ABSTRACT
The combination of locality and universality celebrated in Shakespeare-land lies at the root of the imperial and patriotic Shakespeare studied in this chapter, as it lies at the root of English nationalism. Both of these cultural formations, English Shakespeare and Shakespeare's England, though by definition available for jingoistic and xenophobic applications, ground themselves in myths and fantasies also capable of reproducing the nation as an effective 'imagined community'. In 1912 Shakespeare-land called for the offering of 'homage' to the greatness of one whose universal genius was nonetheless rooted in a particular spot of 'Beautiful England'. Shakespeare-land, that marginal country that lies between the heart of England and England's global identity. Yet somewhere between those images and the visitor's actual experience of Edwardian Stratford lay a land of enchantment, an imaginative engagement with place and culture, which it is reasonable to call Shakespeare-land.
