Shakespeare's writing style

For example, the grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, while the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted.

[6] By the time of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry.

Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter with clever use of puns and imagery.

It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony.

Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:[8] Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep.

Rashly— And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well… After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies.

The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical".

And in Macbeth's preceding speech: And Pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's Cherubins, hors'd Upon the sightless couriers of the air, The audience is challenged to complete the sense.

[11] The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.

This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama.

[19] As Shakespeare's mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech.

His works have many similarities to the writing of Christopher Marlowe, and seem to reveal strong influences from the Queen's Men's performances, especially in his history plays.

After Shakespeare's death, playwrights quickly began borrowing from his works, a tradition that continues to this day.

By making the protagonist's character development central to the plot, Shakespeare changed what could be accomplished with drama.

Shakespeare and His Friends at the Mermaid Tavern (1850, oil on canvas) by John Faed . The painting depicts (from left in back) Joshua Sylvester , John Selden , Francis Beaumont , (seated at table from left) William Camden , Thomas Sackville , John Fletcher , Sir Francis Bacon , Ben Jonson , John Donne , Samuel Daniel , Shakespeare , Sir Walter Raleigh , the Earl of Southampton , Sir Robert Cotton , and Thomas Dekker .
Pity (1795) by William Blake , is an illustration of two similes in Macbeth : "And Pity, like a naked new-born babe, / Striding the blast, or heaven's Cherubins, hors'd / Upon the sightless couriers of the air,". [ 13 ]