Celebrating the Tercentenary in Wartime: J. M. Barrie's Shakespeare's Legacy and the YWCA in 1916

Abstract

This article isolates an instance of the 1916 Shakespeare Tercentenary celebrations to reveal some of the conflicts and tensions surrounding the appropriation of a national poet during the Great War – appropriation, not of his works, but of his iconic presence and his value as cultural capital with symbolic power. On 14 April 1916, a one-act play by J. M. Barrie was produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, for the benefit of the YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association). Shakespeare's Legacy, a skit in which the Swan of Avon is presented as a lad from Glen Drumly, was part of a charity matinée destined to raise funds for hostels, canteens, and rest rooms that female war workers were much in need of. Barrie's one-act play is not included in any edition of Barrie's collected works and has never been reprinted since it first appeared in print in 1916. Shakespearean scholars, who have paid attention to Barrie's speech, “The Ladies' Shakespeare”, have so far ignored Shakespeare's Legacy, a play that questions received notions of national identity, cultural value, and gender relations. Not even Schoenbaum's comprehensive Shakespeare's Lives (1991) records this Scottish Shakespeare that poses a challenge to the Englishness of the British bard. This article also explores further connections between Barrie, Shakespeare, and the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), paying particular attention to Barrie's collaboration with another charity matinée for YMCA's huts for soldiers which combined entertainment and moral indoctrination, just like the Bloomsbury “Shakespeare Hut” that was erected, around the time of the 1916 celebrations, on the plot of land originally acquired for the British National Theatre.