Conclusion: History as Theatrical Metaphor

Abstract

In the Introduction, I cited Adrienne Scullion’s comment that a past ‘hegemony of the history play’ could be argued to have ‘constrained and deformed both the development and appeal of modern Scottish drama’.¹ It must be clear, by now, that her use of the word hegemony for Scottish historical drama is not overstated, and that what constraint and deformation there may be relates not just to modern drama, but stretches back for at least three centuries. From decade to decade, since Allan Ramsay’s The Gentle Shepherd in the 1720s, Scottish playwrights have returned again and again to history plays as a genre of choice. This rather suggests they did not feel history plays offered constraint, but rather some form of creative interest, even release. Part of the reason may be discerned in the earliest history play cited in this volume, William Clark’s 1663 Marciano. That play, as we saw, might apparently address ancient history, but in this guise actually through the safe filter of history deals with Cromwellian revolution and the then recent Restoration. Yet, while embedding themes in a historical frame can sometimes be a means of encoding meaning and avoiding censorship, as it was for James Thomson’s 1738 Agamemnon, censors still banned his 1739 Edward and Leonora. The point, of course, is that, as Chap. 2 explored, history itself is not a neutral field: the ‘safe’ filter does not imply dispassion. Clark’s use of history inflects the play’s sympathies toward pro-Stuart royalism and shapes a perception of historical events that excludes a republican reading. The censorship of Thomson’s 1739 work is clear indication that history plays have contemporary relevance and significance, and may be read by opponents in this way. Scullion’s insight might well, indeed, be reversed to suggest that in Scotland the hegemony of Scottish drama has constrained and deformed, if not history, common perceptions of historical events and their significance, what I have frequently implied in this book by framing the word, ‘history’, with quotation marks.