| personification – Benvolio | Alas that love, so gentle in his view,/ Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof. |
| personification – Chorus | Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie,/ And young affection gapes to be his heir. |
| personification – Romeo | Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,/ Who is already sick and pale with grief/ That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she./ Be not her main since she is envious. |
| personification – Friar Lawrence | The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,/ Checkring the eastern clouds with streaks of light,/ And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels. |
| personification – Juliet | My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words/ of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound. |
| personification – Romeo | With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls,/ For stony limits cannot hold love out,/ And what love can do, that dares love attempt./ Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me. |
| personification – Romeo | Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight./ Let’s for means. O mischief, thou art swift/ To enter in the thoughts of desperate men. |
| metaphor – Lady Capulet | 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. |
| metaphor – Mercutio | Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word./ If thou art dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire – / Or (save your reverence) love – wherein thou/ stickest/ Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho! |
| metaphor – Romeo | If I profane with my unworthiest hand/ This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:/ My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand/ To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. |
| metaphor – Romeo | As daylight doth a lamp; her eye in heaven/ Would through the airy region stream so bright/ That birds would sing and think it were not night. |
| metaphor – Juliet | This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,/ May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet./ Good, night, good night. As sweet repose and rest/ Come to thy heart as that within my breast. |
| metaphor – Romeo | And world’s exile is death. Then “banished”/ Is death mistermed. Calling death “banished,”/ Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden ax/ And smilest upon the stroke that murders me. |
| metaphor – Friar Lawrence | I’ll give thee armor to keep off that word,/ Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,/ To comfort thee, though thou art banished. |
| metaphor – Friar Lawrence | Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, Digressing from the valor of a man;/ Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,/ Killing that love which thou hast vowed to cherish;/ Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,/ Misshapen in the conduct of them both, |
| metaphor – Romeo | There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls,/ Doing more murder in this loathsome world/ Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not/ sell./ I sell thee poison; thou ast sold me none./ Farewell, buy food, and get thyself in flesh. |
| metaphor – Romeo | Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide!/ Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on/ The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark!/ Here’s to my love. O true apothecary,/ Thy drugs are quick./ Thus with a kiss I die. |
| metaphor – Romeo | 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. |
| foreshadowing – Romeo | I fear too early, for my mind misgives/ Some consequence yet hanging in the stars/ Shall bitterly begin his fearful date/ With ths night’s revels, and expire the term/ Of a despised life closed in my breast/ By some vile forfeit of untimely death./ But he that hath the steerage of my course/ Direct my sail. On, lusty gentlemen. |
| foreshadowing – Tybalt | Patience perforce with willful choler meeting/ Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting./ I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall,. Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest gall. |
| foreshadowing – Romeo | This day’s black fate on more days doth depend./ This but begins the woe others must end. |
| foreshadowing – Juliet | I’ll to the Friar to know his remedy./ If all else fail, myself have power to die. |
| simile – Capulet | He bears himself like a portly gentleman/ And, to say truth, Verona brags of him/ To be a virtuous and well-governed youth. |
| simile – Mercutio | More than prince of cats. O, he’s the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing/ prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion. |
| simile – Juliet | She would be as swift in motion as a ball;/ My words would bandy her to my sweet love,/ And his to me./ But old folks, many feign as they were dead,/ Unwieldly, slow, heavy, and pale as lead. |
| simile – Friar Lawrence | Thy, wit, that ornament to shape and love,/ Misshapen in the conduct of them both, Like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask,. Is set afire by thine own ignorance, And though dismembered with thine own defense. |
| simile – Friar Lawrence | A pack of blessings light upon thy back;/ Happiness courts thee in her vest array;/ But, like a misbehaved sullen wench, Thou pouts upon thy fortune and thy love. |
| simile – Capulet | Death lies on her like an untimely frost/ Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. |
| pun – Gregory/Sampson | The heads of the maids?/ Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maiden-/ heads. Take it in what sense thou wilt./ They must take it in sense that feel it./ Me they shall feel while I am able to stand,/ and ’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh. |
| pun – Sampson | My naked weapon is out. Quarrel, I will back |
| pun – Romeo | A sick man in sadness makes his will-/ A word ill urged to one that is so ill. |
| pun – Romeo | 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. |
| pun – Juliet | Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,/ And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss. |
| pun – Romeo | Flies may do this, but I from this must fly |
| pun – Paris | These times of woe afford no times to woo. – Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter. |
| pun – Nurse | Sleep for a week, for the next night, I warrant,/ The County Paris hath set up his rest/ That you shall rest but little. – God forgive me, |
| pun – Capulet | Hath death lain with thy wife. There she lies,/ Flower as she was, deflowered by him. |
| pun – Friar Lawrence | Peace, ho, for shame! Confusion’s cure lives not/ In these confusions. Heaven and yourself |
Romeo and Juliet Literary Devices
December 17, 2019