Aliens and Englishness in Elizabethan Drama

Covering a wide variety of plays from 1550–1600, including Shakespeare's second tetralogy, this book explores moral, historical, and comic plays as contributions to Elizabethan debates on Anglo-foreign relations in England. The economic, social, religious, and political issues that arose from inter-British contact and Continental immigration into England are reinvented and rehearsed on the public stage. Kermode uncovers two broad 'alien stages' in the drama: distinctive but overlapping processes by which the alien was used to posit ideas and ideals of Englishness. Many studies of English national identity pit Englishness against the alien 'other' so that the native self and the alien settle into antithetical positions. In contrast, Aliens and Englishness reads a body of plays that represent Englishness as a state of ideological, invented superiority - paradoxically stable in its constant changeability, and brought into being by incorporating and eventually accepting, and even celebrating, rather than rejecting the alien.

Takes an original stance on a popular topic by subtle analysis of the relationship of the English with their nearer neighbours (including Welsh, Irish and Scots) rather than more exotic 'others'
Provides detailed readings of both individual and also groups of plays, including Shakespeare's second tetralogy
Reads less well-known plays against canonical works, demonstrating that the issues of the alien were widespread across writers, theatres and audiences with various political and personal agendas

Reviews & endorsements

'Looking at neglected plays but raising issues that bear on our reading of Marlowe and Shakespeare too, this timely and topical book explores the representation of aliens and strangers in sixteenth-century drama and offers an elegant and subtle account of the developing notions of Englishness they chart.' Lisa Hopkins, Sheffield Hallam University

'… [Kermode's] book provides a coherent and insightful framework for reading the tensions and conflicts represented in a wide range of sixteenth-century English drama.' Mary Floyd-Wilson, Renaissance Quarterly

'… Aliens and Englishness in Elizabethan Drama, packs a scant 154 pages of text, 28 pages of informative end notes, and a generous 13 page bibliography with brilliant insights into early stirrings of the British Empire as reflected in two continuous phases of Elizabethan plays and their London audiences during the second half of the sixteenth century.' Frederick S. Lapisardi, PhD, Professor Emeritus, California University of Pennsylvania

'Aliens and Englishness in Elizabethan Drama offers an engaging journey into mid- to late-sixteenth century drama. … I recommend [it] to those who teach early modern English theatre as well as those more interested generally in issues of identity as reflected in drama.' William F. Hodapp, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching

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