For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-190-crystal-and-silver-in-a-shakespearean-accent-with-ben-crystal

To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

In today’s episode we have another audiobook/interview mashup!

The Paradoxes of Defence Audiobook Project involved me hiring two narrators to record George Silver’s 1599 book, Paradoxes of Defence. Ben Crystal is a Shakespearean actor, specialising in original pronunciation, and Jonathan Hartman is a modern dramatic actor who narrates in modern English. Renowned historical harpist Andrew Lawrence-King provides the musical punctuation.

George Silver, an English gentleman, was appalled at the influx of Italian rapier fencing into England, and set out his arguments in favour of the traditional English weapons. He rails against the fashionable new style on the grounds that it is both dangerous to the practitioners, and of no use in warfare.

Whether he was right or wrong, history was against him and the fashionable Italian rapier took over. But his work offers a vital window into the theory and practice of martial arts in England in Tudor times, and ironically provides much of what we know about several Italian rapier masters: Rocco Bonetti, Vincentio Saviolo, and Jeronimo Saviolo.

This podcast episode contains a couple of sample chapters of the audiobook read in original pronunciation by Ben Crystal, which is then followed by my interview with Ben, from episode 58. Here’s a bit more information about the interview:

Ben Crystal is an actor, author, producer, and explorer of original practices in Shakespeare rehearsal and production. In this episode we talk about Ben’s work in exploring how actors would have rehearsed, staged, and performed Shakespeare’s plays in the 16th century, and how the original rhymes and pronunciation would have sounded. It makes for a completely different experience to what we think of as “Shakespearean” in modern times. Even if you aren’t into Shakespeare this is a fascinating conversation about theatre, memory, language, and of course, swords.

Which leads us on to George Silver. Find out what Ben thinks of Silver and whether he would have wanted to go to the pub with him. For those of you unaware of our project, in 1599 George Silver published his Paradoxes of Defence, offering a window into the Tudor and medieval martial arts as practiced in England.

You can find the audiobook at guywindsor.net/silver

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-189-federations-forests-and-body-awareness-with-marine-beaumel

To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Marine Beaumel is a historical martial arts instructor best known for her work with Royal Armouries Manuscript 1.33 Sword and Buckler. She started her historical martial arts career in Toulouse before moving to Finland, like all sensible people, where she co-founded the Tampere HEMA club. She is a member of the board of the French Federation of Historical European Martial Arts. And she has served on the executive board of the International Federation of Historical European Martial Arts.

We talk a bit about what these federations are and how they help, and move on to talk about Marine’s master’s in plant science and the fascinating ways that plants can be used to help restore the environment and farm more sustainably.

Here is a picture of Marine’s favourite plant, the Judas Tree (Cercis Siliquastrum):

Once Marine has finished her Master’s thesis, she plans to work on a project for the French Federation to improve HEMA practitioners’ body awareness and understanding of how to prevent injury. The project will produce a series of leaflets to give people a basic overview, rather than going into massive depth and detail on these topics. Guy is working on a similar project, called Jumppa, to cover prehab and conditioning for historical martial artists. So, look out for both of those in a few months’ time.

Marine is a fan of fencing with sharps and towards the interview we talk about the benefits of training with sharps, but also the challenges of working with people who don’t seem to have any awareness of the danger of having a very pointy sword in the vicinity of their face.

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/vadi-and-the-four-virtues-of-sword-making-with-eleonora-rebecchi/

To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Today’s episode is a bit different to the usual format, as we have both a delightful sample from an audiobook and a related interview.

I have created an audiobook of Philippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi. It comes in three parts: 1. My friend, Eleonora Rebecchi (more on her later) has read Vadi’s words in mellifluous Italian. 2. I have read my translation in a rather more clunky English. 3. There’s a combined version, with the Italian chapter followed by its translation in English. Find the audiobook and more details here:

https://swordschool.shop/products/de-arte-gladiatoria-dimicandi-audiobook

This podcast episode contains a couple of sample chapters of the audiobook in both Italian and English, and it’s followed by a repeat of my interview with Eleanora Rebecchi (episode 129, October 2022). Here are the show notes for the interview:

Eleonora Rebecchi is the creative director at Malleus Martialis, producer of excellent training swords, as well as a practising historical fencer and a graphic artist who has done some lovely covers for Guy. She is also a classically trained singer, which you’ll get to hear in this episode.

We talk about how Eleanora and her partner Rodolfo got into designing swords for a living, what goes into the design process, and what qualities a business selling swords needs.

Eleonora explains how the aesthetics, ergonomics and dynamics of a sword fit together, which is demonstrated by Guy’s longsword.

Here is the unboxing video so you can see what he means: https://vimeo.com/722218823