This essay repositions the study of Renaissance sexuality within the portals of rhetoric both because period studies of rhetoric are themselves insistently sexual, and because the drama of the time - notably Shakespeare's - revels in making language the medium and end of sexual desire. Such an emphasis on the sexuality of rhetoric assumes tropological undercurrents that might not be represented explicitly as sexual tensions, but which ensure the battle for sexual supremacy is waged between rhetorical tropes. Shakespeare's Richard II is one of many such battlegrounds, and the king's murder is complicated by sexual factors lurking in the textual undergrowth. (from OCLC FirstSearch)