Introduction

John Bull
2018 Journal of Contemporary Drama in English  
There is, for me at least, a delightful irony in the fact that I should be writing the introduction to this collection of essays based on the proceedings of the 26 th annual Contemporary Drama in English conference, on "Nation, Nationalism and Theatre," held at the University of Reading (UK) in June/July 2017. For John Bull is, or more realistically was, regarded as the popular iconic figure epitomising the robust and patriotic cheerfulness of the English people. 1 It is an identification that
more » ... oes back to 1712, when he first made an appearance in John Arbuthnot's The History of John Bull, an allegorical satire on the fag-end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), where his protagonist struggles with Louis Baboon (Louis XIV of France) concerning the estate of the late Lord Strutt (Charles II, who had died without an heir, as the last Habsburg monarch of Spain). Arbuthnot had been, amongst other things, a physician to Queen Anne, whose reign (1702-1714) had seen the signing of the belated Acts of Union of 1707, after negotiations lasting just about a century from the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England as James I, to become the first to be known as King of Great Britain. With Wales having already been annexed by England in the sixteenth century, and Ireland effectively conquered in the reign of Henry VIII, Great Britain was now a political entity. In his BBC TV series 'The History of
doi:10.1515/jcde-2018-0008 fatcat:mh3jtwkah5h4xnb7d3ubnvffsa