Finally, although adding this at the end of the article and leaving it in the air, several questions are begged: what we see in the plays is not mediaval society at all, but Elizabethan and Jacobean society. Because although Shakespeare was writing ‘history’, using historical figures and events, what he was really doing was writing about the politics, entertainments and social situations of his own time. A major feature of Shakespeare’s appeal to his own generation was recognition, something Shakespeare exploited relentlessly.