Shakespeare's Rhetorical Training and His Early Plays

Abstract

The importance of the art of rhetoric for Renaissance letters in general and William Shakespeare in particular has long been recognized. T. W. Baldwin’s William Shakspere’s Small Latine & Lesse Greeke (1944) provides a survey of the wide range of literary texts and treatises available to Shakespeare, and Sr. Miriam Joseph’s Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language (1947) closely examines the manifold use made by Shakespeare of traditional techniques of invention and argumentation, pathos and ethos. Since then, however, there have been few specific studies on Shakespeare’s rhetorical training and practice. While interest in Shakespeare’s schooling has risen, few direct links between his Stratford lessons and the text of his plays have been established.