“Free institutions have got a new start, and we have to understand the process. We have to make an appraisal of the parliamentary system; and if we make one that is just, we shall displease all parties to the controversy. You remember how during the war this Ogi family used to argue until three o’clock in the morning. The most difficult question in all history had to be decided, and kept decided for four years. Was there really a choice between British capitalism and German autocracy? Was there any real life left in the parliamentary system, anything worth saving in political democracy; or must we go over to working class dictatorship? We listened to the partisans of each side as they stormed at us; there were millions of separate facts, and we had to appraise them and strike a balance. And just when we thought we had it, some Irishman or Hindoo would come along with fresh examples of British governmental imbecility.” “But what’s that got to do with the book?” demands Mrs. Ogi. “We have to make the same decision in our study of world culture. Here is Elizabethan England, and we have to appraise it, and appraise Shakespeare. Are we going to agree with Bernard Shaw and scold him because he isn’t a Socialist? Are we going to agree with Tolstoy and scrap him because he isn’t a saint? Evidently I’m expected to do those things. Here’s a letter from George Sterling, who disapproves most strenuously of my thesis, but who says, ‘From your point of view Shakespeare is your biggest and most vulnerable game.’” “Well,” says Mrs. Ogi, “what’s Shakespeare to you, or you to Shakespeare?” “For one thing, he’s an old friend. For another, he’s a whole universe in himself--” “Surely a respectable opinion!” “I’m sorry to be respectable, but I want to be just. It is easy to name great and important qualities that Shakespeare lacked, and damn him for that lack. On the other hand, one can think of hideous qualities he lacked--and honor him for their absence. Most important of all, he wasn’t a medieval bigot. If he doesn’t ascend to the heights of moral idealism, at least he avoids wallowing in what Sterling calls ‘the liquid manure of superstition.’ He is a modern man, who looks at life with clear eyes, and judges it on its own merits. Coming from Catholic Europe to Elizabethan England is like coming out of a morgue, and standing on a headland where the wind blows from the sea. Shakespeare knew that, and all the men of his time knew it; they were defending themselves from the Inquisition, they were saving the race-mind.