Is Shakespeare English, British, neither or both? Addressing from various angles the relation of the national poet/playwright to constructions of England and Englishness, this collection of essays explores the interplay of nation and imagination, first through new readings of particular plays, then through analyses of a range of subsequent appropriations and reorientations of 'Shakespeare' and 'this England' that the plays - in part - produced.

Contents: Introduction: 'To England send him': repatriating Shakespeare, Willy Maley and Margaret Tudeau-Clayton; Part 1 This England: Pericles and the language of national origins, Thomas Roebuck and Laurie Maguire; 'And bloody England into England gone': empire, monarchy and nation in King John, Willy Maley; The 'true-born Englishman': Richard II, The Merchant of Venice, and the future history of (the) English, Margaret Tudeau-Clayton; 'Eat a leek': Welsh corrections, English conditions, and British cultural communion, Allison M. Outland; 'O, lawful let it be/That I have room ... to curse awhile': voicing the nation's conscience in female complaint in Richard III, King John and Henry VIII, Alison Thorne. Part 2 That Shakespeare: Imagining England: contemporary encodings of 'this sceptred isle', Sarah Grandage; Shakespeare Eurostar: Calais, the Continent, and the operatic fortunes of Ambroise Thomas, Ton Hoenselaars and Clara Calvo; 'Not a man from England': assimilating the exotic 'other' through performance, from Henry IV to Henry VI, Amanda Penlington; A nation of selves: Ted Hughes's Shakespeare, Neil Corcoran; Shakespeare-land, Graham Holderness; Afterword: one of those days in England, Andrew Hadfield; Works cited; Index.