Rule, Britannia! or, literary history is a small world

I'm happy to report that my supervisor was pleased with what I'd done.  I'm now focusing on putting together background information on Anglo-Saxon scholarship in the 18th century so that I know what was in the atmosphere, so to speak.

So as I've been putting together a timeline of when various thematic literature was published/performed, I came across some fun facts about the "unofficial anthem" of England, Rule Britannia!

This was actually the closing song of a masque (musical drama) called Alfred written in 1740.  It was about Alfred the Great, one of the most impressive Anglo-Saxon kings, who unified several separate kingdoms to make a pseudo-nation thing.  He was a really popular figure for both conservatives and liberals in later centuries:

     "Respect all kings absolutely or you're spitting on Alfred!"

     "No, Alfred set up trial by jury and democracy!"

Anyway, the masque was first performed at Cliveden, the house where my dad lived for the Stanford-in-Britain study abroad program!

Then the song became very popular on its own, which you can read about on wikipedia if you want.  Apparently, Beethoven wrote piano variations on it, and Wagner and Strauss quoted from it, too.  And naturally, Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan fame stuck it into his music a few times.  If any of you came to see me in The Zoo, you heard the women's chorus sing in response to the question, "If the noble [lion] could speak, what would he say?":

"He'd say in well-known English staves

He'd say Britannia rules the waves,

And Britons never, never will be slaves, hurray, hurray!"

I imagine part of its continued popularity after WWII is due to this prophetic verse:

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,

More dreadful, from each foreign stroke;

As the loud blast that tears the skies,

Serves but to root thy native oak.

Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:

Britons never will be slaves.

See, history is fun!