‘My Name is Norval?’: The Revision of Character Names in John Home's Douglas

Abstract

John Home's Douglas has often been analysed as providing an ahistorical and depoliticised image of Scottish culture. However, a look at the textual transformations that Douglas underwent as it was composed, staged and printed provides a stronger focus on the material contexts of the play's textual production. Examining changes that Home made to character names and possible motivations for these changes enables one to perceive how the text of Douglas is closely bound up with the material circumstances in which it is produced, in response to concerns over its reception by different interest groups in different social and cultural contexts.