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Of course, Shakespeare is also pretty good at writing. Literary historian Oliver Tearle

shows how he makes Gaunt’s speech “build” by using a rhetorical device called
“anaphora” - repetition at the start of each successive phrase: this royal throne, this
sceptred isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, this fortress.
But as we’ve seen, “what appear to be words praising England’s greatness are, in
fact, elegiac: John of Gaunt fears that England is no longer great.” This ambiguity is at
the heart of Shakespeare’s genius. The speech is simultaneously a celebration and a
lament. England’s future didn’t belong to John of Gaunt. But in all honesty, neither
did its past.

Conclusion
th
th
In the three years since 2019, the History Group has been looking at the 18 , 19 and
th
20 centuries, the era when the modern world was being created. The underlying
question we pursued was, what did people think and feel about this at the time?
Covid slightly got in the way, but we completed this last summer. This year we’re
posing a similar question: when our country and national identity were being

created, before we were the United Kingdom, or England or Britain, how did people
at the time see themselves and their place in the world?

And this year we’re adding a further question - how was all this influenced by
geography? Next session, we begin by looking at one of the most basic facts of our
history and geography: we are offshore islanders. Remarkably, we’re learning a lot
about when and how this came about. Although it happened during prehistoric
times, it is in a sense the first event in our history.