Britain, Empire and Julius Caesar

Abstract

In the opening chapters of this book I located my discussion of notions of British national identity in texts which re-appropriate the histories of the British Isles. With the exception of Haywood’s venture into European history and the adaptations of Shakespeare’s Roman histories, all of the plays encountered have focused on historical events of direct and geographically localised importance to the British nation. Both this and the subsequent chapter move away from plays concerned with English or British histories and look at the ways in which playwrights appropriated foreign histories to comment on contemporary British politics. In particular, these plays participate in a shift in notions of British-ness which became necessary to accommodate the nation’s developing sense of itself as a colonial power. One group of plays which sustained a notable presence on the early eighteenth-century stage and engaged overtly with issues of colonialism and empire are those that appropriated the histories of ancient Rome. Rome has conventionally served as a mirror for Britons and British history and, indeed, the eighteenth century was no exception.1 Throughout the eighteenth century historians, politicians and playwrights continued to appropriate the histories of ancient Rome as commentary on contemporary British politics. My focus is not to establish these plays as domestic allegory, using Rome as provenance for contemporary political actions.