Forensic Shakespeare

An Irish Times review wonders if Shakespeare picked up where the School of Athens left off:

What made Shakespeare into Shakespeare? A case can be made that it was his acute understanding of rhetoric that makes so many of his plays and poems unique, complicated and challenging. The art of rhetoric flourished as the mainstay of educational theory and practice in England throughout the 16th century and well into the 17th. 

Students learned inventio, how to be varied, interesting and accomplished in their presentation of arguments, employing clever tropes and devices that made striking comparisons and startling juxtapositions; reinforcing points through particular emphasis of language and gesture; judging how an audience would react to an argument and tailoring its style accordingly; and knowing when to be brief and when to be expansive. When “invention” started to assume its modern definition, as “discovering or devising new ways of doing things for the first time” rather than “uncovering something already there”, the art of rhetoric was dying. 

Quentin Skinner’s towering reputation is primarily in the field of early modern political history, and he has long argued that rhetoric is the key that unlocks our understanding of historical movements and schools of thought. He has now turned his formidable learning to Shakespeare, to show how an understanding of rhetorical culture will illuminate the ways in which we read the plays and poetry.