. Quaresmius’ early modern call to crusade ultimately helps us rethink the popular assumption that, like the chivalry imagined by Don Quixote, the crusades somehow died along with the middle ages.

In popular imagination few phenomena are as strongly associated with medieval society as knighthood and chivalry. At the same time, and due to a long tradition of differing national perspectives and ideological assumptions, few phenomena have continued to be the object of so much academic debate. In this volume leading scholars explore various aspects of knightly identity, taking into account both commonalities and particularities across Western Europe. Knighthood and Society in the High Middle Ages addresses how, between the eleventh and the early thirteenth centuries, knighthood evolved from a set of skills and a lifestyle that was typical of an emerging elite habitus, into the basis of a consciously expressed and idealised chivalric code of conduct. Chivalry, then, appears in this volume as the result of a process of noble identity formation, in which some five key factors are distinguished: knightly practices, lineage, crusading memories, gender roles, and chivalric didactics.

In 1762, when Richard Hurd (1720–1808) published a small work of historical-literary criticism, this was for him not the start of a long career in literary endeavor or scholarship. While not seeking a career in literary scholarship, Hurd’s two volumes of commentary were hugely successful, going through six editions in just a few years. Thomas Warton (1728–1790) revised his influential Observations on the Fearie Queene of Spenser (1754) after reading Hurd’s third Dialogue, on the Age of Queen Elizabeth. This chapter examines Hurd’s Elizabethan past, in which the monarchy, in the person of Elizabeth, and the nobility were in a balance of political power, while chivalry and romance formed the cultural and literary norms.

Karel (Charlemagne), Elegast, and Eggeric are the three main protagonists of the medieval Dutch epos Karel ende Elegast . Each of them is a knight, but represents different characteristics. The Monarch, the Outlaw, and the Traitor share some chivalric values but present contrasts in their behaviour. This article examines these three characters and their relationships to chivalry. It focuses on the image of chivalry in the epos, and not on the historical aspects of knighthood. As it is one of the first publications in Poland on Middle Dutch texts, it also outlines the chivalric literature in the medieval Low Countries.

‘Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.’ (Leonardo da Vinci) Maurice Keen has given such an accessible introduction to the business of the medieval Court of Chivalry that it is unnecessary to explain the institution to anyone who may pursue this book for the current chapter alone. It will suffice to say that material objects were variously and extensively brought to bear as evidence in just one branch of the court's work: that is, cases in which rights to bear given coats of arms were tried. Of these cases, substantial records survive for just three: Scrope v . Grosvenor, Lovell v . Morley (both initiated in 1385) and Grey v . Hastings (initiated in 1400). Currently, only the first of these is available in print. Keen called the references to objects in the surviving documents ‘iconographical evidence’, which he distinguished from ‘autobiographical evidence’ about people, their actions, situations and so on. In art history, the word ‘iconography’ has technical meanings relating to subject-matter in representational imagery and formal and symbolic paradigms in architecture, so Keen's usage, while perfectly reasonable, will be set aside here. However, his appreciation of the value of material evidence was clear-sighted, and he has written more about it than practically anyone else to date. Notwithstanding Keen's publications, the surviving documentation from the Court of Chivalry's cases is valuable to art historians and others directly engaged with material objects, for reasons which until now have mainly been noticed only incidentally: in order to support arguments about the sociopolitical functions of heraldry. Although this value is manifold, and ultimately depends on the individual scholar's aims, it has two dominant aspects. The first is that the documents record many objects, in various media, which no longer exist. Moreover, they record them in situ in interiors and landscapes which have themselves vanished.6 For anyone not acquainted with it, this data is bound to enrich knowledge of both specific classes of object and the contexts of these objects’ use.

Propaganda and poets Truth is the first casualty of war and it was not surprising that an early step of government was to set up a war propaganda bureau to promote British war aims. Secret conferences were held involving men of letters and poets to see what they could do to underpin the war effort. Housman does not seem to have been recruited; he was not moved to identify himself publicly with pro-war or anti-war groups, or use the war for purposes of self-promotion and self-advancement. It is known that those involved included the Poet Laureate Robert Bridges, Laurence Binyon, G.K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, John Masefield, Owen Seaman, H.G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling. Nor was Housman signatory to The Writers Manifesto in support of the war published as a letter to The Times by Professor Gilbert Murray on 18 September 1914 and signed by most of the same literary luminaries, Granville Barker, Barrie, Bridges, Chesterton, Conan Doyle, Galsworthy, Hardy, Kipling and Masefield. Like Housman, neither G.B. Shaw nor W.B. Yeats (both Irishmen) added their names to the manifesto: The undersigned writers, comprising among them men and women of the most divergent political and social views, some of them having been for years ardent champions of good will towards Germany, and many of them extreme advocates of peace, are nevertheless agreed that Great Britain could not without dishonour have refused to take part in the present war. Gilbert Murray had been chasing Housman for a decision; Housman wrote on 14 October 1914: ‘I suppose I ought to have written, and I am sorry I gave you the trouble of telegraphing. My chief objection was not to the terms of the manifesto but to signing any manifesto at all.’ It was always unlikely that Housman would lend his hand to the simplifications of war propaganda, or deal in the big words – glory, honour and sacrifice – or evoke other big words – patriotism, religion, empire, chivalry or freedom – in the cause of war; his own knowledge and feel for words was too precise and demanding. He was too concerned with meaning; he was not a man to be seized and motivated by irrational emotions.

„The Book of Chivalry” written by Geoffroi de Charny, who was considered the quintessential knight of his age, gives a valuable insight into chivalric culture of knighthood. Unlike many medieval writers on chivalry, de Charny actively participated in tournaments and fought with distinction in numerous engagements during the Hundred Years War, including the battle of Poitiers (1356) where he was killed defending the Oriflamme. His „Book”, primarily intended as a manual for the members of the royal Order of the Star, was implicated in the broader reform programme of King John the Good. De Charny describes the knightly way of life and its requisite virtues as opposed to numerous shortcomings of real life men-at-arms, the chief knightly quality being the „prowess”. Knight is also a men of honour, worth and notable piety who undergoes perilous journeys constantly seeking the opportunity to fight and undertakes incessant hardships in order to bring glory to his name and to secure salvation. "Księga o rycerstwie", napisana przez Godfryda de Charny, uważana za syntetyczny opis sztuki rycerskiej w XIV w., daje cenny wgląd w kulturę rycerskości. Podobnie jak wielu średniowiecznych pisarzy podejmujących temat rycerstwa, de Charny aktywnie uczestniczył w turniejach, walczył z powodzeniem w licznych kampaniach podczas wojny stuletniej, a także w bitwie pod Poitiers (1356), gdzie zginął w obronie Oriflamme. Jego "Księga", pierwotnie przeznaczona jako podręcznik dla członków Królewskiego Zakonu Gwiazdy, została włączona do szerszego programu reform króla Jana Dobrego. De Charny opisuje rycerski styl życia i niezbędne rycerskie cnoty, przeciwstawiające się licznym wyzwaniom prawdziwego życia zbrojnego. Główną rycerską cechą jest męstwo, rycerz jest również człowiekiem honoru, pełnym pobożności, który poddaje się nieustannym podróżom, szukając okazji do walki i podejmując trudy, wysiłek, by przynieść chwałę swojemu imieniu i zapewnić sobie zbawienie.

This article positions Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal alongside chivalric manuals and histories of nobility in order to highlight the ways in which a knight's attendants and companions support his heroism and social status. ( JTS)The knight in medieval England rarely worked alone. Whether he served under a magnate or at the head of a regiment, a knight was almost always a part of a much larger company of men. This is especially true of English knights of the later Middle Ages, whose social roles on and off the battlefield proliferated as time went on. Since at least the thirteenth century, responsibilities in town government kept knights occupied. As literacy spread among the members of England's landed class, so too did knowledge of legal and administrative matters, which allowed knights to serve their king as counselors and functionaries at court; by the middle of the fourteenth century, knights had begun to occupy government posts previously reserved for clerics.1 At home, knights also managed large households and directed many servants who helped maintain the impressive estates of the nobility. With the support of their stewards, many knights cultivated reputations for largess and even drew censure from Thomas Walsingham, who claimed that these nobles were forsaking their swords while training their tongues.2 But, although they took on responsibilities of management removed from battle, medieval knights were, and still are, largely defined through their most visible and spectacular role as bellatores-the armored, mounted warriors who fought for the king. Historians of chivalry have shown that knighthood was indelibly linked with armed combat through at least the end of the fourteenth century.3 And just as the knight's duties at court and at home required that he work as part of a governing body, so too was the knight on the battlefield one man among a company of men. The expansion of the knight's weaponry and armor in the later Middle Ages led to a parallel expansion in the knight's retinue, on whom he depended for support in battle. Even while a knight fought an opponent in single combat on the tournament grounds, a company of squires and attendants helped their employer to victory by looking after his horses, armor, and weapons.4The cooperation between knights, squires, and magnates appears in medieval chivalric manuals as a sign of proper noble behavior. Didactic texts by Ramon Llull in the thirteenth century and Geoffroi de Charny in the fourteenth emphasize knights' responsibility to uphold their own honor even while they also insist that the knights' duties often require working together with other members of the higher and lower nobility.5 These writers approach their pedagogical projects from different angles-Llull focuses heavily on symbolism and interpretation, Charny on more pragmatic concerns- but their texts concur when the writers tell their audiences how to avoid dishonorable behavior in ways that promote reciprocal support. Moreover, cooperation between nobles appears prominently in modern studies of chivalry and nobility.6 In light of the knight's cooperation with other nobles in late medieval England at war, in the household, and on the tournament grounds, it is surprising that a hero's companions should appear so seldom in discussions of the idealized chivalric romances of the time. Members of the English aristocracy had many opportunities to see large companies ride against each other in tournaments during the reign of Richard II, whose love of pageantry and extravagance led him to drain England's coffers in order to fund increasingly elaborate public displays of nobility.7 Nonetheless, Maldwyn Mills insists that chivalric romances center on 'the prowess and fortunes of individual knights, even when they also relate the activities of a large company of such knights at court.'8 Although knights under Richard II fought in immense groups, the romances of the late fourteenth century appear to focus instead on single combat and individual success. …

This chapter discusses precursors for such a group formation. It analyses the extent of the Pre-Raphaelites' success and failure in forming a brotherhood, how they worked divisively against one another, and how this is construed in later descriptions of the movement. The chapter looks at the disunity revealed in their self-imaging, with emphasis on the use of each other in early subject paintings and portraits, and on the differences from the traditional and subsequent forms of self-imaging in the historical avant-garde. In mid-nineteenth-century Britain, groups of artists formed in wilful opposition to a larger more powerful authority were not welcomed by a staid artistic culture heavily dominated by the Royal Academy. Subsequently, historians have tended to make rather large claims for the Brotherhood, linking them to medieval guilds or crusaders banded together in a spirit of chivalry and loyalty for a common cause.

Alchemy allegory and related symbolism battle of Maldon Beaufort, Margaret Caedmon Carol chivalry Cnut dance, dance music drama, vernacular, Dunbar, William earls and earldoms Ely cathedral Franks casket hagiography heptarchy Julian of Norwich liturgy Magna Carta manuscript illumination Morte Arthure, alliterative music - history and theory navy and naval power the owl and the nightingale Piers Plowman prices and wages printing runes satire the seafarer serfs and villeins songs stained glass technology translation and paraphrase vaulting widows and widowhood the wife's lament Wilton Diptych women and the arts.

With the failed crusades, the plague and the papal schism, the fourteenth century inaugurated a period of crisis for the feudal institutions of military, economic and ecclesiastical expansion. In effect the late Middle Ages are characterized by the growth of ethnography within the related genres of geographical literature, ambassadorial reports, mission and even pilgrimage itself. The development of the missionary ideal is perhaps the most obvious expression of the shift of emphasis and helps in understanding the extent to which the crisis of the traditional paradigms of pilgrimage and crusade led to rationalist ideologies and to historical narrative practices within what, essentially, were religious visions. Throughout the late medieval period, mission and crusade were interrelated, rather than opposed to each other, as ideologies of religious travel. Despite the continuing importance of the traditional genres of pilgrimage and chivalry, the transition from occasional to systematic empiricism in travel literature first took place in the more practical field of political reportage.

A review of Elizabeth Morrison and Zrinka Stahuljak's volume, The Adventures of Gillion de Trazegnies: Chivalry and Romance in the Medieval East (2015).

espanolLa finalidad de este articulo es doble. Por un lado pretendemos ahondar en la cuestion de la tradicion de los precedentes clasicos de la leyenda medieval de la campana de Huesca comparando entre si tres tradiciones, la griega, la romana y la medieval, que se extienden desde el siglo V a. C. hasta el siglo XIV, tomando como termino ad quem la llamada Cronica Pinatense . La comparacion entre esas tradiciones se establecera a partir de los testimonios que de ellas nos han llegado en torno a cuatro puntos: la peticion de consejo, circunstancias en torno al consejo, las explicaciones del mensajero al demandante del consejo y, por ultimo, la interpretacion del consejo por el demandante y su puesta en practica. Por otro lado, intentaremos establecer una nueva fuente en su fase medieval diferente a la postulada hasta ahora. Dicha fuente esta relacionada con los manuales de caballeria, herederos de los libros de estratagemas EnglishThis article has a double purpose. On the one hand, it aims to deepen into the tradition of the classic precedents of the legend of the bell of Huesca by comparing three traditions about the topic: Greek, Roman and medieval, all of them between the 5 th century b.C. until the 14 th century AD. (the Cronica Pinatense will be the terminus ad quem in the medieval tradition), and the evidences existing about them. Four points in these traditions have been compared: the request of advice, the circumstances in which the advice is given, the explanations that the messenger offers to the claimant of the advice and, finally, the interpretation of the advice. On the other hand, the paper aims to offer a new source for the medieval tradition. This new source is related to chivalry guidebooks, in the tradition of the stratagy books

This paper aims to expose the theme of chivalry in the Cantigas de Santa Maria , compiled at the court of King Alfonso X the Wise (1221-1284). The purpose of this study is to approach the following topics: the spiritual and amorous vassalage service of the knight towards the lady and values of chastity, fidelity and faith, present in the selected corpus (eight songs), which deals with the aforementioned issues, examining not only the symbolism of the chivalry, but also the devotion to the Virgin, and how she helps the knight’s religiosity and obedience, who honors the ritual accolade’s oath and the weapons’ watch, rites which are celebrated in the Church. Keywords: Cantigas de Santa Maria ; Alfonso X; chivalry; trovadorism; chivalric romance.

Shakespeare's Elizabethan acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, is not known to have staged any play centering on Arthurian heroes. This is not the case with the company's rivals, the Lord Admiral's Players. The Admiral's not only performed the Arthurian romances Chinon of England (1596) and Trystram of Lyons (1599), but during the period of Shakespeare's second Henriad they mounted their own cycle of chronicle plays-Vortiger (1596), Uther Pendragon (1597), The Lyfe and Death of Arthur, King of England (1598)-a historical trilogy that used Arthurian history as a lense through which to explore political questions of succession and the dangers of Catholic intervention from abroad. (PWW)Among the many lost plays identified by title in the Elizabethan diary of Phillip Henslowe are at least five that relate to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. They are (ordered chronologically as they appear in The Diary) 'Chinon of England' (1595/6), 'Vortiger' (1596), 'Uther Pendragon' (1597), 'The Lyfe and Death of Arthur, King of England,' (1598) and 'Trystram of Lyons' (1599).1 (There is another title, 'Hengist,' recorded once in June 1597, but this is probably the same play as 'Vortiger'). No scholar, to my knowledge, has seriously commented on these plays together. Typically Arthurian and early drama studies pause to mention some or all of them, then follow with 'Nothing whatever is known of this piece' or some such phrase.2In the following discussion, I want to argue, first of all, that the Admiral's Arthurian plays of the 1590s were part of the widespread popularity and political interest in what we might call 'Arthurianism,'3 which may have peaked in the last decade of the sixteenth century; certainly the debate over Arthur's historicity appears to have been highly intense around this time. Secondly, the three middle plays in this group-'Vortiger,' 'Uther Pendragon,' and Arthur'-constitute a series of closely related, historically sequenced chronicle plays, perhaps even a historical cycle (with obvious parallels to Shakespeare's late medieval histories), which suggests, possibly, engagement with political and religious issues that became associated with Arthurian narrative in late Elizabethan England. I conclude the discussion with some reflections on Shakespeare and King Arthur.IThe stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were common knowledge throughout English society from the elite quarters of the royal court to the streets of London. This is beyond dispute.4 Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that King Arthur had never been more popular. This was partly due to royal propaganda via pageantry, plays, and print, which touted the Tudors' direct regal descent from King Arthur and promoted his reign as a model of imperial majesty, martial glory, and apostolic religion exempt from papal jurisdiction; and it was partly due to the popular consumption of romances, chapbooks, songs, and ballads (many derivative of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur) which celebrate the glorious tales of romance and adventure surrounding Uther Pendragon, Lancelot, Tristram, and the other knights. It has long been recognized that the revival of medieval chivalry found its most lavish and widely disseminated expression during Elizabeth's reign at the Accession Day Tilts held on the Queen's coronation day of November 17 on the grounds of Whitehall; this enormously popular festival, attended by thousands, turned explicitly Arthurian in the 1590s, as I will explain later. Even before Elizabeth's reign, Arthurian pageantry had filtered down to civic revels, as demonstrated by the annual 'King Arthur's Show' in which London tradesmen and dignitaries, known as 'The Order of Prince Arthur,' dressed up as the Knights of the Round Table, paraded through London, and engaged in an archery competition at Mile's End Green on the outskirts of the city. It was to this that Justice Shallow in 2 Henry IV refers when he boasts about his impersonation of Sir Dagonet (Malory's 'fool' at the Round Table) in 'Arthur's show. …