Literature Review Shakespeare#8217;s works have been spread throughout the world over 400 years, attracting so many critics to show their own insights from different perspectives, which have great significance in deepening our understanding of these masterpieces. This study will focus on the perspective of rhetoric. Harold Bloom considered Shakespeare and Dante as the centers of the classic, because they are more perceptive than any other western writers in terms of the acumen of cognition, the vigor of language, and the creativity. ”No one can compare with Shakespeare in the richness of language.”(36) The richness reflects in the power of words in the works of Shakespeare. In Hamlet, different people have different ways of speaking. The king Claudius is a hypocrite. His greeting towards Hamlet is not enough to cover the guiltiness. The player is just from the lower class. So he is obsequious when talking with the prince. Zha Mingjian noted that the arts of language of Shakespeare also can be shown in a thought-provoking phenomenon. ”The modern versions of Shakespeare#8217;s plays, though being performed by the original lines, have changed the effect and meaning with the change of the contexts, scenes, actors' expressions, intonation and movements.” And he believed it may be due to ”the metaphorical and poetic nature of Shakespeare's dramatic language.”(85) This kind of metaphorical poetic language refers to ambiguity, polysemy, thus we can interpret it flexibly. Some critics also relate rhetoric with cognition. Raphael Lyne in his Shakespeare, Rhetoric and Cognition pointed out that rhetoric and cognition have close connection in Shakespeare#8217;s plays.(28) He also believed that rhetoric is not only the theory of speech, but also the theory of cognition. That means in the using of rhetoric, the characters in the play have changed their cognition. Harold Bloom also said that Shakespeare centers the Western Canon because he changes cognition by changing the representation of cognition.(283) The means of changing of the representation is using rhetoric. Some critics have their own ideas about rhetoric. Paul de Man supported rhetorical reading. He said that the rhetoric fundamentally suspense logic, showing the dizzying possibility of change.(226) It means that all the languages, including literary, philosophical and juristical, are rhetorical. In other word, they are unstable. Because rhetoric makes language become ambiguous. Readers need to judge the relationship between reference and the meaning. Mou Xiaoming stated that aesthetics is the science of studying aesthetic law and rhetoric is the science of better expression of language.(16)Thus rhetoric can be used to show aesthetic ideas, aesthetic ideas in reverse influence the achievement of the value of rhetoric. Many critics have studied rhetoric and Shakespeare#8217;s works. They left a lot of useful references that we can learn from.