In this magnum opus, Britain's most distinguished scholar of 16th-century and 17th-century literature restores Shakespeare's poetic language to its rightful pri

Classical Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, formed the sum and substance of Shakespeare's education and was the basis of his understanding of the power of langua

Grammar-school students in Shakespeare's time were taught to recognise the two hundred figures of speech that Renaissance scholars had derived from Latin and Gr

Renaissance plays and poetry in England were saturated with the formal rhetorical twists that Latin education made familiar to audiences and readers. Yet a form