The cenacle opposing the 'despotism' of Queen Elizabeth and King James, like the knights of King Arthur's Round Table consisted of Francis Bacon, Walter Ralegh, and, as far as Shapiro can make out from her confused writing, perhaps Edmund Spenser, Lord Buckhurst and the Earl of Oxford, all putatively employing playwriting to speak to both rulers and the ruled as committed republicans vindicating that cause against tyranny. She had, in Shapiro's reading, a 'revolutionary agenda' that consisted in upturning the myths of America's founding fathers and the Puritan heritage.