| Allusion | A reference to a work of literature, an actual even, a person, a place, or known information that the writer or speaker expects his/her audience to recognize. |
| Archetypes | An original model or type after which other similar things are patterned (the hero, the outcast, star-crossed lovers). |
| Aside | A character briefly speaks his or her thoughts (1 or 2 lines) to the audience, and the audience is to realize that the character is unheard by the other characters on stage. |
| Climax | The most intense, emotional moment in a play when the audience (reader) realized how the conflict will end in the final act. |
| Dialogue | A conversation between two or more characters. |
| Dramatic Irony | When there is contradiction between what the characters of the play know, and what the audience knows. |
| Dynamic Character | A character who undergoes a permanent change in outlook or attitude during the story. |
| Extended Metaphor | A metaphor introduced and then further developed throughout all or part of a literary work. |
| Flat Character | A character who may not be fully described or defined but is useful in carrying out some narrative purpose of the author. A “one sided” character (minor character). |
| Foil Character | One character who contrasts sharply with another character. |
| Foreshadowing | The use of hints or clues in a passage to suggest action that is to come later in the story. |
| Hyperbole | An obvious exaggeration or overstatement used for effect or to make a point. |
| Metaphor | A comparison made between two unlike things. |
| Monologue | A long speech presented by a single character expressing their thoughts and feelings to other characters. |
| Motif | A recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. Through its repetition, it can help produce and/or enhance other literary devices such as theme, mood, and/or foreshadowing. |
| Oxymoron | A figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory terms appear side by side for effect. |
| Personification | An author gives human characteristics to nonhuman things (animals, natural forces, objects, ideas, etc.). |
| Pun | The use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound. |
| Rhetorical Question | A question to which the answer is obvious and not meant to be answered aloud. |
| Round Character | A character presented in-depth from many angles (major character). |
| Simile | A comparison made between two unlike things using the words like or as. |
| Situational Irony | A discrepancy between what is expected to happen, and what actually occurs. |
| Soliloquy | A character is alone on stage speaking his or her thoughts and feelings, thereby also sharing them with the audience. |
| Static Character | A character who undergoes little or no inner change; a character who does not grow or develop. |
| Tragedy | A drama, often in verse, in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances. |
| Tragic Flaw | The weakness in the hero/heroine that leads to his/her downfall. |
| Verbal Irony | The intended meaning of a statement differs from the meaning that the words appear to express. |
| Personification | “the winds…hissed him in scorn.” |
| Hyperbole | “…Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs.” |
| Simile | “But to himself so secret and so close,/ so far from sounding and discovering,/ As is the bud bit with an envious worm / Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air/or dedicate his beauty to the sun.” |
| Oxymoron | “…O heavy lightness! serious vanity! / …Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!” |
| Metaphor | “Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs / …a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes… a sea nourished with lovers’ tears…a madness…a gall…a sweet.” |
| Allusion | “She hath Dian’s wit / And, in strong proof of chastity well armed.” |
| Personification | “When well-appareled April on the heel of limping winter treads…” |
| Hyperbole | “…Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.” |
| Pun | “You have dancing shoes/With nimble soles; I have a soul of lead so stakes me to the ground I cannot move.” |
| Allusion | “Borrow Cupid’s wings and soar with them above common bound.” |
| Rhetorical Question | “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too boisterous.” |
| Pun | Romeo: “I dreamt a dream to-night.”Mercutio: “And so did I.”Romeo: “Well, what was yours?”Mercutio: “That dreamers often lie.”Romeo: “In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.” |
| Metaphor | “I talk of dreams/Which are the children of an idle brain…” |
| Personification | “…the wind who woos/even now the frozen bosom of the North/ And, being angered, puffs away from thence/Turning his face o the dew-dropping South.” |
| Foreshadowing | “…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,/By some vile forfeit of untimely death.” |
| Simile | “It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night/Like a rich jewel in an Ehthiop’s ear…” |
| Rhetorical Question | “What light through yonder window breaks?/It is the East…” |
| Metaphor | “…and Juliet is the sun!” |
| Personification | “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,/Who is already sick and pale with grief…” |
| Hyperbole | “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars…” |
| Rhetorical Question | “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?/Deny thy father and refuse thy name!” |
| Hyperbole | “Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye/Than twenty of their swords!” |
| Allusion | “At lover’s perjuries,/They say Jove laughs.” |
| Metaphor | “This bud of love…/May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.” |
| Simile | “My bounty is as boundless as the sea…” |
| Simile | “Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books;/But love from love, towards school with heavy looks.” |
| Allusion | “Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies…” |
| Hyperbole | Juliet: “What o’clock to-morrow/Shall I send to thee?”Romeo: “By the hour of nine.”Juliet: “I will not fail. Tis twenty years ’til then.” |
| Oxymoron | “Parting is such sweet sorrow…” |
| Personification | “The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night…” |
| Foreshadowing/Oxymoron | “These violent delights have violent ends/And in their triumph die…” |
| Simile | “Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat.” |
| Pun | “Ask for me to-morrow and you shall find/me a grave man.” |
| Foreshadowing | “This day’s black fate on more days doth depend;/This but begins the woe that others must end. |
| Personification | “Come, civil night,/Thou sober-suited matron,all in black/…hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks/With thy black mantle.” |
| Oxymoron | “Beautiful tyrant! Fiend angelical! Dove-feathered raven! Wolvish-ravening lamb!” |
| Rhetorical Question | “But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?/That villain cousin would have kill’d my husband.” |
| Hyperbole | “That banished,’that one word ‘banished,’/Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts.” |
| Personification | “For exile hath more terror in his look,/Much more than death…” |
| Simile | “Thy wit…like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask,/Is set afire by thine own ignorance…” |
| Personification | “A pack of blessing light upon thy back;/Happiness courts thee in her best array.” |
| Hyperbole | “With twenty hundred thousand times more joy/Than thou went’st forth in lamentation.” |
| Personification | “…and jocund day/Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.” |
| Allusion | “Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow.” |
| Foreshadowing | “O God I have an ill-divining soul!/Methinks I see thee, now thou are below,/ As one dead in the bottom of a tomb,/Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.” |
| Rhetorical Question | “What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?/An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live. |
| Personification/Allusion | “For Venus smiles not in a house of tears.” |
| Metaphor | “The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade…” |
| Hyperbole/Personification | “For I have need of many orisons/To move the heavens to smile upon my state,” |
| Rhetorical Question | “Nurse!–What should she do here?/To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,” |
| Simile | “Death lies on her like an untimely frost/Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.” |
| Simile | “See, there she lies,/Flower as she was…” |
| Personification | “Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir;/My daughter he has wedded.” |
| Rhetorical Question | “Is it even so? Then I defy you, stars!” |
| Simile/Personification | “That the life-weary taker may fall dead,/And that the trunk may by discharged of breath/As violently as hasty powder fired/Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.” |
| Metaphor/Personification | “There is thy gold–worse poison to men’s should,/Doing more murder in this loathsome world,/Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.” |
| Personification | “The sun for sorrow will not show his head.” |
| Metaphor/Personification/Oxymoron | “Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,/Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,/Thus I enforce they rotten jaws open,/ And in despite I’ll cram thee with more food.” |
| Rhetorical Question | “O, what more favor can I do to thee/Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain/To sunder his that was thine enemy?/Forgive me, cousin.” |
| Metaphor | “Here, here will I remain/With worms that are thy chambermaids.” |
| Personification | “Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,/To whose fould mouth no healthsome air breathes in,” |
Romeo and Juliet Figurative Language Test
December 22, 2019