ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how, as Italian fencing was gaining ground in England, Italian vocabulary connected with the art was imported into English, through translation but also by cultural transfers involving lexical borrowings. In the 1590s and early seventeenth century, it was used not only among expert fencers and authors of manuals but also in literary works, in particular theatre plays, which registered, contributed to, and commented upon, the growing popularity of this imported lexicon. Comparing fencing manuals and dramatic texts, this chapter highlights two elements that are key to theatre performance and were frequently underlined by the authors of treatises, namely how to pronounce technical words of foreign origin and how to perform fencing moves. Issues of spelling and pronunciation are discussed, together with the symbolic values associated with these foreign words in both technical and dramatic works in order to try and define the status of fencing jargon within circles that were wider than the (highly competitive) community of professional fencers.
