"An Ode [Rule, Britannia]"
By James Thomson and Thomas Arne

Correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff of Marymount University, Tonya Howe
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Sources

London : A. Millar, 1740This song was originally included in the three-act masque, Alfred, by James Thomson and David Mallet, published by A. Millar. It was set to music by Thomas Arne. The musical score was first printed in 1741, as a supplement to The Music in the Judgement of Paris, in London, by Henry Waylett. The score can be viewed via the IMSLP Petrucchi Music Archive at http://vmirror.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/9/96/IMSLP284937-PMLP146712-Arne_Rule_Britannia.pdf.Page images are drawn from the libretto, available on Google Books at https://www.google.com/books/edition/Alfred_a_Masque/OR3haEgISR8C.For more information on the 1740 text, see the English Short Title Catalog at http://estc.bl.uk/T21215.Oxford, UK: Oxford Text Archive, Thomson, James, 1700-1748. and Mallet, David, 1705?-1765., 2007, Alfred: a masque: Represented before Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, at Cliffden, on the first of August, 1740., Oxford Text Archive, http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12024/K030406.000.

Editorial Statements

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Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded. Main text has been normalized to standard roman type, with highlighted elements in italics.

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Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not. Where pages break in the middle of a word, the complete word has been indicated prior to the page beginning.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section.

Citation

Thomson, James. "An Ode [Rule, Britannia]". Alfred: A Masque, A. Millar, 1740 , pp 42-43 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthology.lib.virginia.edu/work/Thomson/thomson-rule. Accessed: 2024-04-28T19:07:51.715Z

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Footnotes

main_According to the OED (main, n.5a), the "main" is the open sea--the azure or blue sea, in this case.
charter_A charter is a founding document, but more specifically, a document from a sovereign source "granting privileges to, or recognizing the rights of,...certain classes" or groups of people (OED, n.1a). What entity grants these rights in the poem?
britannia_Oil painting of 'The East Offering Its Riches to Britannia' (1778)Source: Spridone, 'The East Offering Its Riches to Britannia' (1778)Britannia is a figurative, allegorical representation of Britain as a female warrior carrying a trident and a sheild, often accompanied by a lion. The trident is the weapon of Neptune, the ancient Roman god of the sea, and in the 19th century, she became a vivid symbol of empire. We might keep in mind the role that white femininity might play in "civilizing" others. In the 1778 painting shown here, we see an unhelmeted Britannia accepting offerings from "the East" (The East Offering its Richest to Britannia, via Wikipedia).
oak_The native English oak tree (quercus robur) has long been a symbol of strength and justice ("Oak Symbolism in the Light of Genomics").