ABSTRACT
This is a revised version of a monograph composed, except for the section ‘Roses at War’, in 1940 and published and reprinted in 1944 by the Oxford University Press under the title The Olive and the Sword. Originally designed for the war years, it is here presented as a study of Shakespeare’s royalism. Fresh introductory and concluding sections have been written to replace the originals, and the footnotes are also new. The text of sections II, III, IV, and V follows, in the main, the 1944 reprint, except for some compression, a few expansions and additions, and the omission of contemporary references to which readers might respond less readily today than on the occasion of their first appearance: those who are interested in the original text must be referred to the libraries. The key to all my thinking on the British Crown during the last twenty years will be found at the conclusion of Atlantic Crossing (1936 pp. 327–35). For further information regarding my work on Shakespeare and the nation, see Appendix A.
