ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about Holinshed and Camden. Between the Queen's and Cloten's militant support of British dignity and insularity and Giacomo's implicit attack on British virtue lies the possibility of a more insightful and self-aware ambivalence. For all their seeming self-consciousness, these characters are not yet fully self-aware. The Ovidian subject matter of her reading, together with the later account of the classical narratives decorating the room, create the sense of a Chaucerian dream-narrative, where the speaker's reading experiences are the prelude to a dream of strong literary self-consciousness. Belarius interactions with the royal family and genealogy are not only self-consciously literary, but also intrinsically investigative of the values of the British History. Cloten's trumpeting of the British History as a sacred lineage, like Kelton's simplified ethnic and national history, implicitly denies this pragmatic and more readily credible view; ironically, he best embodies the uncivil potentials in the British nature.
