This book, original in emphasis, daring in execution, maps out the shaping power of English Renaissance literature in creating and contesting national and colonial identities through the work of major canonical authors including Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton.

Foreword by John Kerrigan Introduction 'The Sceptred Isle': Shakespeare and the British Problem Postcolonial Cymbeline : Sovereignty and Succession from Roman to Renaissance Britain Shakespeare, Holinshed, and Ireland: Resources and Contexts Forms of Discrimination in Spenser's A View of the State of Ireland (1596, 1633): Form Dialogue to Silence 'Another Britain?': Bacon's Certain Considerations Touching the Plantation in Ireland (1606, 1657) Fording the Nation: A Bridging History in Perkin Warbeck (1633) Milton's Observations (1649) and 'the complication of interests' in Early Modern Ireland Index