Several years ago, I wrote a webpage on how a group could put together a fighting event that would recreate some of the elements of the first recorded tournaments. I called it The Tournament at the Dawn of the Age of Chivalry. I delivered it as a speech at "In the Trenches: Heralds and Marshals" that same year. My intent here is to provide a sort of counterpart to that speech, to talk about the tournaments at the end of our period, and how events can be designed to capture the essence of these tournaments.

If the Plantagenets opened the tournament, the Stuarts closed it. But what a closing! In England, writers like Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson wrote the challenges and the dramatic episodes, and architects of a similar calibre designed the pavilions and props.

Tudor and Stuart-era tournaments were not the brutal contests of the twelfth century, more like battles than amusements, because of the practices of capturing horses, war-gear, and prisoners, the use of actual weapons of war, and even the occasional use of archers and other infantry. Through the four centuries separating the dawn and the dusk, tournaments became more peaceful revels and took on aspects of ritual.

The process began almost as soon as the tournament was born. Richard the Lion-Hearted and his contemporaries drew up regulations for tournaments, restricting where they could be held, who could hold them, who could participate in them, and how. Pressures from the throne and the church caused the tournament to become less violent, by the adoption of wooden or whalebone swords and blunted and weakened lances. The rulers of Europe continued to bring the tournament under governmental control, as part of the gradual process that created the modern European nations. By the sixteenth century, the throne had effective control over any tournament in England, whether it was put together by a private individual or by royal command.

At the same time as the tournament took off, the Plantagenets directly fostered the spread of the Arthurian mythos through Europe from their domains in Brittany and Wales. Chretien de Troyes, their principal poet, depicted the men of Arthur's court enjoying and excelling in the tournament as much as they did in real war, and Arthur himself, like Richard the Lion-Hearted and Henry the "Young King" (Richard's older brother, who died before their father), both patronizing and participating in tournaments. The aristocracy took these stories, their continuations, and their imitations to heart, even as they veered ever deeper into fantasy. Even biographies of real people, like Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick and the Edward the Black Prince, had elements of chivalric fiction, especially in terms of prowess and courtly love.

Under these twin influences of an active, popular. and ethically influential genre of literature and laws designed to render the tournament safe both to the participant and the state, tournaments evolved into live-action role-playing, where the participants could, for a while, set aside the burdens of a peer of the realm (or, in the cases of Henry VII and his son, the far heavier burden of the throne) and play at being their fictional heroes and ethical ideals-loyal knights-errant, battling the fictional enemies of the chivalric world, like enchanters and rogue knights, who took Nature's secrets or the arts of war and turned them to their own advantage, daring all for an unattainable beauty. Elizabeth the Great used this last point to tie all the different factions of the court into a loyal whole, and the tournaments of her reign often had political "plot elements".

The prelude to a Tudor or Stuart tournament was the challenge, which usually was given several weeks, if not months, in advance of the tournament itself. Under the Tudors, aristocratic culture was fixed around the throne, so the heralds did not have to range up and down the English countryside. Sometimes, they did go abroad, especially to the Low Countries, where the Dukes of Burgundy put on tournaments as elaborate as those of their nominal lords, the kings of France and the Holy Roman Emperors, who were also visited by English heralds. Early Tudor challenges were straightforward: a group of knights, typically accompanied by the king, would challenge all comers to best them. After Henry VIII died, the throne was occupied by his son, who died as a minor, his two daughters, and the Stuart kings, who weren't great tournament fans. So, the form of the challenge changed. Groups of courtiers, sometimes headed by the Queen's Champion, would present themselves as challengers, occasionally setting the tournament as an episode in a sort of chivalric tale.

The Tudor and Stuart rulers normally held their tournaments at their palaces in and around London, like Whitehall and Hampton Court. In many ways, their lists were the distant ancestors of the modern sports arena: there were box seats for the dignitaries, bleachers for the commoners, and standing room for people who couldn't afford bleachers. The architects tried to arrange seating on the southern side of the lists, so that the sun wouldn't get into the spectators' eyes. Trees and castles were typical set pieces, and were also designed by the architects.

As the date of the tournament approached, brief dramatic episodes related to the tournament might be performed at court. Since the tournament was an episode in a story, the people who took up the challenge could figure out how they could fit in as characters. If the tournament was not part of some story, the participants might still come incognito, as "Black Knights", "Shepherd Knights", or some other sort of romantic character.

Also, as Italian notions of courtly life filtered into Northern Europe, the use of one's coat of arms in tournament display faded away. Instead, the participant would come up with an imprese. An imprese was a picture combined with a line or two of verse, relating to the participant's identity (if he came as a character) or relating in some roundabout fashion to the participant's status at court or in some affair of the heart. Often, a crest would be fashioned to fit with the imprese.

On the day of the tournament itself, the final dramatic episode (if any) took place. As an echo of the new way of war in the midst of the tournament, the training-ground for the old, there is at least one example of the use of musketry in a dramatic episode-an assault on a tower. The participants would enter into the lists in a sort of parade. A participant would be accompanied by people in livery or in costume (especially if he came incognito), sometimes on a "chariot" upon which more pictures and verses related to the imprese would be painted. One of the people accompanying him might be a herald, who would recite a poem about the participant (or his character). Others set up the participant's pavilion, helped him with mounting and dismounting, gave him extra lances, and so on and so forth.

The combat itself normally consisted of one-on-one tilting and foot combat fought by a set number of blows or courses. The heralds marked off good hits and fouls in each match. Instead of double elimination tournaments, which are the norm in the SCA, these were round-robin tournaments. Between sets of bouts, there might be dramatic interludes, especially if the tournament was part of a tale. Often, the interludes would have props, which were portable or came in portable sections that were assembled on the day of the tournament. After the fighting ended, the participants paraded out.

The day of the tournament came to a close in a feast, during which the most successful participant and the most chivalrous participant would be announced. Typical prizes were jewelry or, sometimes, just the unadorned precious stones.

Now that the basic elements of the Tudor and Stuart tournament have been laid out, the next step for me is to suggest how one can adapt them to SCA circumstances. Our shires, baronies, and kingdoms aren't funded by hundreds of taxpaying subjects, and our tournaments are organized by volunteers who have other things to do in their modern lives. Tudor and Stuart tournaments were organized to celebrate major events, like the weddings of peers, visits of foreign dignitaries, or the anniversary of the monarch's coronation. Similarly, a tournament as elaborate as one of these might be held to celebrate a coronation, an investiture of a new baron and/or baroness, a baronial birthday, or some similarly auspicious occasion.

The first step is to select a scenario. Fortunately, many of the chivalric tales of the time are conveniently available from even a small public library. For an early Tudor example, try Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. It was one of the first printed books to appear in English. Le Morte d'Arthur was widely available to people throughout the duration of the dynasties, and several sections, like the stories of Beaumains or of Le Cote Mal Taile, are excellent possibilities for scenarios. By Elizabeth's time, though, Malory was old-fashioned. Other authors were considered more appropriate for the court, and their works are available in libraries, too.

The easiest to find of these more fashionable authors are, naturally, the Englishmen. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia includes some tournament scenes and examples of impreses, which would be very helpful for ideas. The only catch to this is that Arcadia is an extremely long work, by anybody's standards, and not really to twenty-first century American tastes. Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene is more accessible, although it's verse, instead of prose.

Spenser and Sidney were inspired by Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish authors. Some of the works of these men have been recently retranslated and reprinted. Perhaps the easiest of these works to find are the Orlando series, based on Italian versions of the stories of Roland and the other peers of Charlemagne: Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (Roland in Love), Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (Mad Roland), and Ariosto's Cinque Canti (Five Cantos). Not only are there tournaments within these epics, but there are stories within the epics which could be lifted out of them, reworked a bit, and used as tournament scenarios. Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (The Liberation of Jerusalem) is a little harder to find, but, in the light of recent events in that part of the world, might be worth reading. Hardest of all to find are the Portuguese and Spanish authors, and I wouldn't suggest trying to do so, unless you have access to a very good university library or are cashing in a hefty tax refund.

The scenario might have some reference to the occasion being celebrated. The tournament of the Four Foster Children of Desire, scripted by Sir Philip Sidney, was held during the arrival of one of Elizabeth's suitors, the Duke of Alen{c,}on. Similarly, a tournament based on the Arthurian episode of the Sword in the Stone might be held to celebrate the investiture of a new baron.

Your event team will need to include more heralds than is normal, for Renaissance tournaments were fairly herald-heavy in terms of field heraldry. Similarly, because of the pretty theatrical nature of these tournaments, you may want to ask someone to be your "stage manager", who would work closely with your Mistress of Lists. Tournaments were accompanied by court festivities, including elaborate meals, so the cook you pick ought to be somebody who has a reputation for meals that are good, period, and showy. In addition to the other members of the typical event team, like marshalls and water-bearers, you also want to recruit set-builders.

Since Renaissance tournaments were announced quite some time before they were scheduled to take place, you may want to emulate them by asking for time to announce the upcoming festivities on the court dockets of events between your decision to hold the event and the big day. This is a chance for you to present dramatic episodes related to your scenario so that people will become interested in your event.

Renaissance tournaments were as much sporting meets and displays of princely power as they were lessons in knightly ethics. No matter how simple or complex the sets and other getup might be, one goal of the tournament was to demonstrate how noblemen ought to act when confronted with the temptations that come with rank or when confronted with arduous tasks. In that way, our ancestors and ourselves are, though separated by the ages, close in spirit.