ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how William Shakespeare's play uses many of the images contained in the entertainments written to celebrate the investiture, although it deploys these in such a way as to question the fundamental political issues of the period concerning absolutism, law, union and empire. The Empire of Great Britain is 'world enough to yield/ All works of glory ever can be wrought', while Tethys's 'waves and watery government' will, through the alchemy of trade and the exploitation of natural resources, 'turn fish to gold' and render 'more certain riches' than ever the Indies brought to Spain. A more straightforward acceptance of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fabulous history of Britain with its founding myth of Trojan Brutus as the conceptual background for Shakespeare's play has recently been reinforced by a bibliographical emendation. Short essays on the history of names, the difference in usage in different European languages, and the significance of anagrams form a significant proportion of Camden's Remains.
