Rhetoric: ‘Sweet and honeyed sentences’

This chapter is about rhetoric. For many, this primarily means using figures of speech, like the metaphors and similes mentioned above; techniques to make sentences persuasive, as well as ‘sweet and honeyed’ (the description of Henry V’s speech given by the Archbishop of Canterbury – H5 1.1.50). But in fact rhetoric means a lot more than this. It includes the shapes of sentences, how they are structured, how long they are, and detailed issues like whether it is better to put the main point at the sentence’s beginning or its end.