Chapter 1 concentrates on the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) and the performance of Shakespeare at the Theatres Royal in London to show how several prominent productions construct a triumphant narrative of the conflict and commemorate Britain’s participation through the figure of the monarch. This period of war involved a number of widely celebrated victories that were seen to solidify Britain’s dominance as a global power, imparting a retrospective unity to the conflict that was marked by growing war weariness, escalating costs, and uncertainty about its justification and aims. This chapter concentrates on John Rich’s Henry V at Covent Garden and David Garrick’s Henry VIII at Drury Lane in 1761, both of which incorporate replicas of George III’s recent coronation, establishing a connection between the histories of the plays and contemporary royal spectacle. It shows how the use of Shakespeare seems to authorize an approving view of British conquests, despite George III’s own interest in peace negotiations and the disparate aims of production and reception agents connected to these performances.

Chapter 6 concentrates on the Iraq War (2003–11) and a resurging critical interest in just war theory, reflected also in the design and reception of Shakespearean productions. Global public protests preceded the coalition invasion, led by the United States and Britain, of Iraq in March 2003, and the arts, including theatre, provided platforms for voicing this opposition. Chapter 6 adopts just war theory as its organizing principle: the first part considers the justification of conflict (jus ad bellum) as it is critiqued in Nicholas Hytner’s Henry V (2003); the second part examines the violation of just conduct during conflict (jus in bello) as explored within Roy Williams’s Days of Significance (2007) and Sulayman Al Bassam’s Richard III: An Arab Tragedy (2007); the final part considers the end of conflict (jus post bellum), the relevance of the term ‘post-war’, and the erasure of Western wartime responsibility through an analysis of Monadhil Daood’s Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad (2012). This chapter argues that these productions, similar to contemporary Iraq War literature, are sceptical of conflict resolution and closure, but that other production and reception conditions shift their interpretative currency through structures of arts sponsorship and the political and cultural views brought to the theatre, all of which qualify the labelling of these productions as ‘anti-war’.

Chapter 3 examines the fighting over Shakespeare that takes place during the French Revolutionary-Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815). This period of prolonged conflict is characterized by an obsessive interest in position-takings and labelling, such as revolutionary/loyalist and Jacobin/anti-Jacobin; but, as this chapter demonstrates, these wartime binaries are protean. By deploying them we are at risk of under-interpreting the conflict. The performance of Shakespeare at the major and minor theatres in London reveals this distinctive political malleability. The chapter begins by considering pressure points in the conflict when Shakespeare seems to have been loudly mobilized in support of the British war effort – such as the resumption of conflict in 1803 – but concentrates for the most part on the contested political valence of Shakespeare. It examines the opposing political sympathies and theatrical interests of John Philip Kemble and Richard Brinsley Sheridan who were both connected to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, as well as the operations of the minor theatres that position Shakespeare within a battle over the democratization of culture and politics that strongly resonates with the period’s domestic and foreign conflicts. The chapter concludes by proposing that ‘conflicting Shakespeares’ become united through the vagaries of patriotism, a powerful and uncertain concept during this period and beyond.

It tends to be assumed that Shakespeare was enthusiastically mobilized as a patriotic figurehead during the First World War. Evidence of this practice can be found throughout the conflict, most often by individuals who had a prior vested interest in Shakespeare; but Chapter 4 exposes the dramatist’s contested position by examining four kinds of fragmentation that clarify his presence on wartime stages: fragmented users, fragmented texts, fragmented appeal, and fragmented evidence. It builds on Chapter 3’s discussion of patriotism, a concept that seems to indicate confidence and unity, but often reveals division. Chapter 4 evaluates the work of passionate theatre practitioners such as Frank Benson and Lena Ashwell who saw the performance of Shakespeare as a national service that could boost morale, raise funds, and educate both civilians and troops. It shows how the memoirs, public statements, and articles authored by these individuals have had an outsized influence in mediating our understanding of Shakespeare’s appeal. This chapter considers Benson’s performances within Britain; Ashwell’s work with the YMCA on the frontline and the provision of entertainment to troops; and, finally, the use of Shakespeare as part of theatre in Ruhleben, a civilian internment camp in Germany.

The introduction sets out the aims and methodology for this study of ‘Wartime Shakespeare’. It proposes that wartime theatre is mediated by networks of production and reception that control meaning and impact. It outlines in detail theatre’s production agents, reception agents, and structures of control that collectively constitute the methodological framework for this study. The introduction argues that a recognition of these networks necessitates a reappraisal of wartime theatre and the critical terminology used to discuss it, including the relevance of binary labelling, such as pro-war/anti-war or conservative/radical. Wartime performances of Shakespeare, rather than offering ‘fixed’ or clear-cut applications to conflict, are malleable and can accommodate a range of different uses and interpretations. This book’s approach is relevant not just for Shakespearean theatre, but for wartime theatre more broadly and, with some adjustment, to theatre during peacetime. The prologue also considers the ‘origins’ of wartime Shakespeare by offering a short account of what is probably the first documented occasion during which one of Shakespeare’s plays was used in direct application to a wartime crisis: the performance of the ‘deposyng and kyllyng of Kyng Rychard the Second’ on 7 February 1601 at the Globe Theatre during the Nine Years’ War (1593–1603) with Ireland.

The conclusion ties together some of the arguments that have recurred throughout this book. Productions of Shakespeare often cast a spotlight on core debates within a conflict, but do not have fixed wartime identities and are, instead, malleable and responsive as a result of their multi-layered networks of production and reception, which is the core methodological framework proposed in this book. It examines the recent use of Hamlet during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to reflect on the future of ‘wartime Shakespeare’ and the need for further studies that emphasize the transnational mobilization of Shakespeare that reflects the increasing ‘place-less-ness’ of modern conflict.

This Interlude between Part 1 and Part 2 of the book briefly considers the use and delayed currency of Shakespeare in the aftermath of the Russian War of 1853–56 (also known as the Crimean War), an unpopular conflict that nevertheless did not dampen the appeal of rousing militarism in Britain or position Shakespeare as a cultural figure through whom critical perspectives about the conduct of war could be presented. The Interlude concentrates on Charles Kean’s post-war Henry V at the Princess’s Theatre, London, in 1859, a production that does not contemporize the play’s events, but rather historicizes and distances them from its own time, reflecting a Victorian nostalgia for medieval history. It shows how the conditions of war and developments in war reporting can affect (and delay) the use of theatre for immediate wartime commentary. Shakespearean productions can be as much about forgetting or displacing contemporaneity, as invoking the specific contexts of a conflict or crisis, a pattern that recurs in the second part of the book.

During the Second World War, the British state invested in theatre for the first time through two main organizations: the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) and the Entertainments National Services Association (ENSA). Chapter 5 argues that official records and publications linked to CEMA and ENSA tend to stress the ‘apolitical’ currency of Shakespeare – that performances symbolize the pre-war cultural heritage that was under attack in this war against fascism – and favour plays that do not have, in subject matter, direct wartime application, such as The Merry Wives of Windsor. This emphasis exists, however, in tension with the aims of individual production agents associated with CEMA and ENSA, such as Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson from the Old Vic. Shakespeare could be, for example, mobilized as explicitly anti-Nazi, socialist, or pacifist, sometimes within the same production. By examining productions that toured to regional towns and industrial cities across Britain and Europe, this chapter draws attention to the community-building impact and soft power of live theatre and breaks down the distinction between ‘apolitical’ and ‘political’ Shakespeare, suggesting that almost any production during this period of total war was a distinctly ‘political’ act.

While it is sometimes claimed that, during the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), there were no theatrical performances in the colonies owing to legislation passed by the Continental Congress, many did, in fact, still take place. Leading this provision of wartime entertainments were the British military in occupied New York, and this chapter concentrates on their performances at John Street Theatre – renamed the Theatre Royal – including their repertory of Shakespearean plays. In this context, wartime theatre was a clearly political act: the individuals involved in these productions were both theatrical and military actors. Chapter 2 examines the operations of this wartime theatre and the range of repertory performed by the British military, including their prioritization of Shakespearean plays that feature monarchical structures of government – such as Richard III and Macbeth – over classical histories such as Julius Caesar that carried a republican ethos. These productions were used by some as a form of propaganda and the chapter re-evaluates this term to show how Shakespeare and the theatre more broadly were weaponized during this conflict.