The Radical Pedagogies of Lady Elizabeth Russell:"More than womanlike": Education and Resistance in the Star Chamber

This chapter examines the Elizabethan martial preparation that accompanied a young man's formal academic education. Boys were taught how to be men not only through organized study but also through a process of sociocultural indoctrination that readied them for the rigors of war. Treatises such as Stratioticos prepared young men for war not only physically and tactically, but also psychologically. In Coriolanus, Volumnia herself promotes a program of masculine education through warfare. In early modern England, no sooner was a young male breeched than he began training to charge into the breach. This gendered preparation mostly comprised training in the use of specific weaponry and participation in particular boy hood games designed to effect an inurement to fear, hardship, and pain. In fact, sport and play became so central to the martial development of young men in England, preparing war and safe guarding against effeminacy, that the vocabularies of battle and gaming often get intermingled.