Shakespeare and the Arts of Language (Oxford Shakespeare Topics)

Shakespeare and the Arts of Language (Oxford Shakespeare Topics) by McDonald, Russ. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780198711711.

Written in a lucid, non-technical style, the book starts with the story of how the English language changed throughout the sixteenth century. Subsequent chapters define Shakespeares main artistic tools and illustrate their poetic and theatrical contributions: Renaissance rhetoric, imagery and metaphor, blank verse, prose speech, and wordplay. The conclusion surveys Shakespeares multiple and often conflicting ideas about language, encompassing both his enthusiasm at what words can do for us and his suspicion of what words can do to us.