Shakespeare's Rhetorical Figures: An Outline - Paperbackby Gideon Rappaport (Author) When Shakespeare began writing for the stage, he had already mastered over two hundred rhetorical figures inherited from the long tradition of the language arts grammar, logic, and rhetoric stretching from Aristotle to his own time. These figures, which to us may appear merely decorative, were for Shakespeare the very medium of speech, and as his art developed, his figures became more and more subtly expressive of meaning.