Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the text
- Introduction: remembering Britain
- 1 Spenser's spark: British blood and British nationalism in the Tudor era
- 2 Bale's books and Aske's abbeys: nostalgia and the aesthetics of nationhood
- 3 “Awake, lovely Wales”: national identity and cultural memory
- 4 Ghosts of a nation: A Mirror For Magistrates and the poetry of spectral complaint
- 5 “I am Welsh, you know”: the nation in Henry V
- 6 “Is this the promised end?” James I, King Lear, and the strange death of Tudor Britain
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - “I am Welsh, you know”: the nation in Henry V
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the text
- Introduction: remembering Britain
- 1 Spenser's spark: British blood and British nationalism in the Tudor era
- 2 Bale's books and Aske's abbeys: nostalgia and the aesthetics of nationhood
- 3 “Awake, lovely Wales”: national identity and cultural memory
- 4 Ghosts of a nation: A Mirror For Magistrates and the poetry of spectral complaint
- 5 “I am Welsh, you know”: the nation in Henry V
- 6 “Is this the promised end?” James I, King Lear, and the strange death of Tudor Britain
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Over more than a century, the Tudors had invited memorialization of their Welsh ancestry, had exploited it, had even made it the basis of a new kind of national community. But one step they had never taken. No member of the Tudor dynasty had ever claimed to be Welsh. That, they must have recognized, would be a step too far, a blunder which would expose in the eyes of their English subjects the contradictions and absurdities of British nationalism. It was not until the very twilight of the sixteenth century that an English monarch would at last overcome these inhibitions and proudly lay claim to Welsh nationality. That monarch, was not however, Elizabeth I, or any other Tudor. It was instead a king of the house of Lancaster, Henry V in Shakespeare's play.
Henry V is traditionally regarded as the most English of the histories, and hence of all Shakespeare's works. The words “England” and “English” resound through the play, occurring more than one hundred times. Henry is constantly reminding his men of what they are or should be capable of on the basis of their Englishness, and he is himself referred to by the French king as “Harry England.” And yet, remarkably enough, Henry can never quite bring himself to declare unambiguously that he is English. Instead, on two separate occasions in the play, the king of England identifies himself as a Welshman.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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