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the Jacobean Britannica .............57

Chapter ThreeEnglish Nationhood: Way to the Jacobean PaxBritannica

By the middle of the fourteenth century, the House of Plantagenet, ruler of theKingdom of England, fought a series of wars against the House of Valois, ruler theKingdom of France, over the territory and the succession of the French throne, known asthe Hundred Years’ War. Although England was defeated in the War, it marked theformation of the English national identity. Prior to this event, England had long beendominated by the foreign powers of the Continent, and after the Norman Conquest, theDuke of Norman became the rulers of England and also the vassals of France.82Meanwhile,as the medieval Europe was a world of unified Christendom under the authority and rule ofRoman Catholic Church, the secular and temporal power was weak and the nationalconsciousness was poor. Disaffiliating from France was a significant shift for theconstruction of English national identity, while separation from the Roman Catholic Churchwas another crucial factor and strong inspiration of it. In the years of 1530s, Henry VIIIproclaimed his rejection of papal supremacy, and then asserted his supreme position in theChurch of England.83The English Reformation indicated the separate and distinct religionof England, which intensified the English sense of independent national identity. Afternearly half a century of Elizabeth’s rule, the prosperity in domestic and the development ofcolonialism abroad enabled England to be among the most powerful countries in Europe.The elevation of English nationhood developed the English strong sense of national prideand belonging, which forms the early English national consciousness. The emerging idea ofreferring England as an empire gradually filtered into the Englishmen. Therefore, by theage of James’s accession in London, the national consolidation with the implementation ofthe union of England and Scotland did not only arouse the Welsh and Scottish awareness oftheir national identities, but also trigger the English worries about the essence and future ofEnglish national identity under the reign of a foreign king, which in a more serious caseevoked a sense of nostalgia for the Elizabethan rule. Questing for the “Englishness” becamea recurring theme in the early Jacobean stage.
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Conclusion

The accession of King James VI and I to the English throne in 1603 announced the endof the Tudor rule and the beginning of Stuart reign in England. It is a historical moment forthe formation of British identity in that James’s union project and foreign policy leads to atransformation of the English nationhood from England to Britain. In the context of James’spromotion of British national consolidation, there appeared a widespread consideration ofthe conflicts between the separate and distinct national identities of the three kingdoms andthe unified British identity. Acting as the political allegories, a lot of English dramas tried towrite down the national history of a transitional period. Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (c. 1610)is an elaborate political allegory among them in that it demonstrates a topical concern of theformation and crisis of national identities of the three kingdoms in the context of theimplementation of the Jacobean union project. For this thesis, by delving into the thehistorical context of James’s union project and the literary text of Shakespeare’s e