In Hamlet: prince of Denmark, my favourite brand-new character of the novel, the Scottish soldier of fortune Gregor Macbeth says this (by the way, one of the many pleasures of this audio-book is to hear Richard Armitage speaking with an Scottish accent…):
A condottier from Milan told me something I should never forget: ‘we’re mercenaries, we’re not paid to fight, we’re paid to win
This sentence triggered my curiosity, and I wanted to check out if it could be attributed to one of the Italian “condottieri” I have ever heard of (Sigismondo Malatesta, Federico da Montefeltro, Niccolò Orsini…). I have found a very interesting post (in Italian) about soldiers of fortune, or “condottieri” as they are called in Italy. In this article, another name has attracted my attention, the one of an English knight, called John Hawkwood or Giovanni Acuto, who served, among others, the Florentines in late 1370’s. The first thing I have thought after having a quick research in internet about this soldier is: why has never been made a film about him? His life has all the ingredients to create an award winning series or film. Therefore, following the philosophy of this blog as a public service and provider of creative ideas for free, I launch my particular Voyager to the internet space, bipping John Hawkwood, waiting for someone to accept the challenge. In the meantime, I have found a name for the protagonist of my very very very future and next writing
Thank you for mentioning my blog 🙂
You’re welcome! The article is very good, and I’m learning a lot of things reading it. It’s also very interesting the blog on classical studies, congratulations for your work!
Interesting that there’s no fiction about John Hawkwood, he was a notorious figure.
I’ve heard today for the first time about John Hawkwood. Although I have not made a thorough research, as far as books are concerned I have found two in English and one in Italian, not fiction, but historical research.
Should someone ever have the idea to film it, well, the choice of the actor to play the role is obvious, after four Johns… And he’s already trained as far as sword fight is concerned. 🙂