The word style is often used in a sense equally appropriate to all the forms of Art,—­a sense having reference to some peculiar mode of conception or execution; as the Saxon, the Norman, the Romanesque style of architecture, or the style of Titian, of Raphael, of Rembrandt, of Turner, in painting.  In this sense, it includes the whole general character or distinctive impression of any given workmanship in Art, and so is applicable to the Drama; as when we speak of a writer’s tragic or comic style, or of such and such dramas as being in too operatic a style.  The peculiarities of Shakespeare’s style in this sense have been involved in the foregoing sections; so that I shall have no occasion to speak further of them in this general survey of the Poet’s Art.  The more restrained and ordinary meaning of the word looks merely to an author’s use of language; that is, his choice and arrangement of words, the structure of his sentences, and the cast and texture of his imagery; all, in short, that enters into his diction, or his manner of conveying his particular thoughts.  This is the matter now to be considered.  The subject, however, is a very wide one, and naturally draws into a multitude of details; so that I can hardly do more than touch upon a few leading points, lest the discussion should quite overgrow the limits I have prescribed myself.

On a careful inspection of Shakespeare’s poetry, it becomes evident that none of the epithets commonly used in regard to style, such as plain, simple, neat, ornate, elegant, florid, figurative, severe, copious, sententious, can be rightly applied to him, at least not as characteristic of him.  His style is all of them by turns, and much more besides; but no one of the traits signified by those terms is so continuous or prominent as to render the term in any sort fairly discriminative or descriptive of his diction.

Under this head, then, I am to remark, first, that Shakespeare’s language is as far as possible from being of a constant and uniform grain.  His style seems to have been always in a sort of fluid and formative state.  Except in two or three of his earliest plays, there is indeed a certain common basis, for which we have no word but Shakespearian, running through his several periods of writing; but upon this basis more or less of change is continually supervening.  So that he has various distinct styles, corresponding to his different stages of ripeness in his work.  These variations, to be sure, are nowise abrupt:  the transition from one to another is gradual and insensible, proceeding by growth, not by leaps:  but still, after an interval of six or seven years, the difference becomes clearly marked.  It will suffice for my purpose to speak of them all under the threefold distinction of earlier, middle, and later styles.  And I probably cannot do better than to take King Richard the Second, As You Like It, and Coriolanus, as representing, severally, those three divisions.