Chapter 3 - Shakespeare among the Allies

Summary

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.