ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some early Jacobean plays that, while they undoubtedly participated in a nationalist agenda and rhetoric, also offer critical insights into the political and affective workings of nostalgic spectacle. It focuses on the interplay of remembering and forgetting that actively constructs what is remembered of the past, and to the interplay of mimetic representation and affective identification. The mimetic representation and affective identification approach challenges all-too simplistic notions of the authenticity and authority of nostalgic memories. The chapter examines the politics of nostalgia', that is, the vested interests which are both served and disguised by its seemingly natural, authentic visceral physicality. Nostalgia can trigger revolutionary political programmes advocating the restoration of political kingdoms, traditional lifestyles, and religious beliefs and so on. Moreover, the uses of Elizabethan nostalgia in Jacobean England varied according to the milieus in and for which they were produced, and to the interests that they served.
