ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how a dozen of Shakespeare's well-known contemporaries declared their personal interest in Wales, often to the extent of claiming a kind of Welshness. As Bartley notes, excessive pride in birth and absurd claims to gentility were staple attributes of the early modern stage Welshman. Hunting for noble ancestors in the misty Cambrian past was not a habit confined to penurious 'mountain-squires' alone. Welsh ancestors featured prominently in many of the most illustrious English pedigrees, including those of the Tudor queen and Stuart king under whom Shakespeare lived and wrote. It also views as the locus of an ethnically and spiritually pristine Britishness, Welshness was a valuable attainment, to the extent, that is, that it could be imitated or co-opted by the English. Particular aspects of a perceived Welsh identity genetic links with British antiquity, access to mystic British knowledge, imperial and poetic authority could be isolated and made accessible through a range of literary modes.
