Staging Britain's Past

Staging Britain's Past is the first study of the early modern performance of Britain's pre-Roman history. The mythic history of the founding of Britain by the Trojan exile Brute and the subsequent reign of his descendants was performed through texts such as Norton and Sackvilles Gorboduc, Shakespeares King Lear and Cymbeline, as well as civic pageants, court masques and royal entries such as Elizabeth Is 1578 entry to Norwich. Gilchrist argues for the power of performed history to shape early modern conceptions of the past, ancestry, and national destiny, and demonstrates how the erosion of the Brutan histories marks a transformation in English self-understanding and identity. When published in 1608, Shakespeares King Lear claimed to be a True Chronicle History. Lear was said to have ruled Britain centuries before the Romans, a descendant of the mighty Trojan Brute who had conquered Britain and slaughtered its barbaric giants. But this was fake history. Shakespeares contemporaries were discovering that Brute and his descendants, once widely believed as proof of glorious ancient origins, were a mischievous medieval invention. Offering a comprehensive account of the extraordinary theatrical tradition that emerged from these Brutan histories and the reasons for that traditions disappearance, this study gathers all known evidence of the plays, pageants and masques portraying Britains ancient rulers. Staging Britain's Past reveals how the loss of Englands Trojan origins is reflected in plays and performances from Gorboducs powerful invocation of history to Cymbelines elegiac erosion of all notions of historical truth.