ABSTRACT
The various guilds of merchant tailors, drapers, Glovers, coopers, dyers, haberdashers and others contained a strong Welsh element, which made its presence felt in the animated life of the city and became an integrated part of the community barely distinguishable except perhaps by its accent. A young Welsh boy goes to London and finds himself fighting an English colonial war in Ireland on the eve of the Essex rebellion which, itself, drew some of its strength from Welsh support and much of its impetus from the failures of the English imperium fully to enclose its Celtic neighbours. Peculiar Welsh sounds were also evident on the London stage in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Amongst the other essays in this volume, Philip Schwyzer and Megan Lloyd also discuss the presence of various forms of Welsh language in a range of plays on the early modern stage.
