Shakespearean Fragments to Define and Mourn Englishness in “Mrs Dalloway” and “Her Privates We”

Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway” (1925) and Frederic Manning’s “Her Privates We” (1930) were published in the aftermath of the Great War. Shakespeare looms large over both novels like a spectral presence whose words must be decoded if they are to shed light on past, present and future events. The reader’s knowledge and life experience are paramount in the selection of quotes. In polyphonic texts such as these, imperialistic visions of England are set against the rejection or stoic acceptance of any kind of violence. Accordingly, Shakespearean quotations participate in the remoulding of Englishness through an endless interplay of fragments that variously combine to tell as many war tales as there are readers and writers involved in the making of na(rra)tion