Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2024
This chapter examines how Britain used the Shakespeare Tercentenary to forge and strengthen the ties with its actual and desired allies, analysing a number of British overtures and the target countries’ responses. In these exchanges, Shakespeare was presented as a guarantor of shared cultural and ethical values upon which wartime collaborations could be built. Some countries, however, responded with polite rebuffs or used the occasion to present their own demands. On some occasions, Shakespeare-inspired conversations between allies could stray into controversial areas, as when the Belgian consul Charles Sarolea used his Stratford lecture to remind the British of their moral obligation to keep assisting the Belgian refugees. The most complex cases considered in this chapter are the Tercentenary contributions from Britain’s colonies, among them South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Ireland. Their tributes often express ambivalent feelings towards the ‘mother country’: simultaneously, a sense of kinship and a desire to forge their own identities in relation to but separate from Britain; an affiliation with Britain and a desire for self-determination. The 1916 Tercentenary provided a platform for addressing a range of controversial issues and contradictory feelings, ranging from imperial pride and loyalty to imperial exploitation and resentment.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.