- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
In this passage from the essay's introduction, Orwell uses an analogy about drinking to explain the logic underlying his argument about how lazy writing leads to lazy reading/thinking. Orwell is saying that drinking and shame have a circular relationship: drinking leads to shame, which then leads to more drinking. Orwell’s rationale is that bad writing is similar, and does more than reflect stupidity; bad writing actually makes people stupid, which leads to more bad writing. Thus, like drinking, bad writing is both a cause and an effect.
Analogical reasoning thus helps Orwell clarify and explain the rationale for his argument…