I want to try to learn a bit more about what Shakespeare's thought process might have been in terms of diction. And for that purpose, I'm going to refer (again) to John Ciardi's highly useful handbook entitled How Does a Poem Mean? (1959). In Chapter Four, "The Words of Poetry", he points out that words have four qualities and that they should all be considered when making a decision regarding their use. I'm going to summarize Ciardi's points and give Shakespearean examples of each over the next few posts, but for now these are the headings unadorned:

1. A word is a feeling.

2. A word involves the whole body.

3. A word is a history.

4. A word is a picture.

And here, as an example of Shakespeare's diction, is a passage from act three of Henry V, in which the chorus asks us to imagine the English Navy's voyage to France:

CHORUS

Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies

In motion of no less celerity

Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen

The well-appointed king at Hampton pier

Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet

With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning:

Play with your fancies, and in them behold

Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;

Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give

To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails,

Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,

Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,

Breasting the lofty surge: O, do but think

You stand upon the ravage and behold

A city on the inconstant billows dancing;

For so appears this fleet majestical,

Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow:

Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,

And leave your England, as dead midnight still,

Guarded with grandsires, babies and old women,

Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance;

For who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd

With one appearing hair, that will not follow

These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?