Since Shakespeare was sufficiently inspired by legendary British history to write Cymbeline and King Lear, it might reasonably be asked why he never took up the story of Britain's greatest king, Arthur, a “man more sinned against than sinning” if ever there was one (Merriman 1973: 47). It is true, of course, that none of the major dramatists of the period chose to handle an Arthurian theme, and it is therefore perhaps sufficient to say that, like them, Shakespeare did not take the legend seriously enough. The very few specifically Arthurian allusions in his plays are generally pejorative in tone and associated with the likes of Falstaff and other comic figures. When he chose to use the name of Arthur's greatest knight, Lancelot, he did so only to give it to one of his clowns (and a hunchback, perhaps, into the bargain). The literature of chivalric adventure must have seemed a somewhat trivial source of dramatic inspiration when it delighted the mind of a simpleton like Flute, who asked hopefully: “What is Thisbe? A wandering knight?” (A Midsummer Night's Dream: 1.2.41).

The scarcity of Arthurian allusions has even led scholars to the idea that Shakespeare may simply not have been familiar with Malory's book at all (Merriman 1973: 47). But this is surely going too far. Le Morte Darthur was extremely well-known in the sixteenth century and, according to a humanist like Roger Ascham, far too well-known. At all costs, it was to be kept out of the hands of the bright young things of the day, young men and women with too much money and too much time on their hands for such licentiousness and such papistry to be of any good to them (Ascham 1904: 230–1).