Code Choice and Identity Construction on Stage

Abstract

Quintilian, Thomas Wilson and Shakespeare’s contemporary, Ben Jonson. He also references several 20th and 21st century writers, some of whom he lists in “Suggested Further Reading” (236–7). A fascinating ancillary Appendix, entitled “What Shakespeare Learned at School” (211– 219) is a well-reasoned and documented argument against any Oxfordian nay-sayers regarding Shakespeare’s authorship of the works attributed to him. Teachings from the Latin Trivium was “the starting point for a liberal arts education consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric” (235). “Ultimately the schoolboy was to learn how to express himself well in both prose and verse. A key part of this process was both translation and imitation . . . Imitation was the rendering of new matter in the style of a well-known author,” or, as Ben Jonson put it in his Timber, “to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own use” (214). It is easy to reckon that Shakespeare was a voracious reader of others’ influential works, particularly after his schooling; his studies merely provided the acumen “to draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers, with the bee, and turn all into honey,” as Jonson wrote (214), and to continue to develop the rhetorical brilliance which irradiates his plays and poems. Brandreth’s Shakespeare’s Rhetoric is a must-have reference text to deepen an appreciation for Shakespeare’s literary and imaginative creations.