This study traces 43 of the most important rhetorical figures in nine plays by William Shakespeare, from Titus Andronicus (ca. 1592-3) to The Tempest (ca. 1612). Analysing in detail how Shakespeare used these devices for specific effects in his dramas, it refutes the long-lived idea that he depended less on rhetoric in his mature and late writing. Instead, it establishes that Shakespeare used figures at every stage of his career. His rhetoric is always integrated into the verbal structure of the plays and the interaction of human beings that forms their substance.