Several of you have suggested Shakespeare as the national epic, specifically the Henriad. Clayton makes a strong case that the Henriad is a national story from a crucial period in history and remains popular. No argument that RII, HIV, and HV are among Shakespeare’s best work. But I’m not so sure it has quite that level of national importance — we just aren’t Virgilian enough. The Tudors Shakespeare didn’t write about loom far larger as the founders of England, not least the Queen he lived under. As for popularity, Tolkien will win every time. There might be school children who can tell you about Henry V — but none can talk about Henry IV.
Nonetheless, Shakespeare as a whole ought to be on the list. Think of the First Folio as a string of stories like Chaucer but without the framing device. Characters do not literally recur. But I have written before about the way the protean individual was reinvented through Henry IV part II, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. Those four plays, by the way, were written within a year or two of each other. They are all about formative moments. Each hero is an adolescent in some sense. As You Like it is a teenage drama, misread as a gender play. When Rosalind has stopped experimenting with her identity in the playful pastoral mode, she migrates to Denmark and starts playing the antic fool. Hamlet is her dark side. They are opposites and inherently linked. Men are Rosalind when they woo, Hamlet when they become middle-aged.
In fact, Henry IV part II was the start of an extraordinary decade.
Henry IV, Part 2 (1597–1598)
Much Ado About Nothing (1598–1599)
Henry V (1599)
Julius Caesar (1599)
As You Like It (1599–1600)
Hamlet (1599–1601)
Twelfth Night (1601)
Troilus and Cressida (1600–1602)
Sir Thomas More (1592–1595; Shakespeare's involvement, 1603–1604)
Measure for Measure (1603–1604)
Othello (1603–1604)
All's Well That Ends Well (1604–1605)
King Lear (1605–1606)
Timon of Athens (1605–1606)
Macbeth (1606)
Antony and Cleopatra (1606)
Which of those would we leave out of the idea of a national epic? Antony and Cleopatra has as much to say about imperial power and anything in the Henriad — in some ways, it was much more topical. King Lear is a vision of pre-Christian England. Macbeth is about the gunpowder plot, but also a Scottish king with an overly strong sense of his right to rule… Is there anything more English than the deep England of the forest of Arden and the country scenes of Henry IV?
So yes, Shakespeare should be on the list. He is our Ovid, our shape shifter, our many formed national figure who conforms to no religion, admits to no politics, and admires the power of pragmatic protean individuals. In poetic terms we think of that as negative capability. In politics, it’s what made England famous as an unprincipled nation happy to grab power where it could.
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I have an idea about what is our national epic, and that it lives in a way that gives its manifestation a potency that is semi mystical and life.
If Greece has Homer, and India has the Mahabarata, Britain / England has Kingship. The great narratives of Kings and Queens, of the idea of just rule, of nobility and transcendence, of England as a realm of sacredness, with a sacral King / Queen, and this story and narrative contains everything. Fathers and sons, family, the shaping of identity, the desire for a leader. Transcendence, eternity, because a sacral Crown is beyond time.
From King Arthur and Camelot, to the 'Return of the King' narrative of Tolkein, to Shakespeare, to Robin Hood (who serves the absent King and seeks to restore his just rule from corruption), going back to Boudicca, and probably some deep ancestral memory and light as old as the stones, from pre-history, when feudal lords and warriors became kings of tribes.
Well the potency is that the narrative is embodied in our living royal family. Our national narrative exists. It is by our side, it lives and breathes it. They are connected with this mystical story, both by bloodline, but by holding the Crown. That is why they are so magical to us. Its why we felt profound kinship and love for Elizabeth. That is where our primal story lies, a grand narrative that goes beyond our understanding of history, through the ages, taking in all that risen and fallen, our continuity, our sense of something transcendent above and beyond our time.
Henry, what a truly provocative conversation! About a national epic.
All of the "candidates" have their benefits and advantages.
Being American, I am drawn to Whitman's "Song of Myself" (1855) and "Leaves of Grass" (1855-92).
Keep up these soul-stirring conversations! They certainly get my ruminative juices flowing!
Daniel