Shakespeare`s late plays are usually seen in terms of courtliness and escapism. But the critical tradition has been too decorous. Neither neo-Christian pieties nor high-political allegory can account for the works` audacity and surprise, or the popular investment in both their form and meaning. Post-structuralist and historicist approaches show the indeterminacy and materiality of language, but rarely identify how particular figures (words and characters) capture and energize contested history. Recent criticism tends to put a pre-emptive `master-paradigm` above all else; a more sinuous, minutely attentive critical vocabulary is needed to apprehend Shakespeare`s turbulent, precise, teeming metaphorical discourse.