© 2009 Richard Pallaziol, Weapons of Choice ™- all rights reserved
In portraying characters of other times, we run into the problem of how to recreate the style of the period. Not only to breathe life into the characters we portray, but also to convince the audience that they are witnessing a slice of history come to life. Too often, the actors views this as simply adding on mannerisms that they have been told are right for the time, without understanding why the character would have moved or even stood in a certain way. So in addition to having the right costume for the character, the actor needs to have some understanding of the way that people viewed themselves and the world they lived in. The study of how the external aspects of a people develop out of the historic underpinnings in which they lived is called period style. For the purpose of this book, we’ll focus specifically on how a society’s worldview influenced its expression of violence.
Naturally, we’ll be working with broad generalities. Specific trends unique to a given decade, class, or region may not be covered here, even though they may be critical to the production you’re working on. Reading this chapter is not a substitute for doing your own research. But understanding the broad patterns of behavior is the first step toward appreciating—and accurately portraying—the variations.
This section concentrates on the periods and cultures most commonly seen on stage in the United States. While a deep study of Jivaro headhunters may be fascinating, our focus here is necessarily Eurocentric.
For deeper research, look for primary sources from the era you’re studying: newspapers, photographs, diaries, and especially visual art. But be careful. A painting about an event in 1252 but created in 1544 may reveal more about the 16th century than the 13th.. Also keep in mind that the artists may have their own idiosyncratic habits and may not be expert in warfare or period style. The Bayeux Tapestry, for example, was likely made just a decade after the Norman Conquest of 1066, but contains so many inaccuracies that it cannot be reliably used as a guide for how soldiers of the period fought or dressed.
Before we start, it is important to remember that whenever we try to re-create another culture or period on stage, we not only have to mimic those attributes which may be different from our own, but remove the distinctly modern. Our modern behaviors must not only be set aside to make room for the styles of another era—they must be recognized first, which is often the harder task. Many contemporary habits are so deeply ingrained that we don’t even notice them. That’s why, even in major film productions, we occasionally get performances where a medieval outlaw walks and talks like a weekend camper, or a powdered French courtier broods like a bored surfer. I mean—we don’t want a repeat of Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or Keanu Reeves in Dangerous Liaisons, right?
Below are four of the most common and disruptive modern mannerisms that interfere with building an effective period or character style::
- Voice – In the late twentieth and now twenty-first century we have become a more visual and less verbal society. Earlier cultures had the patience—and the auditory skill—to follow long speeches and detailed stories, even if they were illiterate. Rich vocabulary and rapid, varied speech were common even among the uneducated. By contrast, our modern speech is largely monosyllabic or bi-syllabic, built from truncated phrases and simple sentence structures. With limited inflection, narrow pitch range, and underdeveloped expressive nuance, even today’s university graduates might have been seen in earlier eras as slow-witted.
- Posture/Movement – Our daily normal stances and seated positions, unconsciously designed to make us disappear in a crowd, are best described as apologetic. They give the appearance of trying to withdraw from a room, seeming fearful of standing out and being noticed. Prior peoples had an open way of standing or sitting that freed them up to the entire space they were in, whether in or out of doors. A grouping of modern people by comparison usually looks as though they are each afraid that someone will call on them to perform some onerous task.
- Relaxation – We moderns confuse relaxing with collapsing; we slump into a chair, rolling the shoulders inward and retreating from the room. Earlier people could rest without withdrawing—they stayed present and engaged even in repose.
- Focus – More subtle is where we moderns direct our focus, not only where we look but how far we stretch our perception and our “energy”. We no longer enter and “take” all corners of a room with our presence. Outdoors we tend to look down and away from others, keeping our “essence” within a narrow circle a mere few feet around our bodies, almost as though we have something to be ashamed of.
These four aspects of our current body language and expression show up any time you work with modern actors. They are especially the hallmarks of young, untrained American actors, so working to clear these habits can improve the general polish of performances in any show, period piece or not.
Many times for one reason or another a director will try to set a play in what is variously called “no-period”, “universal”, “eclectic” (or, more honestly, “no budget”). When confronted with this kind of aesthetic ambiguity, actors would be especially wise to double down on the four fundamentals: voice, posture, relaxation, and focus.
I should be fair and point out that often the rationale for trying to set a play in “no period” is due to a laudable effort to strip away all of the time-sensitive cues that allow an audience to pigeonhole a work of art, separating themselves from the world of the play—no corsets to dismiss as irrelevant, no dialects to mark as foreign. By attempting a nonspecific period look, the hope is to present the play in a pure form, devoid of considerations of time or place. Laudable, but ultimately futile.
Period style is inescapable. Every modern piece is still rooted in its time. Playwrights, directors, and actors are all products of their own histories, and those histories manifest—consciously or not—onstage. Even productions on bare stages, with actors in black and hair slicked back, still announce their time of origin. Watch a filmed version of such a performance, and you can usually date it within a decade. A hundred subtle cues—speech patterns, movement habits, posture, even how silence is used—shout out the when and where of every performance.
How this chapter is set-up
Where applicable—especially in examining Western civilizations—each section in this chapter will be organized around four key categories:
Politics/Economics – an overview of the trends which place the individual in the larger society.
We make broad assumptions on what is “normal” based on the society in which we have been raised. We Americans especially have a hard time understanding the points of view that exist in other countries, let alone other periods in time. But a people’s daily behavior, values, and physical expression all grow from deeper roots: their understanding of the universe, their relationship to power, religion, and labor. To portray a character from another time, one must begin by understanding the assumptions that shaped that character’s world..
Fashion/Style/Manners – the expectation of the individual when in the company of his peers.
For our purposes we are defining fashion in the broader sense, not as the seasonal trends that are on display at Bloomingdale’s, or a review of what has come down the runway in Paris. Rather, we’re looking for the longer baseline for “normality” in any given culture or subculture. One can dress away from that baseline and be considered abnormal, or blend in with it and be largely accepted by your subculture. In that sense, no one is more “fashion conscious” than the 14 year-old boy on the first day of the new school year. Every item of his couture is carefully calibrated to project the right image. Fashion, at its core, is social armor.
Clothing is an outward manifestation of the face we give to the world, but is also a reflection of how we feel about ourselves. Clothes may not “make the man”, but it reflects something of the thought process that both selected the items for purchase, and then selected which items would be worn on a particular day. Inside anyone’s closet the full range of articles to be worn for leisure, for formal occasions, for various social occasions, etc., represent the complete boundary of that person’s self image. Indeed, we can learn volumes about someone by noticing what is not in his closet. Then, from that selection of the possible, each person daily selects what representation of himself he chooses to show to the world. The choice may not be conscious, but will reflect upbringing, personality, mood, social level, and aspirations.
Every shift in the cultural norm also includes a shift in the clothing choices that we make. Rarely are these new choices thought of as being made for their own sake, but rather as a break from the “old-fashioned” past. Every age thinks of itself as finally shedding the artificial restrictions of their forebears and finally embracing what is “modern”. A good example comes from the widespread acceptance of a relatively new garment – blue jeans. These thick denim trousers are designed as work-clothes in job sties where regular fabric would quickly tear or simply wear out. In the 1960’s, during the youth movement, blue jeans were worn as a way of self-identifying with the working class – a kind of “anti-uniform”. So intimately was this garment associated with the counterculture that it became almost part of the uniform of anyone under thirty, and eventually adopted across all ages and classes. Today, jeans are worn casually, professionally, and even formally, depending on the context.
If you ask someone why they decide to wear their jeans on any particular day, the answer is always the same: “they’re comfortable”. But we all know that they really aren’t, not when compared to regular slacks. Denim fabric is tight, restrictive, doesn’t stretch with movement. But we do feel comfortable in them. This has nothing to do with the qualities of the garments themselves. What we mean is that we feel comfortable in ourselves when we wear them. It’s psychological comfort, not physical ease. In that sense, there is little difference between a modern American in jeans and a 16th-century Elizabethan man in a slashed jerkin and pumpkin breeches. The “comfort” is social. It’s identity.
The same is true of the way we stand, walk, and speak. The choices are less obvious and subconscious, and for that reason more telling.
Civilian Conflict – or, fighting off the battlefield.
This explores the weapons and fighting styles used in non-military settings—by citizens, nobles, and others outside the structured ranks of an army. While military weaponry tends to evolve in response to technological advancement and battlefield necessity, civilian arms are shaped far more by custom, fashion, legality, and social expectation.
From tavern brawls and street ambushes to matters of personal defense or honor, the nature of civilian conflict varies widely—but it is always defined by the environment in which it occurs. Public space, reputation, status, and access to weapons all play a role in how violence is enacted and received.. Civilian fighting styles, therefore, tend to be more personal, performative, and bound by ritual—or, alternately, more improvisational and concealed, depending on the time and place.
Warfare – The weapons and methods of the soldier.
The weapons mentioned in each section are meant to only give a quick overview of the most common weapons to which most combatants would have had access. The emphasis is on the tools and tactics that most combatants would have actually used—not just those that were newly invented. There is often quite a lag time between development of a weapon and its acceptance by the intended users. (Practical jetpacks have been around since 1960, and were invented back in WWII, but you still don’t see people commuting to work in them.) Naturally, when designing a show, it is important to remember that as new weapons are invented, the older styles don’t simply disappear, but often continue to be used for several generations.
Since most plays center on the soldier confronting another soldier on the battlefield, this section will focus on land combatants. With few exceptions, the focus here will be on land fighters, not sailors or aviators. Interestingly, most armed confrontations throughout history are centered on the taking of a city or other fortified position, but there will be no discussion here on siege warfare, nor of bombardment. Those topics don’t provide enough helpful material for the actor trying to create a character. We are interested here in the frontline fighter.
Frontline soldiers throughout history have had to face the same basic challenge – attempting to kill other human beings while putting themselves in direct and immediate danger of being killed. It shouldn’t be surprising that the response has been universally similar. Fear is pervasive. Training and experience can help deal with it, but it never disappears – everyone is afraid. The immediate motivation to stay in that madness always comes down to the camaraderie built between soldiers (“you don’t fight for your country; you fight for your buddy”). Other powerful motivations are often based on appeals to elitism (“the Few, the Proud, the Marines”) and also on precedent (what other soldiers have done in the past). These ideals—loyalty, pride, tradition, and heroism—form a powerful mix that binds a soldier to the line, even in the face of overwhelming fear.
Not all soldiers in the same army will fight in the same way, and their use in battle is traditionally prescribed by the best attribute which they bring as a unit onto the field. Broadly speaking, they fall into two primary categories—infantry (foot soldiers) and cavalry (mounted troops)—each of which can be divided into heavy and light units. Although any unit might find itself fighting against any part of an opposing army, each has certain inherent strengths and weaknesses that play an important role in how a battle is fought:
• Heavy Infantry – The basic foot soldier, the grunt, the dog-face. It is his job to take the battlefield. Soldier to soldier fighting is usually borne by the heavy infantry. He is effective when working as part of a large controlled group and while protected with armor and heavy weapons. Their strength lies in control and discipline, not speed. While relatively slow and vulnerable to harassment, they are the backbone of any traditional army. A battle isn’t truly won until the heavy infantry has taken and held the ground. Heavy infantry can normally defend itself against heavy cavalry, but can be attacked successfully by the hit-and-run tactics of light infantry or light cavalry.
• Light Infantry – This is another foot soldier, but lightly armored for better mobility, and instead of going toe-to-toe with the enemy he has some sort of longer distance [projectile] weapon. His job is to use his mobility to stay just outside of the fight, all the while using his primary weapon to attack and weaken the opposing heavy infantry. Light infantry can be used to defend against the light cavalry, but can be attacked by heavy cavalry.
• Heavy Cavalry – The horseman. Heavy cavalry uses the greatest available method of battle transportation and combines it with heavy armor and a close-in [“shock”] weapon. He can quickly take advantage of battlefield disorganization to move in and strike, although a united heavy infantry can hold him off. Heavy cavalry can rout out light infantry, but is easily attacked by light cavalry.
• Light Cavalry – The fastest troops on the field, light cavalry sacrifice armor and heavy weapons for speed and agility. Their primary tactic is mobile ranged attack—striking from a distance while avoiding entanglement. Think of mounted archers or skirmishers who can harass both infantry and heavy cavalry from beyond reach. Their greatest strength is evasion. However, they are easily countered by light infantry that can deny them space.
Each type of unit has its own weapon system, distinct training, and specialized combat style. Understanding these differences can help the actor embody the physicality, confidence, and vulnerability specific to the character’s role in war.
The Types of War
War is the exercise of physical violence between two politically recognizable groups. While the reasons for war are complex and varied, our concern here is not why wars are fought, but how.
To that end, we’ll be using a few broad terms and loose definitions to categorize different forms of warfare as they’ve appeared throughout history. This framework is neither exhaustive nor definitive—it isn’t meant for military historians—but it will serve our purpose: to help actors understand how various societies have conducted their battles, and what that means for those who fight them.
War has taken many forms throughout history—shaped by culture, resources, and political aims. Below are five broad categories that help us understand how societies have fought. These are loose classifications, not rigid definitions, and they often overlap. One form is not necessarily less violent than another.
- Raiding – A sudden surprise attack on an unsuspecting settlement – typically with the goal of stealing goods or livestock, capturing people, or driving off the defenders. Less common, but historically present, is the raid with intent of annihilation or extinction of the settlement.
- Ritual – Combat carried out according to a formalized set of actions or rules. Often, the outcome is determined without full-scale fighting; many participants may never come to blows. Such warfare serves social, political, or religious functions beyond pure military gain.
- Champion – Single combat between high-ranking or representative warriors from opposing sides. In some cultures, the outcome was accepted as binding for both groups. In others, it served more as a dramatic prelude. Champion warfare could be used within ritual combat or as part of a larger decisive battle.
- Decisive – The pitched battle. All forces are brought to bear with the purpose of killing as many of the enemy as possible in order to secure victory. This is the model most familiar to us today, and the one most often portrayed on stage and screen. Indeed, most people in the world today are unaware of any other style of warfare.
- Provocative – Attacks that are often symbolic, psychological, or designed to provoke a broader political or military response. In the modern era, we are witnessing a shift away from large-scale decisive battles toward more asymmetric, targeted forms of conflict.
For the actor, these categories of warfare aren’t about military theory—they’re about embodiment. A soldier raised in a culture of ritualized combat will carry themselves differently than one trained for brutal, decisive engagements. A raider expects to strike and flee. A champion steps forward in front of all eyes. A conscript in a modern provocative war may never meet the enemy face to face, yet still carries the fear of sudden retaliation. The kind of war a character is trained for—or believes they are fighting—shapes not just their fighting style, but their posture, focus, and inner rhythm. Understand the war, and you begin to understand the warrior.
These differing styles are not mutually exclusive, and one style is not necessarily less bloody than another. In the West—ever since the time of the ancient Greeks—we have tended to imagine war exclusively as decisive battle. Yet Champion warfare, though almost nonexistent in actual Western history, has become a common convention in theatrical and cinematic depictions. So pervasive is the trope that both ancient and modern audiences genuinely believe a single duel can decide the outcome of an entire war. Our literature and entertainment have ingrained this narrative so deeply that we see it not only as dramatic, but as plausible.
From David and Goliath to Achilles and Hector, from Maximus and Commodus in Gladiator to Harry Potter and Voldemort, the belief persists: that one hero’s victory is the turning point of history. Shakespeare reinforced this idea in Henry IV, Part I, where the duel between Hal and Hotspur takes center stage. Though the larger battle still rages, the audience is invited to feel that its true outcome hinges on the clash between these two men.
Onstage, it’s brilliant storytelling. But in reality, battles are not decided by the clash of two individuals—but by logistics, attrition, terrain, and disease.
What some sociologists refer to as “primitive war” is usually a blend of raiding, ritual, and champion-based conflict. These fighting styles tend to emphasize missile weapons (arrows, slings, and thrown spears), limited hand-to-hand combat, and strategic retreat when needed. The goal is often to demonstrate dominance, provoke response, or settle disputes—not necessarily to annihilate the enemy.
By contrast, the Western tradition—particularly since ancient Greece—has elevated the concept of “fighting to the last man” as a hallmark of honor. Yet when we strip away the stories we’ve been told, the idea of dying in place—fighting to the last man—rarely comes from personal heroism alone. It is more often the result of coercion, belief systems, or stories written long after the dust has settled.
Outside of the West—and with some exceptions, such as certain Japanese warrior traditions—few cultures have treated death in battle as a moral ideal. Most have valued survival, withdrawal, or the avoidance of unnecessary loss. The myth of the noble last stand tells us much more about the values of those who tell the story than the experiences of those who lived—or died—through it.
When portraying soldiers or warriors onstage, it is helpful to remember that the most salient features of battle have changed very little in the large sweep of time. Fear is the constant companion of the warrior, the mouth going dry, the heart racing, the urge to void the bladder all too commonly unsuccessfully controlled. Universal conscription was only seen in a small blip in history, primarily during the French Revolution and the wars of the 20th century. Both before and after, warring was primarily the activity of a few powerful leaders and a large collection of the poor and powerless. Up until past century, far more soldiers died of disease and hunger than of wounds sustained in battle. And when battle did engage, soldiers fought not for king and county, but for their fellow soldiers: the handful of men and women with whom they ate, slept, and shared every privation.
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Pre-History [Before Metal Technology]
Obviously anything that we might say about the earliest cultures is purely based on surmise, but the best thinking on the subject suggests that personal disagreements as well as tribal conflicts were found even at the first stages of human development. Indeed, even baboons and chimps will attack other “tribes”. So it is very likely that the early hominids did the same, and used stones and sharpened sticks, progressing to the stone ax, and for some societies the sling and bow and arrow.
It has until recent years been common in anthropology to take a look at previously isolated but still living “untouched” tribal groups and assume that they provide a glimpse into the lifestyles of the earliest humans. Unfortunately, it has become apparent that in almost all cases, these primitive tribes have been found to have not had a completely isolated lineage. Most were originally part of larger bronze-aged (and in Africa, even steel-aged) kingdoms. When the larger units fragmented, some of the smallest clans drifted off to the outskirts of the kingdom, slowly reverting to a simpler and impoverished state. They can hardly be considered to be representative of an “unspoiled” past. How the earliest humans regulated their societies and fought their battles must still be largely left to guesswork.
Permit a slight digression. It is usually assumed that warfare began as an extension of hunting, as both are concerned with killing. Most anthropologists are now questioning that position. Hunting large game for food throughout the world usually has had the following characteristics: tracking a herd, identifying an easy target, separating it from the group, allowing the group to disperse while the individual target is trapped and killed.
Battles are another thing entirely. The group to be attacked has a home location which is well known, the specific target is the strongest individual instead of the weakest, and then the target is killed or separated before the main objective can be reached, which is the containment of the group to either capture or kill as many as possible. These are not the skills learned by hunter/gatherers, who actually do very poorly in traditional battles. No, these battle skills seem far more closely related to those involved in the domestication of herd animals. A group of farmer/pastoralists that can surround and contain a herd, isolate and capture its alpha leader, and then dominate the remaining members has learned all of the basics of battle. Also, hunting best takes place with few members. Every additional member added to the hunting party increases the chance of spooking the quarry without increasing the chance of success. Capturing and controlling a herd, on the other hand, can use all of the available manpower working in concerted union. This requires discipline and a certain command structure, and so is also excellent training for war.
Additionally, weapons development and construction for hunter/gather societies are very simple, and usually the spear heads, arrowheads and knives are made of stone, flint, or obsidian. Nothing more is really needed to bring down even large game. Farmers, on the other hand, need much stronger tools in order to break and till the soil. Hoes must be made of metal, so as societies move to agriculture they need to invent new technologies to create strong metal tools. When primary arable land becomes scarce, ever stronger tools are needed to work ever tougher soil. These same tools and materials, only slightly modified, are the ones we see used as weapons on the battlefield.
The hunter/gatherer usually does not consider land to be ownable in the Western sense. Indeed, it is most often a part of his mythos that the natural and spiritual world are indivisible, and that one can no more possess a patch of ground than one can own a portion of sky. But a plot of land cultivated for food production becomes valuable if for no other reason than one has invested a year’s worth of time in order to produce a single harvest. Though the hunter/gatherer may prefer certain areas over others in his quest for food, strategic retreats to other zones do not impose a severe hardship to him. The farmer is much more likely to think of his land as worth fighting for.
This is not to say that agriculture created war. Hunter/gatherer societies were just as capable of killing their neighbors as brutally as any modern army can. It matters not whether the society was technologically primitive or advanced nor what type of social structure they followed, nor where or when those societies existed. Throughout time and geography, every society has either fed or had to forcefully repress its continued desire to bring violence to another. But with very few exceptions the pre-agri groups limited themselves to raiding and ritual rather than to decisive warfare for material gain. What distinguished the agriculturalists was their innovation of weaponry and finally their concept of what it means to wage war and how to define victory.
With the surplus in food that agriculture provided, societies could not only more densely populate a given region, but also afford to have some members of their group step away from the daily toil involved in food procurement. They could instead devote themselves as craftsmen, warriors, religious leaders, and finally as political leaders. It is at this stage, the final turning point from tribal chieftain to agriculture-based kingdoms, that the modern notion of war has its genesis. Kings could command others to die, and populations readily accepted the sacrifice, not for self-defense nor to stave off starvation, but merely so that the group could maintain or expropriate a particular plot of land. From that point on, land has had more value than the humans on it.
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© 2009 Richard Pallaziol, Weapons of Choice ™- all rights reserved