ABSTRACT
Often the most powerfully registered articulations of England and Englishness in Shakespeare's history plays are, paradoxically, grounded in a strong sense of collective shame, of past wrongs and self-inflicted wounds. Speed's broadside map also has in common with Shakespeare's plays the fact that many of the battles reported are, as mentioned above, far from 'civil'. Not unlike Shakespeare's histories, Speed's peculiarly Elizabethan map and text serves as a solemn reminder of the fierce intra-island battles between the English and the Welsh as well as those between the English and the Scots. Shakespeare's final English history 'might be regarded as proto-British' precisely because it not only incorporates but also accommodates, however briefly and unevenly, an Irish, Scottish and Welsh character. Although the untitled Jacobean map retains much of the form of the earlier Elizabethan map, its content works to erase the haunting memory of Britain's intra-island wars as well as the threat of rebellion in Ireland.
