National Myth and Imperial Fantasy: Representations of Britishness on the Early Eighteenth-Century Stage (review)

At a time when Britain's national identity has begun to acknowledge the colonial "Other" within, Louise Marshall's work on eighteenth-century representations of nationhood onstage is a timely look back at a period when British national identity was emerging, bolstered by rapid imperial expansion. Marshall examines the fragile and fractured building blocks of this nascent national identity through the staging of history plays, which she sees as "part of the process by which Britain's sense of stability, superiority and authority was imposed" (5). Her work provides intriguing insight into a period when theatre was uniquely positioned to reflect communal cultural experience, bridging the gap between the audience's social realities and the staged fantasies of nationhood. In the theatre, she argues, contemporary ideological debates were represented in history plays, where political anxieties were recycled through tropes of nationalism like liberty, patriotism, colonial projects, trade, and the menace of the Other.

Marshall explores the emergence of nationhood thematically by aligning various ideologies then in circulation with history plays that engage similar issues. The first chapter on "Ancient Britons and Liberty," for example, highlights the ideology of the folk in plays like William Philips's Hibernia Freed (1722) and George Jeffrey's Edwin (1724), which root Britishness in Celtic and Saxon identities. Marshall reads these works through Bolingbroke's A Dissertation upon Parties (1736), which emphasized eighteenth-century Britain's strong connection to its mythological histories, "investing them with national significance, encoding them as the origins of Britishness and thus creating a mythology for the nation" (23). Ancient and modern modes of government become linked through the rhetorical tropes of liberty and patriotism, thus reinforcing Britain's mythical privilege to rule supreme.

Chapter 2 moves from the figure of the patriot to that of the "favorite"—a court member granted special privilege and suspected of undue influence. The favorite was traditionally cast in plays as the imminent threat to rightful authority, "an evil presence lurking in the shadows of close court culture" (48). Marshall argues, however, that eighteenth-century history plays rewrote the mythology surrounding favoritism to reflect the period's rising political figures like Sir Robert Walpole, leader of Britain's cabinet and de facto first prime minister in 1721. Finding himself in the uneasy position of being a favorite of George I and his son George II, Walpole promoted national myth and patriotism in order to obscure his personal political ambition, while creating favorites of his own in Parliament. While rulers may condone the actions of favorites if they benefit the nation, favoritism can also create resentment and civil unrest. The rise of a favorite can threaten a country's stability, particularly if he is not of noble birth. Walpole, a commoner, "was seen as a threat to the ancient social structure of England and its moral code of chivalry or politeness" (53). In George Sewell's The Tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh (1719), patriotism and favoritism are closely aligned in an often-problematic relationship, as Raleigh is favored by the Protestant Patriot Queen, but sentenced to death for treason by her successor, James I, at the request of Ambassador Gundamor, a favorite of the Catholic Spanish king. James Ralph's The Fall of the Earl of Essex (1731) offers another version of the downfall of an Elizabethan favorite, portraying Essex as a strategic commander and treaty-making patriot whom eighteenth-century audiences would see as an analog to Walpole, despite his noble birth, due to his prominent role in the British court.

Chapter 3, "Shakespeare, the National Scaffold," explores adaptations of Shakespeare's plays during the period of Walpole's rise to and fall from power (1719-45). Because Shakespearean heroes emanated from the pen of a native-born English poet, they were hailed as patriots to be emulated and revered by an audience hungry for national homogeneity and stability. Marshall notes that some of these plays also position women...