Shakespeare, Spenser and the Matter of Britain.(Book review)

Publication: Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England

Publication Date: 01-JAN-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Associated University Presses

Shakespeare, Spenser and the Matter of Britain, by Andrew Hadfield. Basing-stoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp. viii + 220. Cloth $65.00.

Shakespeare, Spenser and the Matter of Britain insists that English Renaissance literature must be read within the context of the changing relationships between England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland as the four nations of the British Isles were brought together under one Crown. Asserting that "it is hard to resist the notion of Britain and the British context ... because the notion of Britain loomed so large in the horizons and imaginations of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers" (4), Andrew Hadfield's book brings together a collection of essays that aim to explore the different ways in which English writers came to terms with the impact that their new relationship with Scotland, Wales, and Ireland had upon their sense of Englishness. Hadfield singles out the drama of William Shakespeare and the poetry of Edmund Spenser for special consideration in his book, "both of whom were acutely aware of the British context of English literature" (9); but he also examines the writings of John Bale, Thomas Harriot, Michael Drayton, John Lyly, George Buchanan, Richard Beacon, and others. However, by choosing to focus on English writers, and by giving such prominence to Shakespeare and Spenser, the book is by its nature Anglocentric, not to mention inherently Protestant. Moreover, Hadfield examines only male writers; women's writing is entirely overlooked.

The introduction presents a general discussion of the nature of the changing relationships between the four nations of the British Isles from the Reformation to the reign of James VI and I, which usefully places the writers under discussion within their cultural and political contexts. Each of the essays collected in the book--all of which have been published in earlier forms as journal articles and essays in edited collections--explore different aspects of the connection between English writing and the four nations, or English writing and the idea of "Britain."...

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