Critical Analysis: Extract of unknown Prose In the passage given for critical Analysis, the Author reflects on stylistic values of Shakespeare and in the rhetoric of the writer, we are made aware of their opinions in their use of vocabulary and perhaps in some ways their factitious use of examples. The passage is made up of three paragraphs and is a non-fictional piece of prose, aided by the parenthesis of the author’s lexicons. It is a non-dietetic, piece of writing as it is simply the beginning of some kind of essay on Shakespeare. In parts, the extract is cumbersomely convoluted and facetious; including nouns used such as ‘malignity’ and ‘veneration’ to edify the authors point further on Shakespeare’s works, alluded to in the second paragraph.
Significantly on from this in the third paragraph, the author begins again with the first person pronoun of ‘I’ as in the first paragraph, that they will endeavour to show the subjects ‘faults’ in a somewhat fair way. Hyperbolically chosen is the pluralized noun of ‘excellencies’, suggesting to the reader the possibilities of the author’s bias for the subject. With regards to the use of trope in elevating Shakespeare, it is figuratively put when the author describes the subject of the extract ‘one of the original masters of our language’ and respectively this description is casually asserting the authors opinion (referring back to the hyperbole of ‘excellencies’).
The Essay on Third Quatrain Shakespeare First Subject
Explain how themes / ideas were developed in the texts you have studied. Sonnets 18 and 29 by William Shakespeare. In Sonnets 18 and 29 Shakespeare discusses the themes of love, beauty, time and depression. He develops these themes through the structure of the sonnet. The structure of a sonnet consists of three quatrains and a couplet. In Sonnet 18 Shakespeare compares his friends beauty to a ...
The narrator of this piece of prose, promises the reader from their standpoint, that what has been said and implied by their use of lexis, is both from an knowledgeable personage with an eloquent and intelligent use for words as we read on. This opinion has been made, through extracting the flow of the prose, because although as stated before it can be sometimes convoluted and cumbersome (with example from the first paragraph ‘certain mode of phraseology so consonant and congenial’), the words, as if read out loud, seem to be that of a speech or possibly a lecture, imploring the reader / audience to listen to their diction.
Could this text be put out in oration, the listener would discern from the reading, the grammatical breakneck from one paragraph to another. The connotations for the reader of this extract are in that textual expectations allowing for further investigation of the authors premise over Shakespeare. Being more ‘agreeable’ in a modern analysis of the works, contextually the comic dialogue owing to the time it was written would have been fully understood by the audience, although now as modern readers, we can discern, subtleties that in reading rather than watching the underlying comedy / tragedy /history of the texts. To conclude this analy sation, it can be seen that the author’s eloquent use of language, ease of syntax and complex use of vocabulary simply compels the reader into acknowledging the intelligence and obvious learned diction of the author by invoking us to look further into Shakespeare’s works as modern readers, without prejudice that one may have had owing to historical readings..
