From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage

Abstract

This book examines the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century engagement with a crucial part of Britain's past, the period between the withdrawal of the Roman legions and the Norman Conquest. This was a period that saw both Arthur and Alfred, as well as Hengist, Horsa, and Canute. The country was converted to Christianity and saw successive waves of invasions by Angles, Jutes, and Danes, which left both a mark on the language and a record in the physical landscape. By its end, the British Isles had been transformed beyond recognition, and yet a number of early modern plays suggest an underlying continuity, an essential English identity linked to the land and impervious to vicissitudes and change. This book considers the extent to which ideas about early modern English and British national, religious, and political identities were rooted in cultural constructions of the pre-Conquest past.

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