Rule Britannia Eu4
Glendora Spink
"Rule, Britannia!" is a British patriotic song, originating from the 1740 poem "Rule, Britannia" by James Thomson[1] and set to music by Thomas Arne in the same year.[2] It is most strongly associated with the Royal Navy, but is also used by the British Army.[3]
The song was originally the final musical number in Thomas Arne's Alfred, a masque about Alfred the Great, co-written by James Thomson and David Mallet and first performed at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales, on 1 August 1740.[4]
In 1751 Mallet re-used the text of "Rule, Britannia!", omitting three of the original six stanzas and adding three new ones by Lord Bolingbroke, to form the repeated chorus of the comic song "Married to a Mermaid". This became extremely popular when Mallet produced his masque Britannia at Drury Lane Theatre in 1755.[6]
Married to a Mermaid tells the story of a young man, in some versions a sailor or a farmer, who falls overboard from a ship and is married to a mermaid, and later rises from the sea and says goodbye to his comrades and messmates and his ship's captain. It is a traditional sailors' song and regularly performed by choirs, and its lyrics have many versions. A version written, composed and performed by Arthur Lloyd has the lyrics: [6]
"Rule, Britannia!" soon developed an independent life of its own, separate from the masque of which it had formed a part. First heard in London in 1745, it achieved instant popularity. It quickly became so well known that Handel quoted it in his Occasional Oratorio in the following year. Handel used the first phrase as part of the Act II soprano aria, "Prophetic visions strike my eye", when the soprano sings it at the words "War shall cease, welcome peace!"[7] The song was seized upon by the Jacobites, who altered Thomson's words to a pro-Jacobite version.[8]
According to Armitage[9] "Rule, Britannia" was the most lasting expression of the conception of Britain and the British Empire that emerged in the 1730s, "predicated on a mixture of adulterated mercantilism, nationalistic anxiety and libertarian fervour". He equates the song with Bolingbroke's On the Idea of a Patriot King (1738), also written for the private circle of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in which Bolingbroke had "raised the spectre of permanent standing armies that might be turned against the British people rather than their enemies".[10] Hence British naval power could be equated with civil liberty, since an island nation with a strong navy to defend it could afford to dispense with a standing army which, since the time of Cromwell, was seen as a threat and a source of tyranny.
At the time it appeared, the song was not a celebration of an existing state of naval affairs, but an exhortation. Although the Dutch Republic, which in the 17th century presented a major challenge to English sea power, was obviously past its peak by 1745, Britain did not yet "rule the waves", although, since it was written during the War of Jenkins' Ear, it could be argued that the words referred to the alleged Spanish aggression against British merchant vessels that caused the war. The time was still to come when the Royal Navy would be an unchallenged dominant force on the oceans. The jesting lyrics of the mid-18th century would assume a material and patriotic significance by the end of the 19th century.
"Rule, Britannia!" is often written as simply "Rule Britannia", omitting both the comma and the exclamation mark, which changes the interpretation of the lyric by altering the punctuation. Richard Dawkins recounts in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene that the repeated exclamation "Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!" is often rendered as "Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves!", changing the meaning of the verse. This addition of a terminal 's' to the lyrics is used as an example of a successful meme.[11]
Maurice Willson Disher notes that the change from "Britannia, rule the waves" to "Britannia rules the waves" occurred in the Victorian era, at a time when the British did rule the waves and no longer needed to be exhorted to rule them. Disher also notes that the Victorians changed "will" to "shall" in the line "Britons never shall be slaves".[12]
The song assumed extra significance in 1945 at the conclusion of World War II when it was played at the ceremonial surrender of the Japanese imperial army in Singapore. A massed military band of Australian, British and American forces played as Supreme Allied Commander Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma arrived.[13]
Richard Wagner wrote a concert overture in D major based on the theme in 1837 (WWV 42). He subsequently made it the basis of his "Groe Sonata" for piano, Op. 4.Ferdinand Ries quotes from it in "The Dream" (also known as "Il sogno") for piano, Op. 49, and wrote Variations on Rule Britannia for orchestra, Op. 116.Johann Strauss I quoted the song in full as the introduction to his 1838 waltz "Huldigung der Knigin Victoria von Grossbritannien" (Homage to Queen Victoria of Great Britain), Op. 103, where he also quotes the British national anthem "God Save the Queen" at the end of the piece.
The French organist-composer Alexandre Guilmant included this tune in his Fantaisie sur deux mlodies anglaises for organ Op. 43, where he also makes use of the song "Home! Sweet Home!". Likewise, the French composer Alexandre Goria used the tune as part of his Salut la Grande Brtagne - Six airs anglese transcrite et varie, 1re. Suite No. 8, Op. 44.
Arthur Sullivan quoted from "Rule, Britannia!" on at least three occasions in music for his comic operas written with W. S. Gilbert and Bolton Rowe. In Utopia Limited, Sullivan used airs from "Rule, Britannia!" to highlight references to Great Britain. In The Zoo (written with Rowe) Sullivan applied the tune of "Rule, Britannia!" to an instance in which Rowe's libretto quotes directly from the patriotic march. Finally, to celebrate the jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887, Sullivan added a chorus of "Rule, Britannia!" to the finale of HMS Pinafore, which was playing in revival at the Savoy Theatre. Sullivan also quoted the tune in his 1897 ballet Victoria and Merrie England, which traced the "history" of England from the time of the Druids up to Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, an event the ballet was meant to celebrate.
There's really only one song we could pick for Britain's first weekend out of the European Union since 1972. Come the eleventh hour on Friday night, the lads sang it in Parliament Square and down the pub - although not terribly well, it has to be said. Not all their fault, of course. It's a magnificent tune and great words, but they don't fit together that well in the verses and the lyric can be hard to catch. Still, I always like this bit:
That's Kiri with the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing Sir Malcolm Sargent's famous arrangement conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. I attended the Proms that year as a guest of the BBC's Director-General (it'll be a long time before that invitation ever comes again), and, if memory serves, I wrote the programme notes for some of the lighter fare that season. But I treasure Dame Kiri's sincerity in that number, which is not always the case in contemporary renditions. She does particularly well by "the blast that tears the skies".
We have of all people Duke Friedrich Ludwig of Brunswick-Lneburg to thank for "Rule, Britannia!" That was his name at birth, in the Electorate of Hanover in what was still the Holy Roman Empire, on February 1st 1707. So, if we weren't celebrating the birth of post-EU Britain this weekend, we'd be celebrating Duke Friedrich's 313th birthday. He's better known to posterity as Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of King George II and father of King George III. And, if you're saying, "Well, hang on, if he's the kid of George II and dad of George III, doesn't that make him King George the Second-and-a-Half?", I'm afraid not: He predeceased his pater, and the Crown passed direct to George II's grandchild.
His Majesty was not much troubled by that: George II and the Prince of Wales were seriously estranged. Frederick's grandfather succeeded to the British throne as George I in 1714, moved from Hanover to London and brought his son and heir with him. Young Fred was left behind in Germany and didn't see his dad for fourteen years. By the time King George II belatedly ordered his eldest son over to England, Prince Friedrich was twenty-one years old and, having spent his entire life among the Krauts, not terribly British. He was made Chancellor of the University of Dublin (his portrait hangs in Trinity College to this day) in hopes this would keep him away from Court and on the night boat from Holyhead most of the time.
If this is beginning to sound a bit Megxitty, well, almost: In order not to have to spend any time with His Majesty, the Prince in 1737 moved out of St James's Palace to Buckinghamshire, which was evidently the Salt Spring Island of its day. He rented from the Countess of Orkney her riverside estate at Cliefden, which we now spell Cliveden - as in the Profumo affair:
It began like a movie: July 8th 1961. An unusually warm evening at a grand country estate. A girl in the swimming pool. She pulls herself up out of the water. She's beautiful, and naked. A larky lad in the water has tossed her bathing costume into the bushes. And among the blas weekend guests dressed for dinner and taking a stroll on the terrace one man reacts with more than nonchalant amusement as the girl hastily wraps a towel around her. She leaves with someone else the next day. But not before the man on the terrace has enquired after her name.
A lot of history at Cliveden. The swimming pool wasn't there in 1737, and nor was the house - a replacement after the one known by Frederick burnt down, designed in the Palladian style by Charles Barry (architect of my old school and the Houses of Parliament). But there are certain similarities between the residencies of the Prince of Wales and Viscount Astor: under both men, Cliveden became the center for London smart sets of varying merits. Frederick had set up a kind of court to rival his father's, and he didn't take his position for granted. In 1707 the Kingdoms of England and Scotland had been joined in one United Kingdom under Queen Anne. Henceforth, sovereign nation-wise, there was no more "England" or "Scotland", only a newfangled "Great Britain". The Scots weren't terribly happy about being ruled by an English Parliament, and, when Anne died seven years later and was succeeded by her second cousin George I, the English weren't thrilled about being ruled by a German king whose heir was an even more Germanic prince.
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