The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses

The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses is an 1888 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. It is both an historical adventure novel and a romance. It first appeared as a serial in 1883 with the subtitle "A Tale of Tunstall Forest" beginning in Young Folks; A Boys' and Girls' Paper of Instructive and Entertaining Literature, vol. XXII, no. 656 (Saturday, June 30, 1883)^[1] and ending in the issue for Saturday, October 20, 1883^[2]—Stevenson had finished writing it by the end of summer.^[3] It was printed under the pseudonymn Captain George North.^[4] He alludes to the time gap between the serialization and the publication as one volume in 1888 in his preface "Critic [parodying Dickens's "Cricket"] on the Hearth": "The tale was written years ago for a particular audience ...."^[5] The Paston Letters were Stevenson's main literary source for The Black Arrow.^[6]

Plot Introduction

The Black Arrow tells the story of Richard (Dick) Shelton during the Wars of the Roses: how he becomes a knight, rescues his lady Joanna Sedley, and obtains justice for the murder of his father, Sir Harry Shelton. Outlaws in Tunstall Forest organized by Ellis Duckworth, whose weapon and calling card is a black arrow, cause Dick to suspect that his guardian Sir Daniel Brackley and his retainers are responsible for his father's murder. Dick's suspicions are enough to turn Sir Daniel against him, so he has no recourse but to escape from Sir Daniel and join the outlaws of the Black Arrow against him. This struggle sweeps him up into the greater conflict surrounding them all.

Plot Summary

In the reign of "old King Henry VI" (1422–1461, 1470–1471) and during the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487) the story begins with the Tunstall Moat House alarm bell being rung to begin mustering troops for its absent lord Sir Daniel Brackley, who intends to join the Battle of Risingham. It is then that the "fellowship" known as "The Black Arrow" headquartered in Tunstall Forest begins to strike with its "four black arrows" for the "four black hearts" of Brackley and three of his retainers: Nicholas Appleyard, Bennet Hatch, and Sir Oliver Oates, the parson. The rhyme that is posted in connection with this attack gets the protagonist Richard Shelton, ward of Sir Daniel, to become curious about the fate of his father Sir Harry Shelton. Having been dispatched to Kettley, where Sir Daniel was quartered, and sent to Tunstall Moat House by return dispatch, he falls in with a fugitive from Sir Daniel, Joanna Sedley, disguised as a boy and going by the alias of John Matcham. She was an heiress kidnapped by Sir Daniel, who wanted to obtain guardianship over her. Coincidentally, Sir Daniel was intending to marry Joanna to Dick himself; and, in her male disguise, Joanna brings up the matter to Dick, affording her the opportunity of feeling him out on the subject. Dick says he is not interested, but he does ask her if his intended bride is good-looking and of pleasant disposition.

While making their way through Tunstall Forest, Joanna tries to persuade Dick to turn against Sir Daniel in sympathy with the Black Arrow outlaws, whose hideout they discover near the ruins of Grimstone manor. The next day they are met in the forest by Sir Daniel himself disguised as a leper and making his way back to the Moat House after his side was defeated at the Battle of Risingham. Dick and Joan then follow Sir Daniel to the Moat House. Here Dick changes sides when he finds out that Sir Daniel is the real murderer of his father and escapes injured from the Moat House. He is rescued by the outlaws of the Black Arrow with whom he throws in his lot for the rest of the story.

The second half of the novel, Books 3-5, tells how Dick rescues his true love Joanna from the clutches of Sir Daniel with the help of both the Black Arrow fellowship and the Yorkist army led by Richard Crookback, the future Richard III of England.

The second half of the narrative centers around Shoreby, where the Lancastrian forces are well entrenched. Robert Louis Stevenson inserts seafaring adventure in chapters 4-6 of Book 3 as Dick and the outlaws steal a ship and attempt a seaside rescue of Joanna, who is being kept in a house by the sea. They are unsuccessful, and after Joanna is moved to Sir Daniel's main quarters in Shoreby, Dick then visits her in the guise of a Franciscan friar, which was a disguise used during the Wars of the Roses. Stevenson, the popularizer of the tales of the Arabian nights, has Dick tell the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in Book 4, chapter 6 to help him escape from the ruined sea captain Arblaster, whose ship Dick and the outlaws had stolen.

In the course of shadowing Sir Daniel in his goings to and from the house by the sea, Dick and the outlaws, who have made their Shoreby headquarters the "Goat and Bagpipes" alehouse, encounter another group of spies interested in Joanna. After a skirmish in the dark in which the outlaws prevail, Dick finds that he has conquered Joanna's lawful guardian Lord Foxham. Foxham, a Yorkist, promises to give Joanna to Dick in marriage depending on the outcome of a contemplated seaside rescue. There is irony in Foxham scolding Dick, who is nobly born, for consorting with outlaws when the outlaws are recruited in Dick and Foxham's plans to rescue Joanna. Seriously wounded in the failed seaside rescue, Foxham writes letters of recommendation for Dick to Richard Crookback since he must retire temporarily from action.

Richard Crookback, Duke of Gloucester, makes his appearance in Book 5, with whom Dick keeps Lord Foxham's rendezvous. Dick's accurate knowledge of the Lancastrian forces in Shoreby aid Crookback in winning the battle. Dick is also successful as one of Crookback's commanders. A delighted Crookback knights Dick on the field of battle and, following their Yorkist victory, gives him fifty horsemen to pursue Sir Daniel, who has escaped Shoreby with Joanna. Dick succeeds in rescuing Joanna, but loses his men in the process. He, Joanna, and Alicia Risingham travel to Holywood where he and Joanna are finally married. In this way he keeps his initial pledge to Joanna to see her safe to Holywood.

In the early morning of his wedding day Dick takes a walk on the outskirts of Holywood. He encounters a fugitive Sir Daniel trying to enter Holywood seaport to escape to France or Burgundy. Because it is his wedding day, Dick does not want to soil his hands with Sir Daniel's blood, so he simply bars his way by challenging him either to hand to hand combat or alerting a Yorkist perimeter patrol. Prudently, Sir Daniel opts to go away. Just after he leaves Dick he is shot by Ellis Duckworth with the last black arrow. Duckworth found in prayer by Dick tells him, "But be at rest; the Black Arrow flieth nevermore - the fellowship is broken."

Sir Richard and Lady Shelton live in Tunstall Moat House untroubled by the rest of the Wars of the Roses. They provide for both Captain Arblaster and the outlaw Lawless by pensioning them and settling them in Tunstall hamlet. Lawless does a volte face by returning to the Franciscan order as a friar by the name of Brother Honestus.

Characters

• Richard (Dick) Shelton – (the protagonist) son of the late Sir Harry Shelton, heir of Tunstall. He is "not yet eighteen" in May, 1460, the time period of the first part of the narrative. He is described as "sun-browned and grey-eyed."^[7] He is looked upon as the leader of the Black Arrow outlaws in Shoreby as they attempt to rescue Joanna Sedley from Sir Daniel. He is knighted by Richard Crookback in the course of the Battle of Shoreby.
• Clipsby – a saucy Tunstall peasant. He is the first character in the novel to alert Dick to the dishonesty of his guardian Daniel Brackley: "Y'are a lad; but when ye come to a man's inches, ye will find ye have an empty pocket."^[7]
• Bennet Hatch – a middle aged retainer of Sir Daniel Brackley, and bailiff of the Tunstall hundred. He is described as "a brown-faced, grizzled fellow, heavy of hand and grim of mien."^[8]
• Nicholas Appleyard – a septuagenarian veteran of the Battle of Agincourt (1415): "his face was like a walnut-shell, both for colour and wrinkles; but his old grey eye was still clear enough, and his sight unabated."^[9]
• Sir Oliver Oates – the local Tunstall parson and Sir Daniel's clerk. A "tall, portly, ruddy, black-eyed man of near fifty."^[10] He is portrayed in the novel as a cowardly sycophant of Sir Daniel Brackley. His knowledge of the law facilitates Sir Daniel's political and financial gain.
• Sir Daniel Brackley – (the antagonist) a self-serving, unscrupulous knight, notoriously known for changing allegiances from Lancaster to York or vice versa "continually" as it suited him to obtain "some increase of fortune."^[8] He also garnered income by taking rents from lands that came into his hands. He enriched himself by obtaining wardships of rich heirs in their minority such as Dick Shelton and procuring rich marriages for them.^[11] His vacillating character resembles that of the historic Earl Thomas Stanley and his brother Sir William Stanley in the Wars of the Roses. The ending of the respective surnames is the same: "-ley." Sir Daniel was different from the Stanleys in that he was not a simple opportunist but a devious, avaricious villain. He is described by the author as having a bald head and a "thin, dark visage."^[12] He is also described in positive terms as "a very merry knight, none merrier in England"^[13] and as a good military leader.^[14]
• The Walsinghams – Stevenson's renaming of the Woodvilles of the Wars of the Roses.^[15] They do not play a part in the narrative of The Black Arrow, but it is intimated that in the recent past they had exercised lordship and received rents in Tunstall and Kettley. They are described as "poor as thieves."^[16] The Woodville family during the Wars of the Roses was poor in being composed largely of commoners, ennobled by marriage under Edward IV of England.
• Joanna Sedley – (the heroine) also known as John Matcham, the ward of Lord Foxham but kidnapped by Sir Daniel. She is sixteen in May, 1460. Her softness and diminutive frame are constantly alluded to in Book 1 as unbecoming to her masculine attire, but later this is set in contrast to her appearance and bearing as a noble young lady: "she, who had seemed so little and so awkward in the attire of Matcham, was now tall like a young willow, and swam across the floor as though she scorned the drudgery of walking."^[17]
• Will Lawless – a "Friar Tuck" type of outlaw,^[18] member of the Black Arrow Fellowship, who has been many things in life, including a seaman and a Franciscan friar. He is said to have a big body,^[19] and he is fond of drinking.^[20] He helps Dick Shelton visit his beloved Joanna by disguising him as a friar. The final paragraph tells how he ended life as a friar. As a friar he assumes a name that indicates his conversion from thief to honest man, Brother Honestus.^[21]
• Ellis Duckworth – organiser of the Black Arrow Fellowship to avenge Harry Shelton, Simon Malmesbury, and himself.^[22] He was blamed for the death of Harry Shelton,^[23] and he was rumored to have been an agent of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.^[24]
• Kit (Christopher) Greensheve– a Black Arrow outlaw who like Lawless is closely associated with Dick Shelton.
• John Capper – a Black Arrow outlaw closely associated with Dick Shelton.
• Goody Hatch – wife of Bennet Hatch, who is put in charge of Joanna Sedley when she comes to the Moat House with Dick Shelton.
• Lord Foxham– a local Yorkist magnate, guardian of Joanna Sedley, who joins with Dick Shelton and the outlaws in their failed attempt to rescue her.
• Sir John Hamley– kinsman of Lord Foxham and his intended bridegroom for his ward Joanna Sedley. At the end of the novel he becomes betrothed to Alicia Risingham.
• Hawksley – Lord Foxham's retainer. He cares for his master on The Good Hope after the failed attempt to rescue Joanna Sedley from the house by the sea.
• Earl Risingham – a local Lancastrian magnate, uncle of Alicia Risingham, killed in the Battle of Shoreby.
• Alicia Risingham – niece of Earl Risingham and friend, confidant, and companion of Joanna Sedley. She coquettishly poses herself for romantic consideration by Dick Shelton, who graciously declines in favor of his true love Joanna. She is so short of stature that she jokingly refers to herself as a "dwarf."^[25]
• Lord Shoreby – a local Lancastrian magnate, killed by Black Arrow outlaws in Shoreby Abbey Church to prevent his marriage to Joanna Sedley.
• Captain Arblaster – the owner of the ship The Good Hope, stolen by Shelton and the Black Arrow Fellowship. Dick's favor with Richard Crookback allows him to plead successfully for his life after the Battle of Shoreby, but this in turn causes Dick to fall out of favor with Crookback. Arblaster ends life as a pensioner in Tunstall Hamlet.
• Tom – Captain Arblaster's first mate, who is killed in the Battle of Shoreby. It is Tom who is first suspicious of Dick and Lawless as they are making their way to the "Goat and Bagpipes," and it is he that succeeds in catching Dick. Arblaster and Pirret do not heed his warning against Dick tricking them through his Ali Baba tale.
• Master Pirret – friend of Captain Arblaster, whose greed and credulity allow Dick to escape from him, Arblaster, and Tom.
• Richard Crookback – Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, future Richard III of England (a real historical person)
• Sir William Catesby – Richard Crookback's retainer (a real historical person).

Chronology and Geography

From the information given in the novel two time references for the two blocks of action that constitute the narrative can be pinpointed: May, 1460^[26] and January, 1461.^[27] The important time indicator is the Battle of Wakefield, December 30, 1460, which Stevenson describes in the first chapter of Book 3:

Months had passed away since Richard Shelton made his escape from the hands of his guardian. These months had been eventful for England. The party of Lancaster, which was then in the very article of death, had once more raised its head. The Yorkists defeated and dispersed, their leader butchered on the field, it seemed, - for a very brief season in the winter following upon the events already recorded, as if the House of Lancaster had finally triumphed over its foes.^[28]

It is because Richard Crookback, Richard III of England, is presented as an adult active in the Wars of the Roses in January, 1461 that Stevenson provides the footnote: "At the date of this story, Richard Crookback could not have been created Duke of Gloucester; but for clearness, with the reader's leave, he shall so be called."^[29] Richard was born in 1452, so he would have been merely 8 years old at the time of this story. A later footnote emphasizes this again: "Richard Crookback would have been really far younger at this date [i.e. January, 1461]."^[30] Stevenson follows William Shakespeare in retrojecting Richard of Gloucester into an earlier period of the Wars of the Roses and portraying him as a dour hunchback—Stevenson: "the formidable hunchback."^[31] (See Henry VI, part 2; Henry VI, part 3; and Richard III (play).) This characterization closely follows the Tudor myth, a tradition that overly vilified Richard of Gloucester and cast the entire English Fifteenth century as a bloody, barbaric chaos in contrast to the Tudor era of law and order.

Curiously, the 1948 film The Black Arrow portrays Richard Gloucester in a more favorable light than in the novel, somewhat anticipating the work of Paul Murray Kendall to rehabilitate him (Kendall, Richard III, 1956). When Gloucester is told he is "more than kind," he replies jokingly that such rumors would ruin his [bad] "reputation": the revision of the Tudor myth?

Stevenson liked his characterization of Richard Crookback, and expressed his desire to write about him again. Stevenson alludes both to his novel The Black Arrow and Richard Crookback with the phrase "the Sable Missile" in a letter he wrote Sidney Colvin in the month the final installment of The Black Arrow appeared in Young Folks (October, 1883):

Your remarks on The Black Arrow are to the point. I am pleased you liked Crookback; he is a fellow whose hellish energy has always fired my attention. I wish Shakespeare had written the play after he had learned some of the rudiments of literature and art rather than before. Some day, I will re-tickle the Sable Missile, and shoot it, moyennant finances [tr: "for a [financial] consideration"] , once more into the air; I can lighten it of much, and devote some more attention to Dick o' Gloucester. It's great sport to write tushery.^[32]

The Battle of Shoreby, a fictitious battle that is the main event of Book 5, is modeled after the First Battle of St Albans in the Wars of the Roses.^[33] This battle in history as in the novel is a victory for the House of York. The presence of an abbey church in Shoreby is reminiscient of the abbey church of Tewkesbury to which the Lancastrians fled for sanctuary after the battle on May 4, 1471.

In the "prologue" Stevenson intimates that the Tunstall of The Black Arrow is a real place: "Tunstall hamlet at that period, in the reign of old King Henry VI., wore much the same appearance as it wears today."^[34] In south-east Suffolk, England, 18 miles NE of Ipswich, less than 10 miles from the North Sea a "Tunstall" is located with an accompanying forest. Stevenson and his family had visited Suffolk in 1873.^[35] The similarity of place-names near this Tunstall, Suffolk to place-names in the novel also suggest that this is Stevenson's Tunstall: Kettley is Kettleburgh in actuality, Risingham is Framlingham, and Foxham is Farnham, Suffolk. The identities of Shoreby-on-the-Till and Holywood are probably Orford and Leiston respectively.^[36] Orford is on the North Sea and is joined to Framlingham by a road going to the northwest (the "highroad from Risingham to Shoreby"),^[37] and Leiston is also on the North Sea with a medieval abbey like Holywood of the novel. The River Till, which figures largely in Book 1 of the novel, would then be the River Deben in actuality. The River Deben flows near Kettleburgh.

The name of the main character Richard Shelton and his inheritance, Tunstall, were the name and title of an actual historical personage, Sir Richard Tunstall. He, as a Lancastrian and ardent supporter of King Henry VI of England, held Harlech Castle against the Yorkists from 1465-1468 during the first part of Edward IV's reign. In contrast, Richard Shelton, who becomes the knight of Tunstall at the end of The Black Arrow, is a staunch Yorkist.

Two other anachronisms in the novel are Sir Oliver and others speaking of "Simnel" and "the Walsinghams" as suspected organizers of the Black Arrow fellowship. Lambert Simnel is the focus of rebellion in Henry VII's reign (1485–1509), and "the Walsinghams," Stevenson's renaming of the Woodvilles, would have played a part only after May, 1464, when Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville.

The Black Arrow consists of 79,926 words, so it can be classified a novel rather than a novella, novelette, short story, or flash fiction.

Criticism

Stevenson himself was the first critic of his Black Arrow, referring to it as "tushery" with reference to his use of archaic English dialogue. In a May, 1883 letter to H.E. Henley Stevenson wrote:

The influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring, and am headachy. So, as my good Red Lion Counter begged me for another Butcher's Boy-I turned me to-what thinkest 'ou?-to Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is his name: tush! a poor thing!^[32]

His wife Fanny was anonymously acknowledged in the "fly-leaf" as the "critic on the hearth"^[38]—this offers an explanation for this critic and the author having "joint lives" and being on the "hearth," emblematic of home. For the planned fourteen-volume Edinburgh edition of his works, Stevenson indicated that he did not want to write an introduction to The Black Arrow—his wife Fanny, however, did so for the 1905 Biographical Edition of his works. The Black Arrow is in good company as Stevenson also did not like his The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Praise for The Black Arrow is rare among literary critics over its 125 year history. The novelist John Galsworthy wrote that it was "a livelier picture of medieval times than I remember elsewhere in fiction."^[39] The reason for this stems from Stevenson's own dislike of The Black Arrow coupled with a misunderstanding of his attitude toward what he called "tushery."^[40]

Latest Annotated Edition

On December 18, 2007 Penguin Books issued the latest annotated edition of The Black Arrow with the introduction and notes by Professor John A. Sutherland, Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and visiting professor of literature at the California Institute of Technology.^[41] Professor Sutherland makes mention of this Wikipedia article in this edition.^[42]

Film, TV or Theatrical Adaptations

The Black Arrow has been adapted for film and television several times, including a 1911 film short starring Charles Ogle, a 1948 film starring Louis Hayward, a 1985 film starring Oliver Reed and Benedict Taylor, a Soviet film Chyornaya strela 1985, a 1951 two-part British TV serial starring Denis Quilley, a 1968 seven-part Italian TV production entitled La freccia nera, and a British TV series running from 1972-1975 starring successively Robin Langford and Simon Cuff as Richard Shelton during its run. The Robert Louis Stevenson website maintains a complete list of derivative works.^[43]

Editions

• 1888, USA, Charles Scribner's Sons, hardback first edition
• 1888, UK, Cassell & Co., Ltd., hardback first edition
• 1894, UK, Cassell & Co., Ltd., H.M. Paget, illus.
• 1895, 1897, 1899, 1905, 1910, 1912, 1914, 1917, 1921 USA, Charles Scribner's Sons, hardback
• 1916, 1933, 1942, USA, Charles Scribner's Sons (N.C. Wyeth illustrated edition), hardback
• 1930, UK/USA, Standard Book Company, hardback
• 1931, USA, Ginn and Company, hardback
• 1944, USA, Charles Scribner's Sons (N.C. Wyeth illus. ed. reprint) ISBN 0-684-18877-5, hardback
• 1950, USA, Pocket Books, Inc. (Scholastic Book Services), paperback
• 1954, USA, Nelson Doubleday (Lawrence Beall Smith, illus.), hardback
• 1963, USA, Airmont Publishing Co., Inc., paperback
• 1983, USA, Watermill Press ISBN 0-89375-781-0, paperback
• 1994, USA, Geddes & Grosset (Bloomsbury books) ISBN 185471287X, 9781854712875, paperback
• 1995, UK/USA Penguin Books ISBN 0140621644, 9780140621648, paperback
• 1998, USA, Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. (Tor Classics) ISBN 0-812-56562-2, paperback
• 2001, USA, Tantor Media ISBN 1400100038, ISBN 978-1400100033, audio CD
• 2001, USA, Tantor Media (MP3 Una edition) ISBN 1400150035, ISBN 978-1400150038, pub. date 1 June 2001, MP3 CD
• 2003, USA, IndyPublish.com ISBN 1404361723, ISBN 978-1404361720, pub. date 16 April 2003, paperback
• 2003, UK/USA, Signet Classics (Penguin group) ISBN 9780451529169, pub. date December 2003, paperback
• 2004, USA, Audio Book Contractors, Inc. ISBN 1556857527, ISBN 978-1556857522, pub. date 30 January 2004, audio cassette
• 2004, USA, Neeland Media LLC. (Kindle edition), pub. date 1 April 2004, e-book & paperback
• 2004, USA, 1st World Library ISBN 1419254111, ISBN 978-1419254116, paperback
• 2004, USA, Wildside Press ISBN 0809567334, 9780809567331, paperback
• 2005, USA, Kessinger Publishing ISBN 0-7661-9477-9 , pub. date 30 April 2005, paperback
• 2006, USA, Adamant Media Corp. (Elibron Classic ser.) ISBN 0-543-89660-9, paperback
• 2006, USA, Adamant Media Corp. (Elibron Classic ser.) ISBN 0-543-89659-5, hardback
• 2007, USA, BiblioBazaar (large print edition) ISBN 978-1-4346-4730-6, paperback
• 2007, UK/USA, Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-141-44139-9, pub. date 18 December 2007, paperback
• 2008, USA, NuVision Publications, LLC. ISBN 1-59547-698-9, paperback

Comic Book Version

In October, 1946 The Gilberton Company of New York published their Classics Illustrated comic book version of The Black Arrow as "No. 31."^[44]

Footnotes

External links

• The Black Arrow, available as a printer-ready PDF from Ria Press.
• Project Gutenberg etext of volume one of Robert Louis Stevenson's correspondence in which he speaks of The Black Arrow as "tushery" at Project Gutenberg
• Project Gutenberg etext of volume two of Robert Louis Stevenson's correspondence
• The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses (1911 movie) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses (1948 movie) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses (1973 TV film) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses (Chyornaya strela) (1985 USSR movie) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses (1988 TV film) at the Internet Movie Database