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How Boudica’s legend was built through literature, theatre, music, art and politics
Boudica has never been forgotten by the British. Her memory endured before her legacy was properly memorialised from the 16th century. The poet Sir Edmund Spenser called her “Bunduca” in a poem from 1590 called Ruines of Time. He praised her as a “victorious Conqueress” who overcame what he viewed as “Women’s Weakness” to defeat the Romans.
Sexism (not to mention historical inaccuracy) was also displayed by the Jacobean playwright John Fletcher in a play he wrote called Bonduca in 1613. Despite being the title character, Boudica is a secondary role compared to the male protagonist Caratach (Caratacus). To add insult to injury, she is depicted as unintelligent and arrogant. Boudica fared no better in John Milton’s 1670 History of
Britain where he claimed that the Britons were unruly barbarians who were led by a “distracted woman”.
Boudica’s posthumous fortunes only improved during the 18th and 19th centuries. A popular 1695 song by Henry Purcell called Britons, Strike Home! was based on Bonduca and became a patriotic tune that was sung during conflicts that included the Napoleonic Wars.
For a woman who rebelled against imperial aggression, Boudica ironically became an iconic figure at the height of the British Empire. Several Royal Navy ships were named after her and Prince Albert encouraged the construction of her statue in Westminster in the 1850s.
She also became a hero for the Suffragettes. A Suffragette pamphlet from 1909 explained how “this heroic figure… represents a type of the ‘eternal feminine’ – the guardian of the hearth, the avenger of its wrongs upon the defacer and the despoiler.” It is an image that has endured well into the 21st century – regardless of the historical reality.