This study began with the affront of Lord Cobham and is built on the premise that Lord Cobham was the rule, not the exception, to aristocratic sensibilities regarding family in the sixteenth century. If this premise can be assumed, and there is ample evidence that it can be, then other premises must follow: first, that Shakespeare and his audience lived in a society which was founded on and driven by the notion of family and the privileging of genealogy. Second, that the aristocracy was particularly sensitive about family lineage and reputation, primarily because such considerations were paramount in determining an aristocrat's connections, standing, and future. Third, that the dominance of state-controlled chronicles as disseminators of history meant that a family's historical identity was largely dictated by a regime whose main objective was the control and suppression of the once-powerful nobility. Private and family histories could subvert this control, but the rise of the history play meant that the Tudor version of history was suddenly available to a wider, less literate, and less discriminating audience. These premises lead to some final suppositions: that Shakespeare, as a man of his time and place, had to be aware of the importance of family to the aristocratic echelon. Furthermore, as a dramatist of Tudor history, Shakespeare had also to be aware that he was recreating the failings and flaws of the ancestors of that echelon. Because of the universality of Shakespeare, we have a tendency to displace our own cultural peculiarities onto him.