ABSTRACT
Hitherto I have concentrated on vocabulary which is the most obvious and most easily accessible o f linguistic features. I have been especially concerned with the Elizabethan expansion o f the lexicon by borrowings, chiefly from Latin; the recognition and use o f some o f the more recent o f these borrowings, both singly and in groups; and the suggestion that excessive borrowing might be limited by the development o f alternative lexical strategies such as word-formation and archaisms. It is time now to turn to wider matters o f clause and sentence, to the Elizabethan achievement o f a variety o f syntactic styles in English, and to Shakespeare’s selection from these for different artistic purposes. To appreciate this we must first turn aside to examine the function o f rhetoric.1
