In fact, the handful of historical details that are in the play does not correspond to our understanding of life among the early Britons of the first millennium B.C.E. Anachronisms surface that are characteristic of medieval rather than ancient Britain, the influence perhaps of Holinshed’s source, the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain, c. 1135) by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which Shakespeare himself may have read. Even more prominent in King Lear are the reflections of social conditions and controversies from Shakespeare’s own age. Perhaps because of its dearth of historical detail, many have “seen the play primarily in relation to the Jacobean age,” that is, the age of King James (Foakes in Shakespeare, p. 13). Given the complication of three chronological layers—ancient, medieval, and Jacobean—the following survey moves from life among the ancient Britons as we understand it today, to the legendary history of King Lear as Shakespeare knew it, to the era of King James as it relates to the play.
Celtic life. Not organized into a single kingdom, the ancient British Celts, or Britons, consisted rather of individual peoples loosely affiliated by language and culture.
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