The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses

The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses  
Author(s) Robert Louis Stevenson
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Historical, Adventure, Romance novel
Publisher Charles Scribner's Sons (USA) & Cassell (UK)
Publication date 1888

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]

Contents

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

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 (1911)
Directed by Oscar Apfel
Written by Adapted by Charles M. Seay
Starring Charles Ogle
Nathalie Jerome
Release date(s) 10 November 1911
Country United States
Language Silent film
English intertitles

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

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

  1. ^ clip of the first installment of The Black Arrow
  2. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Curtis Bigelow and Temple Scott, eds., 10 vols. (Philadelphia: John D. Morris and Company, 1906), 3:xi: "EDITORIAL NOTE Under the title of The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest, by Captain George North, this story ran serially in Young Folks from June 30 to October 20, 1883." Cf. also Colonel W.F. Prideaux, C.S.I., A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, (London: Frank Hollings, 1903), 61.
  3. ^ "With the end of the summer came the last chapter of The Black Arrow and our return to Hyères, where my husband took up other more exciting work" {Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, Biographical Edition with a preface by Mrs. Stevenson, (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1905), xii}.
  4. ^ description of the clip of the first installment of The Black Arrow
  5. ^ Stevenson, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, Biographical Edition with a preface by Mrs. Stevenson, (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1905), xvii.
  6. ^ Ruth Marie Faurot, "From Records to Romance: Stevenson's The Black Arrow and The Paston Letters," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 5 (Autumn 1965) 4:677.
  7. ^ a b Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 10.
  8. ^ a b Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 11.
  9. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 11-12.
  10. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 16.
  11. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 30, 34, 37, 104-05.
  12. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 27.
  13. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 29.
  14. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 31.
  15. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 10, 17, 28, 257, 258.
  16. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 28.
  17. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 168.
  18. ^ Paul Maixner, Robert Louis Stevenson: The Critical Heritage, (Routledge, 1995), 321.
  19. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 113.
  20. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 52.
  21. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 253.
  22. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 54.
  23. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 32.
  24. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 136.
  25. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 236.
  26. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 35: "It was near six in the May morning when Dick began to ride down into the fen upon his homeward way" [emphasis added].
  27. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 119: "It was a black, bitter cold evening in the first week of January, with a hard frost, a high wind, and every likelihood of snow before the morning" [emphasis added].
  28. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 119, 262.
  29. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 151.
  30. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 207
  31. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 216.
  32. ^ a b Project Gutenberg etext of volume one of Robert Louis Stevenson's correspondence
  33. ^ Ruth Marie Faurot, "From Records to Romance: Stevenson's The Black Arrow and The Paston Letters," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 5 (Autumn 1965) 4:686: "Actually, the battle which Stevenson describes is modeled closely on the account of the battle of St. Albans in May 1455, documented in The Paston Letters."
  34. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 9; emphasis added.
  35. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), xxvii.
  36. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), xxvii-xxviii.
  37. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 65.
  38. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), xlvii, xix-xx, 255; Robert Louis Stevenson, The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Curtis Bigelow and Temple Scott, eds., 10 vols. (Philadelphia: John D. Morris and Company, 1906), 3:xi: "The work is dedicated to his wife, 'The Critic on the Hearth,' yet she never read the book. Mrs. Stevenson once said, ... 'I always make it a rule never to read a novel the scene of which is laid in a bygone age. I would never read The Black Arrow and Mr. Stevenson thought it such a good joke that he insisted upon dedicating it to me.'"
  39. ^ Quoted in Edward Wagenknecht, Cavalcade of the English Novel (New York, 1943), 377; cf. Ruth Marie Faurot, "From Records to Romance: Stevenson's The Black Arrow and The Paston Letters," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 5 (Autumn 1965) 4:689
  40. ^ Ruth Marie Faurot, "From Records to Romance: Stevenson's The Black Arrow and The Paston Letters," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 5 (Autumn 1965) 4:689-690.
  41. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), i-ii.
  42. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland, (London: Penguin Books, 2007), xliii.
  43. ^ Robert Louis Stevenson Derivative Works
  44. ^ Classics Illustrated: The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson, no. 31, (New York: The Gilberton Company, 1946).

External links