No doubt the most familiar of the cliche's of Shakespeare studies is that he is our contemporary. Certainly there is some sense in which the claim is true and worth reiterating. If it is no longer quite the case (if indeed it ever was) that, as Edmund says in Mansfield Park, “we all talk Shakespeare,” Shakespeare, along with Jane Austen, has at the Very least recently emerged as our favorite middle-brow screenwriter, and, quill in hand, he serves us, Via advertising, as a readily identifiable icon of both taste and Value. And, of course, Shakespeare stands at the still point of the ever-changing English curriculum in both secondary schools and universities. Nonetheless, we often forget that Shakespeare's currency flows only one way. He may conceivably be our contemporary; but we are not his. Like every age that does what is necessary to stay in contact with him, we drag him forward into our present, ignoring how much he is a stranger in it.