Historians can learn from Auden, Kipling and Shakespeare
The problem, as so often in English history, is Shakespeare. Intrigued by the title of a forthcoming book, A History of England in 25 Poems by Catherine Clarke, I came up with a selection of my own, before seeing whether there was any overlap with the author’s choices. None of them was especially original – Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon for Anglo-Saxon carousing, fighting and lamenting; one of the many Robin Hood ballads; something from Chaucer. Then the Shakespeare problem caught me. Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, the Wars of the Roses: how can we think of those moments of English history rendered into poetry without calling to mind sceptred isles, wishes father to thoughts, the breach closed up ‘with our English dead’, ‘false, fleeting, perjured Clarence’ et al? And if that’s so, aren’t we just substituting Shakespeare’s historic vision for our own? Clarke, Professor at the Institute...
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