Shakespeare's Late Style
"Shakespeare's Late Style by Russ Mcdonald represents a rare, intriguing effort to understand the development of Shakespeare's final plays by studying them at the level of the sentence, clause and phrase."- Bruce Boehrer Studies in English Literature"McDonald's analysis is both original and convincing.  He is an attuned close reader, combining sensitivity to tone and metre with precision."-Times Literary Supplement"Certainly, in Shakespeare studies, there has been a notable lack of precise technical accounts of Shakespeare's late style, presumably in part because few critics have either the skills or the sheer persistence required to do the work well. Russ McDonald sets out in Shakespeare's Late Style to rectify this situation, and he does so superbly...what stands out above all from Shakespeare's Late Style is the critic's sheer delight in the language of the plays, his determination to investigate the mechanics of their verbal force while never losing sight of the pleasure and frisson of their effect, and the sheer clarity of description that his enthusiasm brings with it. McDonald's book feels like a genuine labour of love; it is also a tour de force, one that all Shakespeareans should read and absorb if we are to know what we really mean when we refer to the playwright's 'late style'."--Gordon McMullan, King's College London, Shakespeare Quarterly