This 1986 book tackles the large and difficult but relatively unexplored topic of how Shakespeare viewed his own craft and creativity. What was his sense of prosody, imagery, poetic structure, and invention? Did he have specific views on acting, the purposes of drama, the unities and audience participation? Was there a conscious theoretical basis to his creation of dramatic personae? What did he think of artistic in relation to natural creativity? Shakespeare's Poetics is a full-length study of this subject. The author charts all its available aspects, and concludes that Shakespeare's idea of poetics occupied a place among contemporary theories which was surprisingly advanced, differing widely from mainstream Renaissance criticism and falling in line with the foremost thinking of the age.