Accordingly, establishing the clear existence of many more, and much more commonly employed, rhyme signals than have previously been perceived should lead us to reconsider 1) the nature of spoken verse, 2) the capacities of a significantly nonlettered audience, and 3) the interpenetration of spoken and lettered forms, both a) in a society partially lettered and partially nonlettered, like that of Elizabethan England, and b) also in our own, which we tend--mistakenly--to think of as not only basically but virtually exclusively lettered. To put it differently: if so subtle a literate craftsman as Shakespeare could and did employ preliterate devices in universally celebrated and unmistakably lettered works, the enduring importance and power of oral literature has been considerably underapprehended
