ABSTRACT
William Shakespeare establishes the Subject/Object relationship under the strains of imperialism and raises profound questions regarding national identity and the fact of 'Englishness.' King Henry V was hailed as 'the most successful incarnation of English nationalism,' and during his nine-and-a-half year reign, there was no threat of civil strife posed against him. While Edmund Spenser's contemporaries writing on Ireland and its people echo the poet's obtrusive stereotypes and concerns, Shakespeare grapples with the identical issues in his historical play Richard II and crucially chooses to show the hypocrisy implicit in these hegemonic assumptions. The status of France which Burgundy describes once again evokes images of Spenser's Ireland as wasteland in the play and England as Richard's garden. The assimilative cycle which King Richard embarks on unsuccessfully in Richard II is now complete as the marriage of Katherine and Henry represents the culmination of England's imperial process.
