About four hundred years ago, on the stage of the Globe Theatre in London, a minor military character in a major English drama of war and peace asked a question which continues to reverberate through the life and literature of this island. When in Henry V, Shakespeare's stage Irishman, Captain Macmorris asked his Welsh compatriot in-arms, Captain Fluellen, "What ish my nation?" he was acknowledging, in his own too easily imitable manner, that a problem existed, that his national identity was in question.