Henry V (Vol. 67) - Christopher Ivic (essay date 1999)
Christopher Ivic (essay date 1999)
SOURCE: Ivic, Christopher. “‘Our inland’: Shakespeare's Henry V and the Celtic Fringe.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 30, no. 1 (January 1999): 85-103.
[In the following essay, Ivic contends that the conflicts portrayed between the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and English characters in Henry V emphasized the fragmented nature of the nation, and explains that England's anxiety concerning its national and cultural identity is symbolized in Shakespeare's King Henry.]
More than twenty years ago, in an essay entitled “British History: A Plea for a New Subject,” J. G. A. Pocock invited historians to construct a less anglocentric history of the British Isles, that is, a “plural history of a group of cultures situated along an Anglo-Celtic frontier and marked by an increasing English political and cultural domination” (605). Although the response has been slow,...
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