Rhetoric matters in Shakespeare's poems not least because it is the principal means of creating variety. For instance, his two narrative poems are best distinguished from each other in terms of pace; Venus and Adonis being swift-footed throughout, whereas The Rape of Lucrece, despite Tarquin's initial eagerness to encounter the woman whose description has enthralled him, moves with deliberate inevitability, like God's grinding mills. Within themselves the two poems observe a larger number of differences of stylistic effect, so that the pleasure each affords consists of any number of local peculiarities. Differences within similarity, similarity within difference, all based on the primary and underlying principle of antithesis, constitute their main appeal to the reader's imagination. Sonnet rhetoric conforms to this process in terms both of overall structural antithesis and incidental pleasure or colouring. Otherwise a sonnet sequence lacks a consistent narrative, and instead makes use of a fractured or interrupted narrative development. In Shakespeare's case this creates endless problems of interpretation and evaluation. In this chapter, I shall focus on the narrative poems, but will refer to the Sonnets under the general topic of rhetoric.

We need to use the word ‘pleasure’ advisedly, since from the time of the narrative poems’ first composition the question of the ethical purpose, or indeed ethical justification, of such literature has contributed in large measure to the kinds of debate they engender. In some respects, Venus and Adonis is the easier of the two poems to discuss in terms of pleasure for the simple reason that it aims throughout to delight readers with its mischievous presentation of the predicament of love. Yet the history of its reception, particularly in recent times, makes it by no means straightforward. Despite the poem’s lightness of touch, it seems to have raised any number of issues that readers have felt require serious deliberation.