Rule, Britannia!

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Phonograph cylinder recording by Albert Farrington, 1914
Britannia figure on a pub in Saint Helier , Jersey
Sheet music, page 1
Sheet music, page 2

Rule, Britannia! is a patriotic song by the English composer Thomas Augustine Arne (1710–1778) and the lyricists James Thomson and David Mallet . It has its origins as the final song of the stage play Alfred, a masque from 1740.

The song was and is considered the "unofficial national anthem " of Great Britain - the official national anthem of this and some other Commonwealth countries is God Save the Queen - and is part of the repertoire of the London Last Night of the Proms , where the most famous and popular arrangement of Malcolm Sargent is played.

history

Alfred's libretto and thus also the text of Rule, Britannia! was written by James Thomson and David Mallet - you can no longer find out who wrote what exactly - and was first performed on August 1, 1740 at the country estate of Prince of Wales Friedrich Ludwig von Hanover in Cliveden ( Buckinghamshire ). The original title of the song is A grand ode in honor of Great Britain / When Britain first at heav'n's command .

While the first three of the six verses known today come from the Masque of Alfred , the other three were added by Lord Bolingbroke in 1755 for Mallet's Masque of Britannia .

At the time of the premiere, the British Navy still shared supremacy at sea with the French and Dutch. In the Peace of Paris in 1763 , Great Britain received a large part of the French colonies in North America . Although the Thirteen Colonies were lost after the American War of Independence (thus ending the First British Empire ), Great Britain defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 , and Great Britain defied Napoleon's continental blockade from 1806 to 1814 . Great Britain opened up new sales markets (especially in North America) - once again the importance of shipping was evident. After Napoleon's end, Great Britain's “imperial century” (1815–1914) began. At the Congress of Vienna , some colonies were exchanged.

After defeating France, Britain had no more serious rivals (with the exception of the Russian Empire in Central Asia ). The British, unrestrictedly dominant at sea, took on the role of a “world policeman”, a state doctrine later known as “ Pax Britannica ”. Foreign policy was shaped by the principle of “ splendid isolation ”: other powers were bound by conflicts in Europe, while the British stayed out and expanded their supremacy by concentrating on trade. Thanks to its leading position in the world economy, Great Britain also influenced the domestic politics of numerous nominally independent states; this included China , Argentina and Siam , also known as the “informal empire”.

The naval fleet later protected Britain from a series of "haughty tyrants" and "foreign strokes" as described in the song.

Use of the song

Rule, Britannia! is - like the patriotic pieces Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem  - traditionally performed by the BBC during the Last Night of the Proms (closing event of the promenade concerts) and is usually sung by a guest star, including Bryn Terfel , Thomas Hampson , Della Jones , Gwyneth Jones , Kiri te Kanawa and Felicity Lott . However, after the singing along with the song and other patriotic works and the intense flag waving of the audience were repeatedly criticized as a longing for imperial greatness and the past, including by Leonard Slatkin , it was only performed in abbreviated form for a few years. In 2020, the two unofficial national anthems, "Rule, Britannia" and "Land of Hope and Glory", will only be performed instrumentally at the Proms, which is what makes British, who feel like patriots, outraged and accuse the BBC of being more political Bow correctness. In 1994 the song was sung at the Last Night of the Proms in London's Royal Albert Hall by Bryn Terfel - the well-known Welsh bass-baritone  - who, to everyone's surprise, sang the third verse in Welsh (see web links ). He did this when he first performed the song in its traditional form in 2008.

English football fans sing the chorus each time the national team plays.

In the late 1990s, the word game Cool Britannia referred to a revitalized and youthful United Kingdom that the British media saw emerged from the election of Tony Blair's New Labor government .

text

Original text

English
When Britain first, at Heav'n's command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
|: Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves.: |
The nations not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
|: Chorus: |
Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
As the loud blast, that tears the skies,
Serves but to root thy native oak.
|: Chorus: |
Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
To work their woe, and thy renown.
|: Chorus: |
To thee belongs the rural reign,
Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine, shall be the subject main,
And ev'ry shore it circles thine .
|: Chorus: |
The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest Isle! With matchless beauty crown'd,
And manly hearts to guard the fair.
|: Chorus: |
 Verbatim translation
When Britain first, at Heaven's bidding,
rose from the blue sea,
was this the foundation of the country
and guardian angels sang this melody:
|: Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves;
British will never be slaves.: |
The nations that are not as blessed as you
will fall prey to tyrants in time;
while you should bloom big and free,
to the horror and envy of all of them.
|: Refrain: |
You should rise even more majestically,
even more terrible by every strange blow;
because the loud crack that tears the heavens apart
only causes your native oak to take root.
|: Refrain: |
Haughty tyrants should never tame you;
all their attempts to bend you down
will only kindle your noble flame
and only care for their suffering and your fame.
|: Refrain: |
You own the rulership of the land
Let your cities shine in the splendor of trade;
The sea as a subject should be entirely yours,
and every shore yours that it encloses.
|: Refrain: |
The muses, still to be found with freedom,
shall return to your happy coast;
Blessed island! Crowned with singular beauty,
and with manly hearts to protect the beautiful.
|: Refrain: |

Sung version

The 2nd verse and the 3rd verse of each stanza are sung twice, sometimes in a different form:

English

When Britain first at Heav'n's command
Arose from out the azure main;
Arose, arose, arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter, the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain;
|: Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves!
Britons never will be slaves.: |
The nations not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish, shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
|: Chorus: |
...

In contrast to the original text, in which only one long drawn out “never” is sung in the chorus, it is now common to sing three quick “never, never, never”, and in the refrain there was also will to shall . The refrain is therefore mostly Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves! / Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

Further use of the song

“When first the South, to fury fanned
Arose and broke the Union's chain,
There was the Charter, the Charter of the land,
And Mr Davis sang this strain:
Rule Slaveownia! Slaveownia rules and raves,
'Christians ever, ever, ever shall have slaves'. "

  • Occasionally the song title is satirized with "Waive, Britannia - Britannia waives the rules" ("Ignore, Britannia, Britannia ignore the rules").
  • Mel Brooks uses the melody in some of his films when there is a reference to England or Great Britain, such as In To Be Or Not To Be (1983) when the main characters arrive in London or in Robin Hood Heroes in Tights when Robin Hood is on the coast England arrives.
  • In the PC computer games Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny , Ultima VI: The False Prophet , Ultima VII: The Black Gate and Ultima IX: Ascension (produced by Origin Systems and later Electronic Arts ), Rule Britannia is always when entering the castle of Lord British played.
  • In the animated film Cars 2 from Pixar an instrumental version of the piece is played, Lightning McQueen and Hook to Buckingham Palace enter to enter ceremony knighthood to Hooks and Hook tried to bring the famous guards out of the socket.
  • Former British wrestler David Boy Smith aka The British Bulldog used the song as an entry music during his time in the US World Wrestling Federation in the 1990s.
  • In the 1935 film Mutiny on the Bounty , Rule Britannia sounds in the closing sequence .
  • In the 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty , the anthem sounds instrumental in the scene of Fletcher Christian's casting off and return from the ship to the island of Tahiti
  • In the 1986 film Basil, the great mouse detective , the hymn sounds instrumental in the scene in which the "Queen" of the mice appears for the first time.
  • In the netflix series "The Crown", Rule Britannia is played as Winston Churchill's entry on his 80th birthday.

literature

Web links

Commons : Rule, Britannia!  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Porter, The Nineteenth Century, p. 401
  2. ^ Porter, The Nineteenth Century, p. 332
  3. ^ Olson, Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, p. 285
  4. ^ Porter, The Nineteenth Century, p. 8
  5. ↑ Rule , Britannia, but don't sing - racism dispute over unofficial national anthems at "Last Night of the Proms" (Jochen Buchsteiner), In: FAZ from August 26, 2020
  6. ↑ a b File: Rule, Britannia! .Pdf
  7. ↑ Maurice Willson Disher: Victorian Song . Phoenix House, 1955.
  8. ↑ MP3 file