Eighteenth-century drama is often dismissed as homogenous, aesthetically uninteresting, or politically complacent. This book reveals the incredibly intriguing and intricate nature of the period's history plays and their often messy dramatisaton of the complexities of patriotic rhetoric and national identification.

'Marshall provides significant insight into how the violent realities of the colonial endeavour were either elided by the fantasy of liberty or reconciled with the rhetoric of patriotism.' - Lisa A. Freeman, Times Literary Supplement