Shakespeare and Scotland (review)

In their introduction to Shakespeare and Scotland, Willy Maley and Andrew Murphy "locate" the volume's eleven essays "on the border between Shakespeare studies and Scottish studies" (11). Borders defining Scotland, England, or Britain provide this collection's overarching concept. The first five chapters examine how Shakespeare uses Scottish history in the second tetralogy, Hamlet, and Macbeth. The next four describe Scottish accommodations of Shakespeare from the eighteenth century onward, while the final two show how Scotland and Shakespeare represent one another after the empire. In what follows, I will discuss most but not all of these.

In "'Stands Scotland where it did?': Shakespeare on the March," David J. Baker sees the Henriad trilogy depicting "the tensions between a centralizing English monarchy and a disruptive Anglo-Scottish frontier" (23). Epitomizing the marchers' warrior mentality, Hotspur mocks the fastidious "popingay" King Henry sent to collect his prisoners (1 Henry IV, 1.3.50),¹ rejecting "the English court" with its "alien" "code of conduct—'courtesy'" (30). To the English, Scotland remains a "nebulously defined elsewhere," whatever "lies on the 'other' side of the march" (28). This cultural gulf between center and periphery eventuates in "a cabal of rebellious marcher lords: Northumberland, Owen Glendower, and . . . Hotspur" (26), who transform England's defenders into invaders.

In Henry V's council scene (1.2) English lords debate the nature of this border. The king observes that whenever Edward III invaded France, "the Scot" would "C[o]me pouring like the tide into a breach" (ll. 148–49). The archbishop of Canterbury maintains the contrary, for "They of those marches" are "a wall sufficient" to keep out "the pilfering borderers" (ll. 140–42). The bishop of Ely and duke of Exeter agree that the Scottish border is permeable, but not from which side. Ely quotes a proverb, "'If that you will France win, / Then with Scotland first begin'" (ll. 167–68), which proposes Scotland as merely "a stopover on the route to France," as Baker says (27). Exeter concedes Scottish penetration, but the English have "pretty traps to catch the petty thieves" (l. 177). Textual variants affecting the archbishop's "wall" provide a final turn on the border's function. In the quarto (1600), the wall defends "your England"; in the Folio (1623), "Our inland" (33). For Baker "inland" "implies the more ancient understanding" of Anglo-Scottish relations, in which "what must be protected . . . is lowland England, the 'inland' . . . of civility" (33–34). "England" "suggests a more coherent kingdom" (34), a nation-state with clearly conceptualized boundaries.

Neil Rhodes's "Wrapped in the Strong Arms of the Union: Shakespeare and King James" shows the king relocating the border. In Basilikon Doron the "violent, lawless territories" of the Anglo-Scottish marches become, by "lexical sleight of hand," the kingdom's "'middle shires'" (42). The marches and Scottish lowlands are peopled by Baker's "inlanders," opposed now to Highlanders and islanders—the Gaels. Because James's Highlanders have "'some shewe of civilitie'" (41), clan chiefs can be controlled through legislation. The islanders, however, require "'planting Colonies among them of answerable In-lands subjects'" and "'rooting out or transporting the barbarous and stubborne sort'" (41). Unlike Baker, Rhodes sees 1 Henry IV as supporting James's agenda. The English characters' praise of his valor "reinforces Douglas's role as the 'noble Scot,'" a portrait Shakespeare "intended to be complimentary," implicitly constructing through Douglas "an independent kingdom . . . with its own traditions of honour and chivalry" (45). Like Basilikon Doron, Henry V reconfigures the borders of the Henry IV plays, promoting an image of British unity by appealing to a shared language. In his speech to Parliament in March 1604, James asks, "'Hath not God first united these two Kingdomes both in Language, Religion, and similitude of maners?'" (41). In 1 Henry IV, 3.1, Mortimer's wife's Welsh marks her as radically "other." In Henry V the British characters speak English, however inflected; "the other language is French," for...