Our subject is “political culture,” a phrase that combines two of the most conceptually complicated words we can encounter in English. The roots of the first word are Greek; they take us back to the ancient city-state, the polis, and its distinctive forms of public and collective life. The roots of the second are Latin, from cultura, referring to the tilling of land or the care bestowed in growing plants. Yoking these two ideas together as adjective and noun, therefore, asks us to think about those modes those rules and norms, habits of mind, manners of speaking, and common practices employed in ruling, running, maintaining, and advancing, or possibly resisting, the polity. However, the meaning of this combination of ideas is far from straightforward when applied to Shakespeare's world.