Saxon Rites in Late Stuart Drama

The dramatization of Germanic worship played an interesting role in the construction of British national identity in the Restoration period and under Queen Anne. There are three late Stuart plays that have never been studied together and that focus on Germanic religion and mythology; all three of them have scenes featuring a temple with the statues of the three main Saxon gods. These plays are as follows: Joshua Barnes’s unperformed entertainment 'Landgartha, or the Amazon Queen of Denmark and Norway' (1683, with successive revisions); Henry Purcell and John Dryden’s “dramatick opera” 'King Arthur' (first version of the libretto in 1684, but first staged in 1691); and Nicholas Rowe’s tragedy 'The Royal Convert' (1707). They are very disparate works in terms of both genre and success, but their different portrayals of Saxon worship may allow us to understand the political connotations that a staging of such rites could have in this period.