Militant Protestants and the Construction of Oxford as the Irreformable 'Other'.

Reading Greville's 'Life of Sidney' and thinking about the construction of Edward de Vere as the irreformable and unruly 'Other'. A 'site of disruption in need of surveillance and control' (Willis). The portrayal of Sidney's 'resistance' to Oxford's 'tyranny' and Sidney's relationship to continental Protestant resistance theorists.

A Catholic (irenical?) Italophile  excluded from the militant Protestant vision of British identity. Extravagant and irregular Shakespearean forms were too unruly for the laureate vision (Jonson, Chapman) of the English language - nation-building required a more ordered, proportionate and restrained style (Language is the dress of thought).

Both Edward de Vere and Shakespeare were sites of disruption in need of surveillance and control for the militant Protestant vision of Britain to prevail.

That is almost an impossible thought. The idea of Shakespeare as a cultural outsider. But the polarizing 'militant Protestant conceptualization of British identity' (White) would eventually prevail over the dynasty of the Stuarts kings as well.

Droeshout engraving - Shakespeare's Bad Form

Immanuel Wallerstein - The 'other' of the colonialism of the core.

Oxford - the irreformable 'Other' of the nation-builders at the core.

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Problems of 'Hamlet' - Catholic Oxford's exploration of the shifting nature of the 'ground' and 'virtuous matter' that militant Protestant polemic claimed to 'build' upon? (Oxford was characterized by Greville as airy, windy, shadowy, intemperate and unsubstantial).

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Militant Protestantism and British Identity, 1603-1642
Jason White

For the first fifteen or so years of his reign after his accession to the English throne, James and the militant Protestants managed to peacefully coexist. While the militant Portestant vision of Britain was decidedly different from James's vision, this had not caused a deep rift in politics. Events such as the Gunpowder Plot and the proposed marriage of Prince Henry to a Catholic bride show that there were potential points of departure between the two visions of Britain, but these events were not transformative enough to create a polarization. This would change with the advent of the Thirty Years' War in 1618/1619, especially after Frederick's crushing defeat at the Battle of White Mountain in November 1620 made it apparent that Protestantism was in serious danger. Until that point the militant aspiration for post-Union of Crowns Britain was just an abstraction - the war presented the first real opportunity to actually act on this desire. Therefore, the origins of the domestic tumults of the 1620's (explored in greater detail below) in many ways stretched to the early days of James I's reign, when the discussion and articulation of aspirations for a newly united Britain were given free rein in  a political atmosphere that was more accommodating to expressions in support of more British unity, even if these expressions did not entirely coincide with the king's own vision of the potential of British union. (p.37)

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