Henslowe writes: 30 | ne | tt at liffe & death of martin swarte ... | 02 | 08
In modern English: 30th [June, 1597] ... new ... total at Life and Death of Martin Schwartz ... £2 and 8 shillings [i.e. 48 shillings]
Today, the Admiral's Men performed a new play! The Life and Death of Martin Schwartz is now lost, but its title tells us that it was an historical tragedy about a German mercenary who fought for Lambert Simnel, a pretender to the English crown. From the information available to us, it is possible to speculate that this was yet another charismatic warrior role for Edward Alleyn.
The life
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| The Siege of Neuss, where Martin Schwartz made his name |
Meanwhile, in England, the seemingly endless Wars of the Roses were grinding to their conclusion. At the Battle of Bosworth Field, the Yorkist King Richard III was killed, and the victorious Henry Tudor was crowned King Henry VII.
But there was in one final twist before the wars could end. A priest had spotted a boy named Lambert Simnel who bore a passing resemblance to young Edward, Duke of Warwick, who had a better claim to the throne than Henry but was imprisoned in the Tower of London. The Yorkists trained Simnel in courtly manners and promoted him as the rightful king of England. The Earl of Lincoln raised an army to overthrow Henry and install young 'Edward VI' on the throne; he was probably using the 10-year old Simnel as a stepping stone to taking the crown for himself.
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| Margaret, the future Duchess of Burgundy: a 1468 portrait |
Things came to a head in Nottinghamshire at the Battle of Stoke Field. Schwartz's role in the battle is briefly mentioned in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1587) which tells us that there were "two thousand Almains [i.e. Germans], with one Martine Sward, a valiant and noble captain to lead them". Holinshed writes that "both the armies joined and fought very earnestly" and the Germans, "being tried and expert men of war, were in all things, as well in strength as policy, equals and matches to the Englishmen". And he praises Schwartz: "few of the Englishmen, either in valiant courage, or strength, and nimbleness of body was to him comparable".
Despite this, Henry's forces prevailed. Arthurson cites English and Swiss accounts which record that Schwartz felt betrayed, having been misled about the degree of support in England for the Yorkist rebellion. But he fought on to the death. Holinshed praises the spirit of the defeated army:
When this battle was ended, and fought out to the extremity, then it well appeared, what high prowess, what manful stomachs, what hardy and courageous hearts rested in the King's adversaries. For there the chief captains, the Earl of Lincoln, and the lord Lovell, Sir Thomas Broughton, Martine Sward, and the lord Gerardine, captain of the Irishmen, were slain, and found dead in the very places which they had chosen alive to fight in, not giving one foot of ground to their adversaries.
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| A modern memorial to the dead of the battle in East Stoke, Nottinghamshire. © WMR-35 |
The legend
It seems that Schwartz was more famous in Elizabethan England than he is today; indeed, there appears to have been a song about him. John Skelton's poem "Against a Comely Custron" (1527) mocks a kitchen-boy by comparing him to Lambert Simnel; it includes the lines:
With, hey, trolly, lolly, lo, whip here, Jack,
Alumbek sodildim sillorim ben!
Curiously he can both counter and knack
Of Martin Swart and all his merry men.
And in William Wager's 1560s play The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art, the fool Moros sings the lines,
Martin Swart and his man, sodledum, sodledum,
Martin Swart and his man, sodledum, soledum bell.
Schwartz was still remembered in the 1630s. In John Ford's play Perkin Warbeck, about another pretender to the throne, the rebels recall the fates of Simnel's supporters, and they list the commanders who died for him, including "Bold Martin Swart".
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| A glimpse of Martin Schwartz in the TV series The Shadow of the Tower (1972) |
The play
From the fragments of information about Schwartz, it is possible to speculate on what an Elizabethan play about him might have been like.
We can imagine a play about a bold and glamorous soldier who rises from humble origins to become a respected warrior on the continent before getting mixed up in the Simnel rebellion. If so, this might have been an interesting take on the English history play, presenting it from the point of view of an outsider.
The play must surely have been negative toward the Yorkist cause (since Henry VII was the ancestor of Queen Elizabeth), but perhaps it was Lincoln who was portrayed as the villain, while Schwartz came across as a brave but doomed soldier on the wrong side of history.
We don't know if the play was really like that. But we do know that it made 48 shillings, an unimpressive debut for a new play. Even if Londoners could hum the Martin Schwartz song, they may not have been sufficiently interested to see a play about him.
FURTHER READING
The Life and Death of Martin Schwartz information
- Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587), vol.
- Ian Arthurson, "Schwartz, Martin (d. 1487)," in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
- Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 953.
- Mark Hutchings, "Martin Swarte, His Life and Death", Lost Plays Database (2016), accessed June 2021.
Henslowe links
- Transcript of this page of the Diary (from W.W. Greg's 1904 edition)
- Facsimile of this page of the Diary (from the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project)
Comments?
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