Poster, 'Stand not upon the order of your going'

Enlisting Shakespeare

This British Army recruitment poster uses a line from William Shakespeare's play Macbeth, when in Act 3, Scene 4 Lady Macbeth commands her guests to 'Stand not upon the order of your going. But go at once'. In this context, however, the line is used to urge men to enlist. 

By the second year of the First World War (1915), the British government was increasingly eager to recruit men for the Army. What was to have been a very short war had turned into a long struggle. Britain lacked a steady supply of trained reserves who were ready to fight and as a consequence published many patriotic posters in an effort to continuously recruit new soldiers.

British and American Posters in New Zealand

This poster is part of a collection of First World War posters sent to New Zealand as examples of British wartime propaganda. From 1917-1919, the Dominion Museum (now Te Papa) collected such war material with the help of the New Zealand High Commissioner in London and the Department of Defence.

The museum intended to collect and display such objects in a planned national war museum in Wellington which never eventuated. Instead, the museum toured over 100 war posters around New Zealand in the early 1920s in the context of increasing commemoration of the war during peacetime. For many, the posters illustrated important aspects of the war and the history of New Zealand's part in the war. This commemorative function was far removed from their original function to encourage wartime contribution.