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words, whether spoken or sung, do not seem to us in the least Shakespearian; and they might all be omitted without loss to the context. In a word we regard the masque as a non-Shakespearian interpolation…

(163)

Perhaps this suggests an iron fist within Q’s velvet glove. Certainly, the English Arden he constructs for As You Like It can brook no foreign elements that would dilute either its Englishness or its quintessential Shakespearean quality. The fact that these are coterminous for Q reinforces the point and justifies his edition’s recommended cut. A Liberalism as English as his must be prepared, paradoxically perhaps, to repel potential boarders as part and parcel of its larger stance. And Q was in no doubt as to the extent to which English Liberalism’s principles were inextricable from the traditions of an English way of life. Indeed, the American T.S.Eliot’s remark about contemporary society being “worm-eaten with liberalism” provoked uncharacteristic outrage and indignation in him: “This ‘Liberalism’ which Mr. Eliot arraigns as a worm, eating itself into the traditions of our society, reveals itself rather as Tradition itself…” (Gross 1973: 208) —of the very essence of Englishness, that is: something which a mere American could scarcely be expected to grasp. As You Like It’s idyllic Forest of Arden is quite clearly cut from the same cloth.

Of course, such idylls demonstrate that meaning is finally made, not found. Cultures characteristically construct sets of polar opposites to this end. Not always overt, or even formally designated, these work most powerfully when unrevealed or unrecognized, even by those whose ways of life they covertly, albeit powerfully, shape. Constructing difference, we construct ourselves: we are what we oppose. However, we may also, for complex historical reasons, slightly misconceive some of the systems of opposition and difference most powerfully at work in earlier societies, by imposing upon them characteristics derived from our own. If the Englishness/Foreignness opposition that Q constructs as the basis of his reading of Arden turns out to be sustainable only at the cost of the excision of a chunk of the otherwise admired Folio text, then a case exists for arguing that it may be generated by its editor’s particular stance in the matter.

In fact, to abandon that commitment for the moment is to encourage the emergence of a set of different, no less distinctive oppositions, some of which find a confirming echo in a number of other Shakespearean texts. One evident example—specifically in

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