To write his plays, William Shakespeare looked for inspiration in a wide variety of sources, including myths, history, and popular stories of his day. Among Shakespeare’s inspirations were two ancient British kings. Of the two kings, King Lear is completely mythical. His biography is partially based on Leir of Britain, a legendary British monarch whose story Geoffrey of Monmouth recorded in his pseudohistorical 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (“History of the Kings of Britain”). Geoffrey's genealogy of the British dynasty dates Leir's rule to the 8th century BC, about the period of Rome's establishment.  Geoffrey of Monmouth at Tintern Station. (Colin Cheesman / CC BY-SA 2.0)  Read moreSection: NewsHistoryAncient TraditionsPremiumPreviewRead Later