ABSTRACT
This paper was solicited from us by the editors and conference organizers, Simon Mealor and Philip Schwyzer, and we are grateful for the spur that they provided. The idea of a dialogue was theirs, but the suggestion was informed by the fact that we had been engaged for quite some time in a dialogue, not only with one another, but with colleagues closer to home and further afield, revolving around the question of British identities, their extent and their exclusivity. So while this is a commissioned piece, in a form that is less familiar than the standard academic essay, it grew out of a genuine dialogue conducted over a long period of time by email, telephone, and in the course of ‘proximity talks’ in Monterey, Glasgow, and Oxford. We have elected to retain the speech rhythms and informalities of conversation characteristic of a live exchange, rather than gloss over the occasional nature of the performance. To that extent, then, this represents the state of play in our thinking at a particular moment, and we have made some cosmetic changes merely for clarity. At the same time, we see this piece as a necessary part of our thinking for another volume of essays which we were then in the process of pulling together (British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). We are doubly grateful to Simon and Philip for allowing us to think outside the box of that book, and to air views that were not easily accommodated within that particular volume. We value dialogue, and we continue to differ creatively in our views of an area that still fascinates and frustrates us in equal measure.
