First published in 1980. At their most successful, Shakespeare's styles are strategies to make plain the limits of thought and feeling which define the significance of human actions. Baxter analyses the way in which these limits are reached.

John Baxter

1. Verse into drama 2. Sidney's Defence and Greville's Mustapha 3. Tragedy and history in Richard II 4. The standard: the moral and the golden 5. The standard: the metaphysical and the Shakespearean 6. Reductions: style and the character of Bolingbroke 7. Deflections: style and the character of Richard 8. Tragic doings, political order and the closed couplet 9. Astounding terms: bombast and wonder 10. Macbeth: style and form