Uncivil and unruly Englishness: mythologies of England recast in the work of Jez Butterworth and Angela Carter

ABSTRACT

Written eighteen years apart Jez Butterworth's play Jerusalem (2010) [Jerusalem. Nick Hern Books] and Angela Carter's final novel Wise Children (1992) [Wise children. Vintage Classics] both attempt to recreate a sense of Englishness for the marginalised ‘under-class’ of post-imperial England without falling prey to nationalist interpretations. The two texts present raucous, vulgar protagonists who force an alternative rebellious form of proudly proletarian English identity into being. Where Carter’s work is seen against the post-war backdrop of industrial decline, Butterworth’s work is connected to a renewed interest in vernacular rural English culture.

The action of both texts take place on one day, 23 April, making use of the fact that the day of national celebration, St George's Day, coincides with that of Shakespeare's birthday. Both texts, in fact, reclaim the mainstays of English national identity, Shakespeare and the myth of St George and recast them with characters who revel in the enactment of their anti-establishment identities.

This paper will argue that the purposefully unruly behaviour of the protagonists of these texts continue the tradition of incivility as a form of social resistance in England, allowing the creation and assertion of an alternative Englishness that emanates from the margins and sees its roots in Shakespearean bawdiness and England’s pagan past.

KEYWORDS:

• Butterworth
• Carter
• Englishness
• folklore
• underclass

At the heart of the national culture of England there remains a power struggle for who sets the narrative of Englishness. This is a debate that is played out continuously within post-imperial cultural production, particularly fictional narratives. One of the most prominent writers to address this theme in the late twentieth century was the English feminist author, Angela Carter. More recently, there has been what could be called a cultural movement to draw English folklore and rural life into this discussion, placed in a new frame so as to avoid the many pit-falls of nationalism. Significantly, in Jez Butterworth’s play Jerusalem the theme of Englishness takes centre-stage. Written eighteen years apart, a comparative study of these two works reveals that what the great Marxist feminist writer begins in her depiction of working-class culture, Butterworth develops in response to the increased sense of disenfranchisement and a growing underclass. Where Carter’s work is seen against the post-war backdrop of industrial decline, Butterworth’s work is connected to a renewed interest in vernacular rural English culture. With an awareness that political figures of the far-right such as Nick Griffin (the recent president of the British National Party) have encouraged his followers to mine English folklore, including English folk music, as part of their attempt to lay claim to Englishness (Keegan-Phipps, 2017, pp. 4–7), Butterworth’s play can be viewed as both brave and dangerous in its presentation of English folk tales and songs. This article examines the negotiations that these writers carry out, mostly successfully, in order to create a new discourse with which to represent a non-racialised, non-elitist and un-jingoistic celebration of the culture of the disenfranchised under-classes of England. This celebration draws on the influence of Shakespeare, the traditional tales of folkloric figures such as the Green Man and ancient pagan gods such as Woden, embedded in specific locations in England, yet not exclusive to any one ethnicity.

The 2010 programme for the production of Jerusalem at the Apollo Theatre in London, directed by Ian Rickson, contains a response to the play by environmentalist writer Paul Kingsnorth. He repeats a rhetorical question that many ask ‘Who in England knows the legend of Wayland today?’ and responds noting ‘The English, notoriously, have a blind spot when it comes to their myths’ (2010). Kingsnorth, as others before him, note the peculiarity of the lack of awareness of English folklore in comparison to that of the Celtic cultures. It is, he suggests, a purposeful forgetting due to the fear to look back at our pre-industrial past and to see ourselves. He repeats a concern examined by Jonathon Roper in ‘England – The Land without folklore’. Roper places the blame initially on rapid industrialisation and urbanisation (2012, p. 228) but ultimately on the lack of English folklorists (2012, p. 253). It is this lack of attention that allows for the appropriation of English folklore into the hands of the far-right. This, I suggest will be changing with an increase in the exposure of the English public through television and music to folklore and a folk culture renewal. This article argues that Jerusalem is at the heart of this challenge and change.

The two writers address the complexity of national identity by celebrating rebelliousness of a specifically lower-class Englishness. For Carter this Englishness is epitomised by the subversive nature of vaudeville theatre. For Butterworth, it exists in the counter narratives offered by ancient foundation myths of giants and Green Men of England. Crucially, Shakespeare’s subversive and rebellious writing is a shared influence upon both authors. In fact, Carter’s inclusive version of bottom-up Englishness relies upon the fact that Shakespeare, whose plays have an immense influence on the creation of English myth, serves as the figure-head of both elite and proletarian culture. For Butterworth, Shakespeare’s subversive and raucous character Falstaff is a clear influence upon the development of his protagonist, Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron. What can be observed through both texts is a battle for the recognition of the vernacular myths that are frequently overlaid and silenced by a version of Englishness that was created through British imperialism and produces an exclusionary national identity based on capitalist modernity. This paper will argue that the purposefully unruly behaviour of the protagonists of these texts continue the tradition of incivility as a form of social resistance in England, allowing the creation and assertion of an alternative Englishness that sees its roots in Shakespearean bawdiness and England’s pagan past, and is lived defiantly in the margins of contemporary England.

The themes of both pieces are strikingly similar considering that one is a particularly feminist novel and one a highly masculine play. Both narratives give voice to socially ostracised protagonists, who develop their own sense of Englishness, despite their rejection by ‘genteel’ society. Written eighteen years apart Jez Butterworth's play Jerusalem (2010) and Angela Carter's final novel Wise Children (1992) present raucous, vulgar protagonists who force an alternative rebellious form of proudly proletarian English identity into being. Ultimately, this reflects the ever-on-going dispute between the authoritative elite and the rebellious ‘lower classes’ regarding whose version of Englishness is most heard and embraced by the population. Additionally, the ‘country and the city’ divide that was so well articulated by Raymond Williams in 1973, is relevant here, as much as it was in then. The two texts that are the focus of this study straddle this divide. Carter’s Wise Children is set predominantly in South London and Butterworth’s Jerusalem in the rural communities (and fictional country town of Flintock) of Wiltshire.

Williams, who saw the problems of rural poverty and dismissed the notion of a rural idyll, was equally damning of the capitalist systems that he noted driving urban life. For Williams, both the industrial revolution and imperialism not only increased the urban populations of England but also altered the way that those who remained in the countryside would live (2016, p. 1). The awareness of capitalist influence on English identity is echoed in the more recent work of Owen Jones regarding the denigrated ‘chav culture’ of the poverty-struck underclass. Since the millennium, the rebellious and ostracised members of both an urban and rural underclass have been portrayed with pathos as unruly protagonists in television shows such as ‘Shameless’ (2004–2013, Company Pictures, set in Manchester) and ‘This Country’ (2017–2020, British Broadcasting Corporation, set in the Cotswolds, western England). Whether in South London or rural Wiltshire, the works of Carter and Butterworth, respectively, provide similar alternative approaches to English national culture from the perspective of the disenfranchised. Carter is able to create a carnivalesque celebration whereas Butterworth’s version has sinister aspects.

Carter’s Wise Children is an overtly urban novel, set in London, Brighton and Los Angeles at the end of the 1980s. It was written during the final years of the Thatcherite era and published in the year of her resignation. Thatcherite politics, that encouraged free market economics, privatisation and individual participation in the capitalist system, sit in opposition to Carter’s Marxist influences. Nonetheless, both Thatcher and Carter participated in the development of English national identity, but from very different perspectives. While Thatcher encouraged a jingoistic nationalism, particularly during the Falklands War, Carter creates an image of a multicultural, inclusive and non-elitist Englishness that is built on a pride in proletarian cultures. She succinctly pinpoints the influence she gains from the era in which she lives in an interview with Kate Webb, stating: ‘I am the pure product of an advanced industrialised, post-imperialist country in decline’ (2007, p. 198). For Carter, the decline of England is a significant feature that needs not to be looked at with shame and ignored but linked to the rebellious creative response of the people most affected by its deterioration, the working class.

Her protagonists (a pair of identical female twins in their seventies) are unapologetically ‘from the wrong side the tracks’ and are the illegitimate daughters/nieces of a set of male upper-class twins in their nineties. The protagonists are from south of the river Thames, which in a simplified economic geography of the capital city denotes the poorer, less fashionable and disregarded areas. Their father and uncle, by contrast, are from fashionable and rich North London. These oppositions exemplify the structure of the novel by which Carter sets up many systematic social oppositions only to subvert and challenge them. In this way, Carter reveals something to us about the English class system only to play with it and destroy it before our eyes (literally, as occurs at the end of the novel when one working-class niece and upper-class uncle, despite their relation and years, almost destroy a historic building by ‘fucking the house down’) (Carter, 1992, p. 220).

Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, written and produced at the end of the 2000s, has been called ‘The greatest play of the century’ (Akbar). The play begins with the partial (interrupted) singing of the national hymn ‘Jerusalem’ by a hesitant girl in a fairy costume who stands in front of a tattered St George’s Cross on the stage curtain, thus providing an opening statement symbolic of the state of the nation.

It was written during the Labour government of Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister who saw the dilution and disbanding of the New Labour movement (Lawson, 2008). The play was first staged during the change of government from Brown to the Conservative government of David Cameron (significantly, an 'Old Etonian’ and part of the ruling elite). Following from the middle-left, Thatcherite influenced version of Labour politics created by Tony Blair, Brown provided a momentary break from what would become a succession of several Prime Ministers from the upper classes. The play was revived in 2022 with the same award-winning cast, (most notably led by Mark Rylance who was instrumental in co-writing the protagonist Rooster Byron with Butterworth). At this time, the government remained in the hands of the Conservative Party, with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister (another ‘Old Etonian’ and ruling elite). The significance of the ruling party’s elitist associations provide a significant context for the 2022 audience. In 2014 and 2019 the government requested research to be carried out by the Social Mobility Commission and Sutton Trust that revealed ‘Britain’s ‘elite’ is higher in the national consciousness than ever’ and the ‘Social mobility across the UK is low and not improving’. It found that from the 7% of the population who attend the fee-paying independent schools, they provided, on average, half the people who hold senior positions in British society (eg. 65% of Senior Judges, 45% of Public Body Chairs) (Social Mobility Commission, 2019). The political context of upper-class rule in which Butterworth’s play was revived appears in contrast to the representation of his English characters from a disillusioned underclass. His play, thus, intimates the immense economic and social divides in the country by focussing his play on the representation of the disadvantaged.

Yet, this is not a play of the downtrodden, honourable man. His characters display highly anti-social behaviour such as loud drunkenness and taking illegal drugs at the town’s carnival. In many ways the younger characters of the play are reminiscent of the type of vilified youth that became known as Chavs in the early part of the twenty first century. Owen Jones’ famous study CHAVS (2016/2010) focused specifically on the identification of the emergence of a youthful underclass in England and how these disenfranchised and rejected members of society are perceived by the ruling classes and the right-wing media that support them. As Jones notes, the term for the ‘shiftless class’ came into use by the right-wing politicians and commentators in power and was used frequently to demonise the poorest unemployed members of English society. In part this rhetoric was employed to denigrate those dependent on the welfare state (an invention of their opposite, the socialist Labour Party, after all). In his second edition (2016/2010) Jones noted that his rhetoric had taken hold in the ruling Conservative Party: ‘But the conservatives have created a system that drips extreme examples of such wrongdoing to the media, fuelling the myth that there exist large numbers of dishonest benefit claimants’ (Jones, 2016/2010, p. 16). His analysis links this to the creation of the term ‘chav’, a term designed to turn one section of society against another: ‘Since the 2008 crisis, rather than helping the poor, Tory ministers have openly condemned them as ‘skivers’ and ‘shirkers’ to exploit divisions with the working class’ (Jones, 2016/2010, p. 16). As he explains ‘the term ‘chav’ now encompasses any negative traits associated with working-class people – violence, laziness, teenage pregnancies, racism, drunkenness, and the rest’ (26).

The relevance of Jones’ commentary to Butterworth’s play is that Jerusalem becomes a subversive celebration of exactly those who are ostracised from Conservative society. His clearing is the location for nihilist parties where the people (mostly young) rejected by the local town gather to joke, dance, drink and take drugs until they reach unconsciousness. The comedic first act of the play sees various characters emerging from hidden corners of the set following a night of revelry: from within the workings of a broken sofa; from under the caravan; from behind the chicken coop. The group of ‘outcasts’ are led by Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, described by Arifa Akbar in a review in The Guardian as ‘a heroic anti-establishment rebel and one of society’s losers’ (2022). With clear influences from Shakespeare’s Falstaff, Rooster is as comedic, subversive and tragic. He employs Shakespearean rhythms to his speeches, adding to his larger-than-life representation. Calling out to his ‘rabble’ in his clearing, he calls for revolution, shouting: ‘Cohorts! Beloved Spongers! Make Merry. For tonight … we will storm Flintock Village and burn every house, shop and farm. We will behead the Mayor! Imprison the Rotary Club! Pillage the pubs! Rob the Tombola! And whip into a whirlwind a roughhead army of unwashed, unstable, unhinged, friendless, penniless, baffled beserkers … we will rise up … until the whole plain of Wiltshire dance to the tune of our misrule’ (Butterworth, 2010, p. 52).

The action of both texts take place on one day, 23 April, making use of the fact that the day of national celebration, St George's Day, coincides with that of Shakespeare's birthday. Both texts, in fact, reclaim the mainstays of English national identity, Shakespeare and the myth of St George and recast them with characters who revel in their unruly behaviour. As the play begins with William Blakes’ poem ‘Jerusalem’, that is now the national hymn, the symbolism introduces the audience into a familiar jingoistic framework, redolent of a nineteenth century imperialist national identity. However, the song is quickly interrupted by the sounds of a party with loud pounding dance music and the sight of the protagonist Johnny Rooster Byron’s clearing (Butterworth, 2010, p. 6). Thus, the expected jingoism is overturned by Rooster’s powerful, pagan anti-authoritarian behaviour.

Any attempt to create a civilised version of Englishness is most famously subverted in Angela Carter’s Wise Children when a vaudeville entertainer ‘Gorgeous George’, in a typical reversal of expected gender roles, does a strip-tease down to his Union Jack ‘gee-gee string’ (which is large enough for a horse) and reveals the map of the British Empire tattooed across his body, with the Falkland Islands disappearing ‘down the crack of his bum.’ (1992, p. 67) This exemplifies Carter’s oeuvre in which Bakhtinian carnival forms the framework of her writing. Carter promotes Englishness that purposefully subverts and over-rides that of an elitist national culture. Her subversion is cultural and bodily, and always excessive. In his study of the grotesque, David Danow explains the function of carnivalesque figures in contemporary writing, in a way that makes it applicable to Carter’s work. In Chapter One, he explains that this form of carnival is a social leveller reliant on laughter, a celebration of the bodily above the spiritual and cerebral, a celebration of excess and community and a release of class tensions (Danow, 1995). Both Wise Children and Jerusalem portray many wild and carnivalesque parties that illustrate Danow’s understanding of the carnivalesque. None is less poignant than a party at Lynde Court, the stately home of the protagonist twin’s father, where Hollywood producers and Shakespearean actors mix at a ‘Twelfth Night’ fancy dress ball. During the night the house burns to the ground (indicating the end of the dominance of high-culture and the elite status of their father) and the crowd reacts with ‘orgiastic’ energy described by Carter in excessive bodily, subversive and comic detail:

Nothing whets the appetite like a disaster. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Coriolanus stoutly buggering Banquo’s ghost under the pergola in the snowy rose-garden whilst, beside the snow-caked sundial, a gentleman who’d come as Cleopatra was orally pleasuring another dressed as Toby Belch. (1992, p. 103)

Butterworth reaches further back into the history of England, in fact to pre-history and the myths and legends of the West Country. By setting his play in the woods of the area of England best known for its ley-lines and large prehistoric monuments such as the megaliths of Stonehenge and Avebury, he draws upon the continued ancient mysticism of the region. Thereby he conjures a sense of mythology of the old region of Wessex, and marries it to a need for an articulation of a rejected underclass of rural desolates. This requires a delicate balance, whereby he creates an English mythology without it being interpreted as racially exclusive or encouraging the development of fascistic national narratives. In addition, in Jerusalem, the day is also that of the local country fair. These traditional community-lead festivals continue to be celebrated throughout rural England, particularly in the month of May. In fact, the Flintock Fair, that is reported as off-stage action, is described as a contemporary version of an ancient fair with roller-coaster rides and coca cola yet that still retains its crowning of a May Queen, the May Pole and Morris Dancing. The traditions and myths of the past are frequently recalled by all of the characters – even the youths sing traditional songs and keep the rituals at Flintock Fair interspersed with drug taking, drunkenness, sexual abandon and rave music. Whether it is the retired professor of History (who poignantly suffers from dementia) or the local youths, they all make reference to either St George or folk song. In Act One a folk song celebrating the Spring is heard on several occasions: ‘With the merry ring, adieu the Spring; For summer is a-come unto day’ (Butterworth, 2010, p. 10). Thus, the lexis of this play is a vital illustration of polytemporality whereby the vocabulary is interwoven with that of twenty-first century urban youth and pre-imperial folklore.

Even so, for the critic, there remains a difficulty in discussing folklore without invoking a cultural framework by which the folklore itself can be possessed by a sector of society for their exclusionary own purposes. The difficulty of finding appropriate terminology and symbolism for the connection of this ancient mythology to certain located cultures of England reflects the political sensitivity of the subject. The danger of the appropriation by the far-right of an Englishness that emanates from pre-industrial England has been often noted regarding the use of the St George’s flag by racist groups. Therefore, it is no surprise that the use of the English flag as part of Butterworth’s stage set is noted with unease by Arifa Akbar in a review of the play: ‘The flag has, since Jerusalem’s first staging in 2009, continued to be associated with the far right, and the play’s bigger dewy-eyed ideas around Englishness carry a queasy proximity to the romanticised narrative that has been co-opted by the right.’ (2022)

When asked in interview by Green Party politician Caroline Lucas about the link between Rooster and Englishness, Rylance responds with the question ‘What is an appropriate myth for these times?’ (O’Kelly, 2023). The question hovers appropriately unresolved over the play. What is English mythology to the contemporary sometimes cosmopolitan and richly diverse population of England? Butterworth’s English mythology draws upon the traces of ancient and rural folklore such as the continuing traditions of May Day celebrations and their associated folk songs to explore this question. It is these that Butterworth mines for his myth of our times and thereby contributes to a noticeable folk revival. Moreover, the discussion of a revival of English folk music is helpful in negotiating this conundrum that Butterworth’s play instigates; how is it possible to draw upon ancient English folklore without conjuring references useful to the far-right?

Not only does English folk music occur in both texts, as it also does in Shakespeare’s plays, but Angela Carter was herself a folk musician. Perhaps seeming more tenuous but of significance, Jerusalem is linked through cultural association with a current folk revival via the actors who play the characters Ginger (Mackenzie Crook) and Lee (Johnny Flynn). Johnny Flynn is also a well-known folk musician. Crook himself is a key player in a new exploration of rural Englishness in his recent television work such as Detectorists (2013–2022, BBC) which he wrote and directed, famously including new English folk in its soundtrack, including a theme tune by Johnny Flynn. In an interview with The Countryside Charity, Crook considers how his experience of playing Ginger has made him reflect on the concept of Englishness. He considers: ‘What is Englishness? I don’t have the answer for you, but I think our culture, folklore and traditions are all part of that identity … Often you’re alone with the ghosts of the past, looking for signs of people that are long dead. And they’re everywhere, because every field in England has been trodden or inhabited before. We’re all walking around on archaeology’ (2022). The similarities between the depiction of rural England in Crook’s Detectorists and Butterworth’s Jerusalem are clear. At the end of the Christmas special episode of Detectorists (2022), the central hapless characters sense the ground rumble and shake (as it does at the end of Jerusalem) at the magical inference that the Holy Grail lays beneath their own feet in a field in isolated rural England.

Contemporary English folk music is explored in an essay by Simon Keegan-Phipps in which he notes the danger of folk music being co-opted by the far-right, as it is frequently referenced by the far-right figure Nick Griffin whose vocabulary is littered with the term ‘folk’. For this reason, there exists a ‘Folk Against Fascism Campaign’ that was started in 2010 specifically to make a musical statement to alienate far-right listeners. Observing this, Keegan-Phipps states, ‘Nonetheless, the vast majority of English folk musicians, dancers and audiences actually share left-of-centre politics, and oppose the nationalist rhetoric of the far right. Rather than linking their activities to the celebration of nationalism, the vast majority of folk performers and enthusiasts consider their involvement in the folk arts to be an expression of vernacularism.’ (2017, p. 6)

Terms such as ‘vernacular’, ‘indigenous’ and ‘endemicity’ have all been used to explain the link of folklore to the population of England. The term ‘vernacular’ (associated with home and domestic locations) has begun to replace any notion of ‘indigeneity’ of English folklore. Although sometimes erroneously used in order to express the connection of ancient myths to current-day English culture, the concept of ‘indigeneity’ is not applicable to mainstream English society and is in fact politically disingenuous. The UN (n.d.) defines ‘indigeneity’ explaining that: ‘Indigenous Peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment. They have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live’. Keegan-Phipp’s examination of English folk music succinctly explains why English folk culture in a post-imperial context can never be ‘indigenous’: ‘ … while national identities are so often expressed in terms of opposition to – and, ultimately, independence from – a dominating or threatening external group (historical or current), the assertion of an English identity is confused or disrupted by the English people’s historical credentials in the role of dominator.’ (2017, p. 18) With this knowledge in mind, Keegan-Phipps suggests the term ‘post-imperial endemicity’ to express the sense that folklore ‘belongs’ to certain people in England, yet this term does so while recognising the position of England’s role as a dominating force (2017, p. 19). Nonetheless the aspect of ‘belonging’ can still appear to be exclusionary in a way that Keegan-Phipps is hoping to avoid.

Butterworth partly navigates these issues by casting his protagonist with an English Romany identity. As this places Rooster outside imperial culture, he could actually be associated with at least some aspects of indigeneity. To what extent Rooster is connected to a Romany community is not fully revealed in the play. However, it is made explicit that he is descended from a Romany family and he calls upon his ancestors to protect him at the climax of the drama (Butterworth, 2010, p. 108). He also intimates that he has magical powers that he has gained from his Romany ancestry including an extraordinary yet undisclosed power that causes fright when characters look closely into his eyes and see his true nature (Butterworth, 2010, p. 70). He also exercises the ability to make a curse, as he does to the Kennet and Avon Council saying ‘Any uniform which brushes a single leaf of this wood/Is cursed, and he who wears it this St George’s Day/May he not see the next’ (Butterworth, 2010, p. 108). Although this adds to the drama and excessive charisma of the protagonist, it plays directly on stereotypes noted by Romany academic Ken Lee. In ‘Orientalism and Gypsylore’ Lee provides a history of the study of Romany culture through anthropological research by which: ‘Romanies could be seen as exotic and anachronistic outsiders in a modern setting – the exotics/primitives within – and thus suitable subjects and sources for an emerging ‘scientific’ study into language, cultural customs, music and dance’ (Lee, 2000, p. 136). He reinforces the point that, ‘An important sub-set of this anthropological perspective was examination of the Gypsies as practitioners of the occult arts, particularly various forms of fortune telling’ (Lee, 2000, p. 136). In fact, a version of this stereotype can be found in the representation of the Romany characters, particularly the women Esme and Polly, in BBC’s Peaky Blinders, 2013–2022, a highly popular television series that is contemporaneous with Jerusalem.

Butterworth’s appropriation of a Romany identity for the protagonist Rooster is one of the most troublesome and yet also redemptive aspects of the play. Whereby the Romany have held the unfortunate position throughout history as outcasts in English society, and this seemingly has not abated in our time. Problematically, this opens the potential for the audience to add to the already familiar orientalist exoticism and mysticism associated with the Romany. In order to counter this, Butterworth makes clear the hereditary connection of Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron for many generations to the woodland. He is, it is made clear, an English Romany (Butterworth, 2010, p. 107). In Lee’s terms this reinforces the notion that: ‘Whilst Orientalism is the discursive construction of the exotic Other outside Europe, Gypsylorism is the construction of the exotic Other within Europe – Romanies are the Orientals within’ (2000, p. 132).

Thus, on the one hand, Butterworth falls into the trap of reengaging with exoticized representations of Romany. However, it is significant that it is the Romany Rooster who employs the ancient myths of England to build a bespoke identity, that offers an alternative to an elitist post-imperialist Englishness. This provides a protective layer against the appropriation of Butterworth’s vision of Englishness by the far-right. Due to the racist stereotyping of Romany in British society, Rooster, is both English and ‘other’. Therefore, his ancient version of Englishness is vernacular and yet not racially exclusive.

We find Rooster at the end of the play creating incantations to the ancient gods and giants asking for protection against the authorities. This, and other moments when Rooster reveals his supernatural powers, make a direct magical realist and problematic link between his Romany ancestry and mysticism. Yet, there is also a sense that Rooster, and his ancestors, are the truly rightful inhabitants of what is called, after all, ‘Rooster’s Wood’. Moreover, the setting in woodland and Rooster’s refusal to be evicted from it by the local council, reminds us of modern anti-establishment heroes such as the environmental protester ‘Swampy’ who, since the 1990s, has famously lived in tunnels and trees and refused eviction in order to halt development of significant areas of natural landscape (Barkham, 2021). In effect, Rooster is not only protesting his own eviction from his ancestral woodland, but (like Swampy) attempting to halt the overriding development of rural England for capitalist profit. Hence, the ‘new estate’ becomes a focus of hate for Rooster and a symbol of the capitalist urbanisation of the countryside. This form of capitalisation is one that creates uniformity, exclusion and disconnects the population from their traditions and regional identity. Yet, some of the disillusioned youth that are drawn to his clearing to find a space of freedom and belonging actually live on the new estate, illustrating Butterworth’s representation of the complexities of country-town living.

Appropriately, given the complexity of the theme, Rooster is a trickster protagonist who revels in unruly behaviour, much like the recurring figure of Puck that occurs in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare, 2004) and is referenced in Wise Children. He has many traits that we can also associate with Shakespeare’s Falstaff. It is frequently observed that Falstaff is a carnivalesque subversive figure. As Graham Holderness reasserts that Falstaff ‘constitutes some kind of internal opposition to the ethical conventions, political priorities and structures of authority and power’ that are held by his friend Prince Hal. Moreover, Holderness claims this is the result of ‘moral rebelliousness and illegality’ (1992, p. 151). This could equally be a description of Rooster. He is a reveller and a teller of tall-tales. His role is to create disorder so as to counter the control that the local authorities attempt to take over his life. In part, his resistance is an attempt to preserve his ancestral woodland and Romany way of life. Yet he is also seeking to protect his freedom from capitalist urban life, and he does so not only for himself but for the community of disenfranchised individuals who gather together in his clearing. By running his informal ‘court’ by his old trailer in a clearing in the woods, he provides a space to escape and reform identity away from the regulation of mainstream society and its conformist consumerism. After all, ‘during carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is the laws of its own freedom’ (Danow, 1995, p. 7).

It is also Rooster’s Romany identity that places him in a liminal position in relation to English mainstream society and provides him with the possibility to subvert and challenge. He shares this potential with Carter’s twins who are liminal in every aspect of their lives (illegitimate, female, vaudeville performers from the poor part of town) and yet use this in order to challenge and subvert the systems that make them outcasts. Rooster’s stand against the Kennet and Avon council is really resistance to the capitalist system that discards those who are not economically effective. This is what makes him a hero in the play. He brings together the local disenfranchised youth for parties and drugs, but provides them with crucial refuge from the dehumanising treatment that they receive as underachieving members of society. Thus, it also shares in the carnivalesque concept of Carter’s work in which ‘Carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank’ (Danow, 1995, p. 10). The clearing is a carnivalesque space where the order of society is suspended and it becomes a down-at-heal utopian space of refuge for all. His clearing, much like Puck’s Forest of Arden in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a space where class distinction does not exist. This is a clear intertextual connection to Shakespeare’s play and Butterworth also references the play with the first speech by Rooster ‘I dreamt all night of waterfalls … ’ (Butterworth, 2010, p. 10) and later, with the Professor’s toast to ‘Titania’ (Butterworth, 2010, p. 18). Thus, the influence of Shakespeare’s play is at the centre of Butterworth’s depiction of contemporary rural life, indicating a strong and enduring tradition of classless celebration of Englishness.

Yet, despite Rooster’s seeming heroic character, the complexity of the play is such that, as Arifa Akbar points out, there is repeated misogyny, and seen through other eyes, Rooster is a menace, drug pusher and possible abuser of teenage girls (2022). It is made clear that he has fathered a son with a young girl who first went to his clearing to find refuge and instead fell under his influence. He is, it is a clear, also a neglectful father. Yet, as the play never allows for simplicity, he appears to be appropriately protective towards Phaedra, the May Queen, who has run away to Rooster to avoid the sexual interest of her step-father, Troy. In fact, it is his heroic protection of Phaedra that leads to a brutal beating by Troy from which it is unclear at the end of the play if he will fully recover.

It is in Act Three that the tragedy of Rooster’s story becomes evident. On the point of eviction by the local council from his ancestral woodland, he finds that he has been abandoned by the youths who previously sought him out and gathered in his clearing. Beaten and drunk, he is left to fight the authorities on his own. Completely outcast by all of society, of all classes, Rooster turns to the ancient gods and figures from English folklore calling out: ‘Rise up, Cormoran. Woden. Jack-of-Green … You fields of ghosts who walk these green plains still. Come, you giants!’ (Butterworth, 2010, p. 109). As Sophie Gilbert states, ‘When the play’s climax shows a bloodied Rooster Byron attempting to summon the giants of England to his aid, Butterworth has sure-handedly connected contemporary to ancient England.’ (2022)

Of course, the relationship of Englishness and the history of the English countryside is never uncomplicated. Christine Berberich states in ‘This Green and Pleasant Land: Cultural Constructions of Englishness’ ‘We have the idea of pastoral England, the green and pleasant land, competing for space with the newly industrialised England’ (2006, p. 208). It creates nostalgia for the ‘unspoilt’ countryside which in itself is a myth as the English countryside is almost entirely created through human habitation and farming. As Berberich asserts, this nostalgia for ‘green and pleasant land’ as the core of Englishness was secured in the nineteenth century, at the height of imperialism with which it is associated. Rooster’s wood is distinguished from this two-fold: firstly, Rooster’s clearing is a temporary dwelling (a static caravan) and not a built settlement. Secondly, the woodland is indeed ‘unspoilt’ (but for the detritus of the parties that take place there). While the Kennet and Avon Council see Rooster’s wood as potential building land, for Rooster his connection to the ancient woodland is not nostalgic but a continuous line of ancestral habitation. Jez Butterworth explained in an interview with The Guardian journalist Sarfraz Manzoor (2011) that the play is definitely not about nostalgia but about the loss of the ability to react to threats to our lives. This is the power of myth that Butterworth attempts to harness: to make us aware of rural England as a place redolent with references to the past with an inclusive sense of community inspired by Shakespeare’s English plays and the ancient myths of the places we inhabit; to create an English identity based on rebelliousness that protects rural life and dismisses the symbolic ownership of ‘the green and pleasant land’ by the landed (and often semi-urban) gentry, yet one, which, given the open ending, is unclear in its success and ultimately appears reliant on undefined magic.

In her review of the play in The Atlantic magazine, Sophie Gilbert, too, sees the dangerous line that Butterworth attempts to walk with this play, summarising: ‘If Englishness is a place, it’s where pagan chaos meets tyrannical order … . But to lose sight of the fact that so much of our national identity as Englishmen and women is constructed and fake is to risk falling sway to darker impulses.’ (2022) Her statement, of course, is true but also rather too dismissive. After all, we are aware that Rooster is a teller of tall-tales, and creates stories to place himself among mythic characters, such as when he claims to have met the giant who built Stonehenge ‘just off the A14 outside Upavon. About half a mile from the Little Chef’ (Butterworth, 2010, p. 57). The myths to which he refers are also of course stories but they are ancient and oft-repeated stories that have a deeper significance, as all myths do. Therefore, the reclamation of the ancient stories of the west of England in order to produce a renewed English identity provides a bedrock for an alternative Englishness that speaks for the marginalised as well as the powerful. On reflection, Gilbert concedes: ‘My reading of Jerusalem, and my sense of why it registers at a slightly different frequency now, is that the play captures the potency of storytelling, for good and for bad. Rylance gives Rooster so much charisma that, as an audience member, you will his stories to be true.’ (2022)

In her review written during the week of the Queen Elizabeth II’s Jubilee, Sophie Gilbert ponders (2022):

If you were looking for a summation of the state of contemporary England, that week laid it all bare: twee floral arrangements, the fetishization of history, cheap supermarket booze, privilege, appalling messes made for workers to clean up. Against this backdrop, Jerusalem felt to me less like a play than a prophecy … . To be English, it suggests, is to be part of a great contradiction recurring over and over. It’s to boast about the mythology of a national identity without remotely invoking it in practice … .

Yet, Butterworth is successful, at least in part, in providing an alternative Englishness that connects ancient myth to people’s lives and localities. Ultimately, while Carter creates a sense of proletarian Englishness by reclaiming Shakespeare’s subversive elements in twentieth century London, Butterworth adds to this by drawing upon English rural traditions and reclaiming the ancient myths of Wessex to create a diverse, mystical and strong version of Englishness that counters both Imperialist versions of a nostalgic English idyll, and the capitalist urban modernity. Both writers successfully negotiate association with a racialised Englishness and create a national identity that originates with the working classes and those discarded by society. However, as Arifa Akbar states about Jerusalem: ‘The play’s idea around myth and identity are lyrical but do not fully cohere’ (2022). Butterworth responds to a need to find alternative ways to cast Englishness that encompasses the experiences of the disenfranchised rural population, and he does so by employing the figure of the ‘Romany’. With this, he counters a racialised Englishness but repeats the exoticisation of a subaltern minority. Yet, as Akbar says, ‘this is a complicated and layered play, growing into its magnificence, as mercurial as its contradictory and complicated central characters’ (2022). Nonetheless, it is a play that will be seen in future years to represent our time and reflect both the disenfranchisement of an underclass by the ruling elite that defines it, as illustrated in Carter’s work before, including the traces of racialist colonialism, and a complex folkloric cultural renewal to connect diverse people to the foundations of a new Englishness.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).