‘God Save Our Queen!’ Percy Bysshe Shelley and Radical Appropriations of the British National Anthem

Abstract

Introduction When Percy Shelley wrote ‘A New National Anthem’ in the months following Peterloo he was contributing to a tradition of radical appropriations of ‘God Save the King’ which had proliferated in the 1790s. Following the summer of 2012 in which the British national anthem was played on numerous occasions to celebrate the longevity of a monarch and sporting success, it seems pertinent to consider the provenance of this song. When the song ‘God Save the King’ emerged in the London theatres in 1745 under a new arrangement by Thomas Arne, it was as an anti-Catholic, xenophobic song aimed at boosting English morale following a defeat by Bonny Prince Charlie. What is less well known is that it was in fact an appropriation of an earlier Jacobite drinking song. This essay charts the evolution of this song through radical and loyalist incarnations thus illustrating the development of many popular ballads and songs during the eighteenth century and the ongoing battle for the ‘ownership’ of folk culture between the forces of radicalism and conservatism, a battle still being waged today. Radicals used the national anthem to harness the immediacy and accessibility of oral popular culture in order to disseminate ancient ideals of nation and liberty. Conservative appropriations, however, were designed to celebrate and support notions of monarch and empire through the creation of Self and Other. Different versions of ‘God Save the King’ originated in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and the United States, as well as England, thereby demonstrating widespread knowledge of the song and a desire to appropriate it for mainly radical purposes. Although ‘God Save the King’ is arguably a trope rather than a distinct genre, I demonstrate how, through an exploration of its literary evolution, it fulfils the function of a genre. According to Tilottama Rajan and Julia Wright, writers, including Shelley, were seeking to ‘alter the sociopolitical domain by using genre as a form of cultural intervention’ The intertextual dialogue created by these texts and their dependence on readers’ ‘horizons of expectations’ are illustrative of how many genres functioned in the Romantic period. The anthems share the framing device of a specific tune, which demonstrates both their inter-relatedness and how they reflect the shifting nature of national identity during this turbulent period. As Robert Branham aptly observes: ‘National songs inevitably occupy contested political territory and are frequently objects of contention between groups competing to define the nation’