Wondering about the scene in Henry IV when Falstaff tries to make it look like he killed Hotspur by stabbing his corpse in the thigh. My literature professor suggest that must have been meant to show that Falstaff was strange, or had some other symbolic meaning. I'm skeptical, I know leg wounds are quite common on excavations of medieval battlefields, but then, how many of these people that are dug up are of Hotspur's social class who would have had some sort of plate armor (I'm not up enough on armor to know how far along plate was during Henry IVs reign. ) Were leg wounds common injuries to people wearing the best armor money could buy? (obviously these people would have died less often, but wondering about when they did, would a leg wound have been uncommon enough a cause to be quite strange?)
It has also occurred to me, perhaps by thigh shakespeare really means groin, and falstaff is shoving a misericorde type thing into that gap between leg and pelvis?
Bit of a rambly question, but I hope someone can help me out
FALSTAFF:
... 'Zounds, I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead: how, if he should counterfeit too and rise? by my faith, I am afraid he would prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I'll make him sure; yea, and I'll swear I killed him. Why may not he rise as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me. Therefore, sirrah,
[Stabbing him]
with a new wound in your thigh, come you along with me.
[Takes up HOTSPUR on his back]
By saying "I'll make him sure" Falstaff indicates that at least he believes that the wound would have been fatal had Hotspur been alive. Presumably this means a cutting of the Femoral artery.
In line 126 (the stage direction) Falstaff's actions recall an occurrence at the Battle of Hastings where "one of the soldiers when Harold was slain, did cut him the leg with a sword" and was later executed for the dishonorable action according to Chronicles of England by John Stow (1580).
According to the notes in the Arden 3rd Edition:
thigh: a seemingly odd place to aim to kill a man, though the back of the thigh would be one of the few exposed places on an armored soldier; Phillip Sidney's death in 1586 from a wound to the thigh is well known though the wound came , as Sir John Smythe noted, 'by not wearing his cuisses', a general tendency to scorn armor which Smythe actively opposed.
The Sir John Smythe reference comes from Certain Discourses (1590).
All of this information comes from the notes of The Arden Shakespeare 3rd Series edition of Henry IV Part 1, especially pages 332 - 333.