Staging England in the Elizabethan History Play

Ralf Hertel is Professor of English Literature at the University of Trier, Germany.

• Introduction: Performing National Identity on the Early Modern Stage; Part I Territory; Chapter 1 Plotting England: The Transformation of Territory into Homeland; Chapter 2 Mapping the Globe: The Cartographic Gaze and Henry IV Part 1; Part II History; Chapter 3 Making History: Staging the National Past; Chapter 4 Nationalizing History? The Anglica Historia, Richard III and the Appropriation of the English Past; Part III Religion; Chapter 5 Performing Religion: Belief and National Identity; Chapter 6 The New Faith of the Nation: Religion in King John; Part IV Class; Chapter 7 How Common Is the Commonwealth? Class and National Identity; Chapter 8 ‘Infinite numbers’: Nation and Class in Henry VI Part 2; partV Gender; Chapter 9 Women on Top: Gender and National Identity; Chapter 10 The Private Is Political: Gender and Nation in Edward II; Conclusion: Early Modern Englishness and the Transformative Power of the Performative;

'Hertel has valuably shown that the English history plays of the 1590s addressed the issue of national identity with caution, dialogically, open-endedly, and, like Macmorris, in the interrogative mode.' Seventeenth Century News 'Staging England in the Elizabethan History Play is much more than a book of literary criticism: it investigates many different cultural domains ... it provides many penetrating insights into a plethora of crucial socio-political issues and it possesses the rare quality of being equally enjoyable for both specialists and non-specialists. ... We can be grateful to Ralf Hertel for helping us look at very familiar plays in a new and refreshing light.' Notes and Queries 'Hertel shows how nationalism on the Elizabethan stage represented variously a present ideal, a stabilizing bulwark against destabilizing forces, and the promise of a homogenous and conflict-free future. In addition, his study represents a thoughtful consideration of how dramatists used the stage as medium to express, interrogate, and critique prevailing nationalist paradigms.' Theatre Journal