This essay explores the burgeoning nationalism of Renaissance England with a particular focus on the figure of the land found in three Elizabethan writings: George Gascoigne`s "The Princely Pleasures at the Courte at Kenelwoorth," Raphael Holinshed`s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and William Shakespeare`s King Richard II. Proposing to define England through representations of the attachment between the land and the monarch, these texts ultimately fail at drawing a neat parallel between these two symbols of the nation as other dissenting forces-courtiers, common people, shifting socio-economic systems-wedge their way into the texts to assert their association with the land and thereby undermine the monarch`s monopoly on the English soil. The land, therefore, becomes a tropological site of dynamic competition among heterogeneous voices in dispute over who or what is "English." A close textual analysis of this discursive competition taking place around the figure of the land reveals a certain political ambiguity intrinsic to a nation born from the monarchical system. A seemingly paradoxical desire to unite and dissent exists between the monarch and the people precisely because the sovereign will of the nation is represented and enacted by one individual ruler. That is, as long as Queen Elizabeth is England, the nation-building project of the English people requires the celebration of their dear queen even while they voice their individual interests and ambitions and imagine other grounds for national solidarity than the crown, such as language, history, and culture. Likewise, reacting to the era`s ambiguous standing between traditional medievalism and incipient modernity, the monarch straddles the dual identity of a knightly protector of the land and the people (as seen in Gascoigne) and a modern individual who, no longer able to rely on the commodified land, turns to such cultural properties as the English language and patriotic sentiment to found his sovereignty upon his subjectivity (as seen in Shakespeare). My emphasis on the ambivalent forces of monarchical hegemony, both constructively unifying and oppressively antagonistic, in the early stages of English nationalism makes moot the dispute among historicist critics who impose their political beliefs on textual interpretations only to take sides in deciding who represents "England"-the ruler or the people. By focusing on the literary figure of the land and its political ambiguity, my analysis of the texts offers a far more historically suggestive reading, ultimately putting Renaissance nationalism in its proper historical context so that we can gain veritable perspective on the significance of land and territory in the idea and experience of the nation.