ABSTRACT
While Celticness is a fluid concept in writing of this period, there appear to be two dominant strains of thought about Celtic connections, at times used in a specific historical sense, which is assertive if inconsistent, and at other times to gesture towards a blurry mythopoeiacal past that is unsurprisingly flexible and unstable. John Kerrigan, whose Archipelagic English is on one level a sophisticated response to the work of Pocock and Nairn, has spoken of 'the Anglo-Celtic double-helix which entwines different versions of the Lear story', and our purpose here is to look at the way in which that 'double-helix' operates in other Shakespeare plays. Pittock's point is important, because one aspect of the emergence of 'Celtic' as a term of abuse was a reaction on the part of Unionists and imperialists to anti-colonial resistance from Ireland, Scotland and Wales to the British Empire.
