“Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite a universal wolf,” devouring all. This is as good a capsule description of the history of Nazism or Stalinism as one can imagine: first the thirst for power, then the pure assertion of will, and then the world wolfed down, large and small alike. Shakespeare believed in charity and forgiveness, too—justice and order tempered by mercy and cheer. But the risk of the universal wolf unleashed when every station in life is contested worried him far more.
