Shakespeare was not a genius. He was, without the distant shadow of a doubt, the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But not a genius. No angels handed him his lines, no fairies proofread for him. Instead, he learnt techniques, he learnt tricks, and he learnt them well. (Page 11)
Note: Memorable line
Nobody is quite sure which is Shakespeare’s first play, but the contenders are Love s Labours Lost, Titus Andronicus, and Henry VI Part 1. Do not, dear reader, worry if you have not read those plays. Almost nobody has, because, to be utterly frank, they’re not very good. To be precise about it, there isn’t a single memorable line in any of them (Page 11)
Shakespeare got better because he learnt. Now some people will tell you that great writing cannot be learnt. Such people should be hit repeatedly on the nose until they promise not to talk nonsense any more. (Page 11)
So Shakespeare learnt and learnt and got better and better, and his lines became more and more striking and more and more memorable. But most of his great and famous lines are simply examples of the ancient formulas. “I can smile, and murder while I smile” was not handed to Shakespeare by God. It’s just an example of diacope. (Page 12)
All that the Greeks were doing was noting down the best and most memorable phrases they heard, and working out what the structures were, in much the same way that when you or I eat a particularly delicious meal, we might ask for the recipe. (Page 12)
The figures are alive and thriving. The one line from that song or film that you remember and don’t know why you remember is almost certainly down to one of the figures, one of the flowers of rhetoric growing wild. They account for the songs you sing and the poems you love, although that is hidden from you at school. (Page 13)
A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else. (Page 13)
There is no possible way that Shakespeare didn’t have North open on his desk when he was writing. But also, Shakespeare made little changes. That means that we can actually watch Shakespeare working. We can peep back 400 years and see the greatest genius who ever lived scribbling away. We can see how he did it, and it’s really pretty bloody simple. All he did was add some alliteration. (Page 15)
Any phrase, so long as it alliterates, is memorable and will be believed even if it’s a bunch of nonsense. (Page 16)
It’s still polyptoton if the words have a close etymological connection, or are just different parts of the same verb, (Page 18)
Polyptoton, even though nobody has ever heard of it, succeeds, and nothing succeeds like success. Polyptoton is the sort of rhetorical trope you use when you’re the first man on the moon, unless cruelly messed up by the radio transmission. (Page 20)
Polyptoton was complex. Antithesis is simple. Indeed, the only tricky thing about antithesis is how to punctuate it. Some insist that you should use a colon: others complain that you should use a full stop. But in essence antitheses are simple: first you mention one thing: then you mention another. (Page 21)
But these are all just plays on the basic formula of antithesis: X is Y, and not X is not Y. Wilde did a few of these: “Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.” This is the soul of antithesis, and this is what makes it so simple. (Page 21)
