New Criterion editors have generally been against public funding of the arts in general and the NEA in particular. But “it is gratifying to report that the National Endowment for the Arts seems finally to have come around to our way of thinking on these issues. Under the leadership of the distinguished poet and critic Dana Gioia, the NEA has said farewell to the ephemeral and the meretricious. One evidence of the agency’s new commitment to quality is Shakespeare in American Communities.”