This essay tracks the conflicts that have taken place in Ireland over a period of several centuries, examining the ways in which Shakespeare has, himself, engaged with these conflicts, and the ways in which his work has been recruited by those participating in the conflicts – on both sides. The importance of Shakespeare to the identity formation of the colonial community in Ireland is noted, and the increasing appropriation of Shakespeare by nationalists from the end of the eighteenth century onwards is registered. A particular point of focus here is the nineteenth-century nationalist militant and land-rights activist Michael Davitt. Davitt’s possession of several photographic images relating to Shakespeare is noted, as is his general acquaintance with the playwright’s work. The essay also discusses the importance of Shakespeare to later nationalists, such as Patrick Pearse, executed for leading the 1916 uprising against British rule in Ireland. That one contemporary unionist commentator unexpectedly offered a cautious celebration of Pearse’s self-sacrifice by drawing a comparison between the militant and Julius Caesar’s Brutus is a telling sign of the extent to which Shakespeare served as a kind of common cultural reference point over the course of Ireland’s fraught, conflictual history.

This chapter tracks the emergence and evolution of the concept of the British nation from the twelfth century through to the present, from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s first attempt to fashion an image of a distinct British nation to the severe challenges the national unit of the United Kingdom has faced in the wake of Brexit and other recent developments. The chapter explores the issue of how the nation is constituted and constructed and, specifically, the role that literature (and culture more generally) plays both in facilitating that construction and in interrogating it. The particular – often fraught – place of Wales, Scotland and Ireland within a formation dominated by England is also explored, together with issues relating to internal colonialism and global imperialism. Among the other issues touched on are class, education, gender and race.

This chapter focuses on challenges to the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom, from the period of the breakaway of the Irish Free State through to the contemporary campaigns for Scottish independence and for a united Ireland. The centrifugal forces prompted by the Brexit referendum are explored, together with the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and other contemporary crises. The fundamental complexities of nation-state formations within a multinational kingdom are considered. The fundamental question posed is whether the United Kingdom, as a conceptual, constitutional and cultural unit, can survive the pressures currently being brought to bear on it.

In the early years of the twentieth century, the wide dissemination in Ireland of British popular literature (including penny dreadfuls, educational books, newspapers, and magazines) prompted an intensification of activities by Irish writers keen to preserve and support a distinct Irish literary tradition. Such activities ranged from W. B. Yeats’s efforts to construct a national canon centred on the folklore of an ancient Ireland predating English colonisation, to the nationalist vision of a new Gaelic Irish culture, predicated on Catholicism and the Irish language, promoted by figures such as D. P. Moran. There was of course much discussion, in this period, about how exactly Irish literature could define itself against British literature. Yet at the same time, even among many separatists, there was a very strong sense of attachment to English literary culture. This chapter describes the complex patterns of influence and resistance that shaped both British and Irish literature between 1900 and 1920 by examining some of the popular, periodical, pedagogical, and literary texts that were central to the traffic in ideas back and forth across the Irish sea.

Introduction

I open this consideration of nostalgia and political theory with two passages from the history of political thought, and one from contemporary American politics. First, from Livy's History of Rome:

Livy thus introduces and frames his monumental work by contrasting a virtuous past with a degenerate present ‘in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies’.

Second – continuing with the theme of Livy – from Niccolò Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy:

Here, Machiavelli distinguishes between two phenomena that ‘men … celebrate’: ‘the ancient times’, or ‘that age which has been recalled to their memory by known writers’ (in other words, times of which they can have no direct knowledge, but must rely on history books), and a past that they have, at least purportedly, experienced first hand; in other words, that ‘(being now old) they remember having seen in their youth’.

Third, to come closer to the present day, the 45th President of the United States: ‘When we were all younger – many of you are my age and many of you are younger – but when we were all younger we didn't lose so much, right? We don't win anymore. As a country, we don't win’ (Donald Trump, quoted in Johnson and Del Real 2016).