Politics & Power Quote by Alex Cox

Cox’s line has the breezy authority of a filmmaker who’s spent a career smuggling unruly ideas through popular forms. “Everybody gets a little dose of Shakespeare” frames the Bard less as sacred literature than as cultural inoculation: unavoidable, administered early, and faintly medicinal. It’s a sly dig at how Shakespeare functions as England’s most successful brand export, a curriculum staple that confers taste and legitimacy whether you asked for it or not.

Then Cox pivots to the admission every serious Shakespeare-lover is supposed to keep quiet: yes, the craft is untouchable, but the worldview can feel conservative. Calling the politics “fairly square” is doing a lot of work. It’s a deliberately un-academic phrase, a shrug that punctures the reverent halo. “Square” doesn’t mean evil; it means safely aligned with order, hierarchy, restoration, the comfort of stability after chaos. Shakespeare’s kings regain their crowns, legitimacy gets reasserted, and even when power is questioned, the drama often funnels back toward continuity. The plays are radical in psychology and language, less so in their final settlements.

The subtext is a director’s practical problem: how do you stage canonical genius without reproducing its default ideology? Cox, known for punkish, anti-establishment instincts, is signaling a method: take the dose, keep the high, but don’t mistake prestige for progress. Shakespeare remains the richest toolbox in English drama; the trick is refusing to let the toolbox tell you what kind of house to build.