Download Romeo and Juliet Figurative Language Examples

Romeo and Juliet Figurative Language Examples
ACT 1
Scene 1
“Well, in that hit you miss. She’ll not with Cupid’s arrow, --she hath Dian’s wit” (Lines 205-206)
“Alas that love, whose view is muffled still, Should without eyes see pathway to his will!”
“Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything, of nothing first created! O heavy
lightness! Serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well seeming forms!” (Lines 173-175)
“Love is smoke made with the fume of nights; Being purged, a fire sparkling in a lovers’ eyes;
Being vex, a sea nourished with loving tears.”
Scene 2
“Take thou some new infection to thy eye, and the rank poison of the old will die.”
“Compare the face with some that I shall show, and I will make thee think thy swan a crow”
“Earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she; She is the hopeful lady of my earth” (Lines 14-15)
“When well-appareled April on the hell of limping winter treads, even such delight Among fresh
fennel buds shall you this night inherit at my house.” (Lines 27-30)
Scene 3
“Lady, such a man as all the world. --Why, he’s a man of wax.”
“Verona’s summer hath not such a flower. Nay, he’s a flower, in faith-a very flower.” (Line 77-78)
“And what obscured in this fair volume lies/ Find written in the margent of his eyes. This
precious book of love, this unbound lover, to beautify him only lacks a cover.” (Lines 85-88)
Scene 4
“I fear too early; for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars, shall bitterly
begin his fearful date with this night’s revels; and expire the term of a despised life, clos’d in my
breast”
“Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes with nimble soles; I have a soul of lead So stakes
me to the ground I cannot move.” (Lines 14-16)
“Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boist’rous, and it pricks like a thorn.” (LInes
25-26)
“We waste our lights in vain, like lights by day.” (Line 45).
“I dreamt a dream tonight./ And so did I/ Well, what was yours?/ That dreamers often lie. / In
bed asleep, while they do dream things true.” (Line 49-53)
“True, I talk of dreams; Which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
which is a s thin of substance as the air” (Line 96-99)
Scene 5
“O she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night as a
rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!”
ACT 2
Scene 1
“If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.” (Line 33).
Scene 2
“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East and Juliet is the sun!” (Lines
2-3)
“The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp” (Lines 19-20)
“O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art as glorious to this night, being o’er my head, as is a
winged messenger of heaven” (Lines 26-29).
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet.” (Lines
43-44).
“With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls; for stony limits cannot hold love out” (Lines
66-67).
Scene 3
“Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye THe day to cheer and night’s drank dew to dry, I
must upfill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. The earth
that’s Nature’s mother is her tomb.” (Lines 5-9)
Scene 4
“Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead: stabbed with a white wench’s black eye; run through the
ear with a love song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt shaft” (Lines 1316)
“These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph dies; Like fire and powder, which
as they kiss consume”
Scene 6
“Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, brags of his substance, not of ornament. They are
but beggars that can count their worth; But my true love is grown to such excess I cannot sum
up sum of half my wealth” (Lines 30-34).
ACT 3
Scene 1
“Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man”
“Tybalt, you ratcatcher, will you walk? [...] Good king of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives”
(Lines 73, 75-76)
“A plague o’both of your house! They made worms’ meat of me.” (Lines 88-89)
Scene 2
“Spread they close curtain, love-performing night, That runaways’ eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms untalked of and unseen” (Lines 5-7).
“Tybalt is dead, and Romeo-banished.” That “banished,” that one word “banished,” hath slain
ten thousand Tybalts.”
“Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die, take him and cut him in little stars, and he will
make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night…”
Scene 3
“Heaven is here, where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog and little mouse, every unworthy
thing, live here in heaven and may look on her” (Lines 30-33).
“But Romeo may not, he is banished. Flies may do this but I from this must fly; They are
freemen, but I am banished.” (Lines 40-43)
“Ha, banishment! Be merciful, say death; For exile hath more terror in his look, much more than
death. Do not say “banishment.”
“Doth not she think me an older murderer Now I have stained the childhood of our joy with blood
removed but little from her own?” (Lines 94-96)
*Various devices all from Lines 110-155 on pg. 862
Scenes 4 and 5
“I was fool would married to her grave”
ACT 4
Scene 1
“Poor soul, thy face is much abused with tears”
“ O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, from off the battlements of any tower, Or walk in
thievish ways, or bid me lurk where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears, or hide me
nightly in a charnel house” (Lines 77-80)
“The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade to wanny ashes, they eyes’ windows fall like death
when he shuts up the day of life” (Lines 98-100).
Scene 2
“I’ll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning” (Line 24)
Scene 3
“For I have need of many orisons to move the heavens to smile upon my state” (Lines 3-5)
“I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins that almost freezes up the heat of life” (Lines 1516).
“At some hours in the night spirits resort-[...] what with loathsome smells, and shrieks like
mandrakes torn out of the earth” (Lines 44-47).
Scene 4
“O heavy day!” (Line 18)
“ Death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field.” (Lines 28-29)
“Death, that hath ta’en her hence to make me wail, ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.”
(Lines 31-32)
“Read to go, but never to return. O son, the night before thy wedding day and Death lain with
thy wife. There she lies, flower as she was, deflowered by him. Death is my son-in-law, Death is
my heir; My daughter he hath wedded. I will die and leave him all. Life, living, all is Death’s”
(Lines 34-40)
ACT 5
Scene 1
“I dreamt my lady came and found me dead (Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to
think!) And breathed such life with kisses in my lips that I revived and was an emperor.” (Lines
6-9)
“Ah me! How sweet is love itself possessed, when but love’s shadows are so rich in joy!” (Lines
10-11)
“O mischief, thou art swift to enter in the thoughts of desperate men!” (Lines 3536)
“And that the trunk may be discharged of breath as violent as hasty powder fired Doth hurry
from the fatal cannon’s womb” (Lines 63-65)
“And if you had the strength of twenty men, [this liquid thing] would dispatch you straight” (Lines
78-79)
Scene 2
“He will beshrew me much that Romeo hath had no notice of these accidents; But I will write
again to Mantua, and keep her at my cell till Romeo come—Poor living corse, closed in a dead
man’s tomb!” (Lines 25-29)
Scene 3
“Death, that hath sucke dthe honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty”
(Lines 92-94)
“Here, here will I remain with words that are they chambermaids” (Lines 108-109)
“By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint and strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs. The
time and my intents are savage-wild, more fierce and more inexorable far than empty tigers or
the roaring sea” (Lines 35-39)
“Thou detestable maw,° thou womb of death, gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth, thus I
enforce thy rotten jaws to open, and in despite° I’ll cram thee with more food” (Lines 45-48)
“Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! And.lips, O you the doors for breath, seal
with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!” (Lines 112-115)
“We see the ground whereon these woes do lie, but the true ground of all these piteous woes
we cannot without circumstance descry” (Lines 179-181)
“Capulet, Montague, See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill
your joys with love, and I, for winking at your discords too, have lost a brace of kinsmen,” (Lines
291-294)
“The sun for sorrow will not show his head” (Line 306)