National Myth and Imperial Fantasy

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

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2. Introduction: Dramatising Britain — Nation, Fantasy and the London Stage, 1719–1745

   • Louise H. Marshall

   Pages 1-17

3. Ancient Britons and Liberty

   • Louise H. Marshall

   Pages 18-47

4. Kings, Ministers and Favourites: the National Myth in Peril

   • Louise H. Marshall

   Pages 48-77

5. Shakespeare, the National Scaffold

   • Louise H. Marshall

   Pages 78-107

6. Britain, Empire and Julius Caesar

   • Louise H. Marshall

   Pages 108-141

7. Turks, Christians and Imperial Fantasy

   • Louise H. Marshall

   Pages 142-179

8. Conclusion: History, Fantasy and the Staging of Britishness

   • Louise H. Marshall

   Pages 180-188

9. Back Matter

   Pages 189-223

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Eighteenth-century drama is often dismissed as homogenous, aesthetically uninteresting, or politically complacent. This book reveals the incredibly intriguing and intricate nature of the period's history plays and their often messy dramatisaton of the complexities of patriotic rhetoric and national identification.

• drama
• Great Britain
• identity
• stage
• William Shakespeare
• British and Irish Literature

'Marshall provides significant insight into how the violent realities of the colonial endeavour were either elided by the fantasy of liberty or reconciled with the rhetoric of patriotism.' - Lisa A. Freeman, Times Literary Supplement

LOUISE MARSHALL lectures in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature at the Department of English and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth University, UK. She has written several articles that discuss the political resonance of the early eighteenth-century stage and the dramatic representation of mythologies of Britishness.

Policies and ethics