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Figures of Speech in Shakespearean Language - Coggle Diagram
Figures of Speech in Shakespearean Language
-Pun-
Word play to make it funny
“Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”
- Romeo and Juliet
Meaning:
Joke about dying
Figure:
"Grave" both mean dead and serious
“A little more than kin, and less than kind.”
- Hamlet
Meaning:
Someone want to upgrade their status
Figure:
"Kind" both mean family and nice
“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York."
- Richard III
Meaning:
Thing always better at the worse time
Figure:
Son sounds like sun
-Onomatopoeia-
Use word that describe the sound
“Hark! Hark! Bow-wow
The watch-dogs bark.”
- The Tempest
Meaning:
Dog barking sound
Figure:
Sound like how they really do it
“The murmur of bees in the meadows.”
- Henry V
Meaning:
Calm and nature scene
Figure:
"Murmur" is sound of a bee
“Knock, knock! Who’s there?”
- Macbeth
Meaning:
Someone knocks at the door
Figure:
"Knock" represent the real sound
-Hyperbole
Over saying something
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”
- Macbeth
Meaning:
Felt very wrong
Figure:
Show that they are guilty and impossible to forget
“I will weep a hundred years.”
- Much Ado About Nothing
Meaning:
Feel extremely bad
Figure:
Weep a hundred years shows that they are really guilty
“There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune.”
- Henry IV
Meaning:
Someone can't be trusted anymore
Figure:
Show that it is impossible to trust that person anymore
-Personification-
To do human action as object
“When daisies pied and violets blue
Do paint the meadows with delight.”
- Love's Labour's Lost
Meaning:
Flowers look happy and beautiful
Figure:
Flower paint like human
“Grief fills the room up of my absent child.”
- King John
Meaning:
Someone lost their child
Figure:
Grief fill the room like who people crowd looks
“Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.”
- Romeo and Juliet
Meaning:
Someone is getting happier
Figure:
Sun and moon shows feeling like human
-Oxymoron-
The opposite of two word crate a new meaning
“O brawling love! O loving hate!"
- Romeo and Juiet
Meaning:
Love can be both sweet and sad at the same time
Figure:
Combine word to make mix feeling
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
- Romeo and Juliet
Meaning:
Goodbye is both sad and also show love
Figure:
It makes the emotion more clear
“Beautiful tyrant! Fiend angelical!”
- Romeo and Juliet
Meaning:
It both feels happy and sad
Figure:
Show strong but confusing feeling
-Irony-
Say but mean another
“Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.”
- Julius Caesar
Meaning:
They mean the complete different thing
Figure:
Sarcastic of the text
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
- Hamlet
Meaning:
It shows that she is already guilty
Figure:
The word shows the opposite of the meaning
“I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of.”
- The Winter's Tale
Meaning:
Feel both happy and sad
Figure:
The opposite meaning make it ironic
- Anaphora-
Refer to the word meantioned before
“O Lord, O Lord, how this world is given to lying!
O Lord, O Lord!”
- Henry IV
Meaning:
Frustrated about the world
Figure:
Repeat O Lord
“You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!”
- Julius Caesar
“And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air.”
- Macbeth
-Metaphor-
One is another
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.”
- As you like it
Meaning:
LIfe is a stage and we have a role
Figure:
LIfe is compared to stage
“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”
- Romeo and Juliet
Meaning:
Juliet bring happiness
Figure:
Compare Juliet to sun
“Out, out brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow."
- Macbeth
Meaning:
Life is short
Figure:
Compare life to a candle to make it looks short
-Assonance-
Repeat vowel sound
“Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks.”
- Romeo and Juliet
Meaning:
Someone is beautiful
Figure:
Repeat "I" sound
“Hear the mellow wedding bells.”
- Romeo and Juliet
Meaning:
In the wedding hall
Figure:
Repeat "LL" sound
“The moonlight sleeping upon this bank.”
- A Midsummer's Night Dream
Meaning:
The night is calm
Figure:
OO and EE
-Allusion-
Refer to something well-known
“You are a lover; borrow Cupid’s wings.”
- Romeo and Juliet
Meaning:
Show true love
Figure:
Refer to cupid, god of love
“I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant.”
- Hamlet
Meaning:
Criticize something
Figure:
Refer to some kind of god
“Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate.”
- Othello
Meaning:
Want viewer to know him as he is
Figure:
Truth and honesty
-alliteration-
Repeat same sound at the beginning
“Full fathom five thy father lies.”
- The Tempest
Meaning:
Someone might be sad or die
Figure:
Repeat "F" sound
“From forth the fatal loins of these two foes."
- Romeo and Juliet
Meaning:
Two families don't agree or fight
Figure:
Repeat "F" sound
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair."
- Macbeth
Meaning:
Thing is not how it might be
Figure:
Repeat "F" sound
-Simile-
Compare two thing
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep.”
- Romeo and Juliet
Meaning:
To express love to the other
Figure:
As...As, Hyperbolic
“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end.”
- Sonnet 60
Meaning:
: Time fly quickly
Figure:
: Like
"I'll drink no more!
And yet methinks I'm better than a churl
That drinks for love as men for fear of death.”
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
Meaning:
Aiming for love is dangerous
Figure:
As...For
My favorite figure of speech
TYpe:
Ironic
Reason:
It felt really good when you can be sarcastic towards someone