Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd Chapter 44

What Zeale.  What Furie.  Hath inspired Thee Now?

Much of his imagination was inspired by books.  There are times when he had the sources open beside him, and he wrote passages almost line by line but somehow, once these stories seemed to magically change.  Working on pre-existing material seemed to deeply satisfy him deeply.  That is why he could revise his own work and that of other dramatists, in the course of his career.

On occasions he read several books on the same topic and he combined the collected information to create a new reality with it.  In his creation of the trickster from the Winter's Tale he borrowed from one of Robert Greene's pamphlets on his observations of life in the city.  Shakespeare had learned in school that the first step in creation was imitation and he was a genius of imitation.  He also retained an amazing memory and could summon phrases and quotes from his school days and effortlessly revert to outworn dramatic or rhetorical styles.

He worked with words.  Words would evoke more words but then one word called forth another word of opposite intent.  Words flew so freely from him and he distrusted them.  There were times, even when fluency disgusted him.  That is perhaps why he often emphasised the fabrication and unreality of his dramas as his stories were meant to be improbable.

It is also likely that he didn't have a plan when he started writing something.  The most observant account of Shakespeare's method occurred in a treatise, A Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeare, in which the author remarks on the power of association that would lead Shakespeare to link words and ideas "by a principle of union unperceived by himself, and independent of the subject to which they are applied."  He doesn't know what guides his hand or what forced pushed him.

There have been countless studies of his imagery of which an equal number of conclusion have been drawn - that he was fastidious, sensitive to smells and noise, that he engaged in outdoor sports, that he knew the natural life of the countryside very well and so on.  Each play has a continuous stream of images or metaphors that are intrinsic to that play.  They convey a unity of feeling rather than one of unity  In A Midsummer Night's Dream the rude mechanicals are quite unlike the fairies but partake of the same reality, touched by the same lightning.

Yet that lightning was for Shakespeare was a source of perpetual novelty and surprise.  His imagination seemed to increase as he went along.  A scene would appear or a character emerged who would proceed to steal the best lines.  There is a precise moment in Henry IV when Pistol develops the characteristics of quoting or misquoting lines from old dramas.

A complementary path can also be traced in the shape of his career.  He began as an ambitious and prolific dramatist, ready to take on any subject.  He excelled in melodrama as well as history and lyrical pathos.  He seemed to have a natural genius for comedy, in which he could improvise effortlessly, but he learned very quickly how to employ other materials.  It was only in the course of writing his plays that he discovered his vision.  It was only they that he could become truly "Shakespearian".  It may even be that, in the later years, he would astound and terrified himself with these great acts of creation.