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Uses tropes associated with cognitive rhetoric in Macbeth, such as "temporal dysmorphia" and metalepsis, to analyze Sonnets 97 and 30. Argues that Shakespeare's cognitive rhetoric evokes sympathy and active mental processing of the thoughts explored in both poems and drama.
Building on Samuel Johnson's critique of Shakespeare's "quibbles" (predominately puns), analyzes the effect of words with multiple meanings in As You Like It and Sonnet 135.
Provides a "mini-archive of Hamlet's visual record" and questions what theatrical images can tell viewers about past performances and conceptions of the play.
Examines classical influences--like Ovid's Metamorphoses--on Shakespeare's plays and poetry. Using the rude mechanical's version of Pyramus and Thisbe and Hamlet's attempt to remember the tale of Aeneas and Dido, argues that the plays' "classical moments are often audibly or visibly distinguished from the surrounding drama." Further argues that Shakespeare's sonnets wrestle with "the nature of immortality, of poetic permanence, of monuments, and of living energies" by examining Sonnets 60, 81, and 17.
Compares Petrarch's, Dante's, and Michelangelo's poetry with Shakespeare's. Concludes that "points of contact between Shakespeare and Michelangelo show how Petrarchism could evolve in response to far-reaching cultural shifts and how far it enabled rather than hindered some of the most seminal achievements of European poetry in the 16th century."
Suggests that although Shakespeare may not have read Du Bellay's Antiquitez and Ruins of Rome, Shakespeare does employ similar themes and descriptions of "Ruinish" (poetic language associated with ruin, civil war, and the fall of Rome), metaphors surrounding ruined human bodies and cities, refusal, responses to Petrarch, and nothingness. Also briefly discusses Titus Andronicus as point of initial engagement with Du Bellay's images and ideas.
Compares Wyatt's poetical techniques with Shakespeare's sonnets and plays; argues that when "[w]riting for the page, Shakespeare preserves the license of intermittence, or open voicing, as practised and proposed by Wyatt. Writing for the stage, he uses the instabilities of voice and purpose to create a present/absence: the sense of psychic depth as rendered by words that work by means of insufficiency."
Discusses the influence of Tudor grammar schools and English-Latin debates in Shakespeare's sonnets and Sidney's Astrophil and Stella. Concludes that Shakespeare's "engagement with the details of grammar is more understated" than Sidney's and thus "deal[s] more thoroughly with...the functional and structural features of language," whereas Sidney tends to deal with social aspects associated with grammar.
Explores use of commonplace markers in print texts of Shake-Speares Sonnets and 1609 quarto of Troilus and Cressida, arguing that, in comparison to present-day perceptions of Shakespeare's originality, "within the texts, the values of rarity and novelty are attenuated by, and often subordinated to, a prior commitment to abundance and commonality."
Examines the early modern English history play's response to crises caused by the English Reformation, arguing that in Richard II Shakespeare promotes a "secular re-enchantment" by manipulating comedy and tragedy.