though he were writing a newspaper report; but this concreteness of
vision translates itself into a remarkable concreteness of speech. I
suppose there was never a more concrete writer than Shakespeare, and his
practice of translating all his idea into things which you can touch or
see grew steadily stronger throughout his career, so that any competent
critic can in a moment distinguish his later writing from his earlier by
its compression of images in words, its forcible concretion of the
various "parts of speech," its masterful _corv�e_ of nouns substantive
to do the work of verbs, and so on. Even in very early work such as
_Venus and Adonis_ we cannot but note this gift of vision, how quick and
particular it is....

_Upon this promise did he raise his chin,
Like a dive-dipper, peering through a wave,
Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in...._

But in his later plays--so fast the images teem--he has to reach out
among nouns, verbs, adverbs, with both strong hands, grasping what comes
and packing it ere it can protest. Take for example:--

_Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care._

Or--

_The multitudinous sea incarnadine,
Making the green one red._

Or--

_In the dark backward and abysm of time._