Words as the Measure of Measure for Measure: Shakespeare’s Use of Rhetoric in the Play

Abstract

The document presented strays from the form of a traditional historical or literary paper to assume the shape of an analytical catalogue of the most frequent (and some rarer) figures of rhetoric used by Shakespeare in the play. While it is true that rhetoric, conceived as the art of persuasion, is met under various forms and preferences in all ages, it is a less calculated pursuit in our world. Shakespeare and his contemporaries were systematically taught rhetoric in the grammar school and it offered therefore a more conscious resource than it does nowadays. The high concentration of a type of figure goes a long way to establish the general atmosphere of the play world or define the profile of a character. An inclination to resort to similes (fully formulated comparisons) rather than metaphors (incomplete comparisons) – see Julius Caesar for example – imposes on speech a hefty, didactic structure, well away from the condensation and speed with which metaphors key us into a poetic alternative to daily reality.

Keywords

• Measure for Measure
• rhetoric
• Shakespeare