Poetic Devices (Romeo & Juliet)
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Allusion
The verb form of “allusion” is “to allude.” So alluding to something is the same thing as making an allusion to it.
For example:
You’re acting like such a Scrooge!
Alluding to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, this line means that the person is being miserly and selfish, just like the character Scrooge from the story.
Apostrophe
2 Types:
1)When a character speaks to a person who is not present. Like when Hamlet speaks to his dead father.
2) when a character speaks directly to a personified inanimate being, or an abstraction is addressed (spoken to) as if they were present.
Like when ALexander Pope speaks directly to Envy
Examples
“Envy, be silent and attend!”
—Alexander Pope
Or when John Donne speaks to Death...
"Oh, Death, be not proud."
— John Donne
More examples:
"Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again . . .."
—Paul Simon, "The Sounds of Silence
"O Fortune, Fortune! all men call thee fickle;
if thou art fickle, what dost thou with him that
is renown'd for faith? Be fickle, Fortune; for then,
I hope, thou wilt not keep him long, but send him back." r — William Shakespeare , Romeo & Juliet
Aside
a part of an actor's lines supposedly not heard by others on the stage and intended only for the audience. This is when a character talks to himself or herself.
Alliteration
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes;
The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry.
Comic Relief
the inclusion of a humorous character, scene or dialogue in an otherwise serious story, often to relieve tension.
Paradox
a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition; A seemingly contradictory situation that is, nonetheless, true.
For example...
some people live by the motto "never say never". The paradox in this situation, however, is simple...in order to "never say never", one must say "never" twice.
More Situational Paradoxes
"Don't Talk to Strangers"
Nobody goes to that restaurant, it's too crowded.
Don't go near the water until you've learned to swim.
If you get this message, call me; if you don't, then don't worry about it.
If a person says about himself that he always lies, is that that the truth or a lie???
A verbal paradox
a figure of speech in which a seemingly self-contradictory statement is nevertheless found to be true.
For example:
"Life is much too important to be taken seriously."
(Oscar Wilde)
Click Here to see a list of paradoxes:
Conceit
A fanciful poetic image, especially an elaborate or exaggerated comparison.
A long, detail, and exaggerated metaphor.
Example:
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat,
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
From Britanica Online
CONCEIT
, figure of speech, usually a simile or metaphor, that forms an extremely ingenious or fanciful parallel between apparently dissimilar or incongruous objects or situations.
The Petrarchan conceit, which was especially popular with Renaissance writers of sonnets, is a hyperbolic comparison most often made by a suffering lover of his beautiful mistress to some physical object—e.g., a tomb, the ocean, the sun. Edmund Spenser’s Epithalamion, for instance, characterizes the beloved’s eyes as being “like sapphires shining bright,” with her cheeks “like apples which the sun hath rudded” and her lips “like cherries charming men to bite.”
The metaphysical conceit, associated with the Metaphysical poets of the 17th century, is a more intricate and intellectual device. It usually sets up an analogy between one entity’s spiritual qualities and an object in the physical world and sometimes controls the whole structure of the poem.
For example, in the following stanzas from A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, John Donne compares two lovers’ souls to a draftsman’s compass:
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Conceits often were so farfetched as to become absurd, degenerating in the hands of lesser poets into strained ornamentation. In sonnet number 130, William Shakespeare responded to the conventions of the Petrarchan conceit by negating them, particularly in the sonnet’s opening lines:
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
With the advent of Romanticism the conceit fell into disfavour along with other poetic artifices. In the late 19th century it was revived by the French Symbolists. It is commonly found, although in brief and condensed form, in the works of such modern poets as Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound.
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Personification
A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form.
Examples:
Hunger sat shivering on the road
Flowers danced about the lawn.
The stars danced playfully in the moonlit sky.
The run down house appeared depressed.
The first rays of morning tiptoed through the meadow.
Hyperbole
((h
-pûrb-l not hyper-bowl)
A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect
Examples
I could sleep for a year
This book weighs a ton.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest...
from To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
Pun
A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.
Examples-"I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me."
-"Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now."
-"I couldn't quite remember how to throw a boomerang, but eventually it came back to me."
-The electrician got his supplies at the outlet store.
-Benny was sure that if he had to he could master braille once he got a feel for it.
-I never understood why people liked to play soft ball. It's a very underhanded thing to do.
Dramatic Irony
When the audience knows something that the characters don't....thereby heightening the dramatic experience for the audience.
Throughout Romeo & Juliet, the audience is always aware of things that the characters are unaware of. This heightens the sense of impending doom.
Allusion
allusion |əˈlo͞oZHən|
noun
an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference: an allusion to Shakespeare | a classical allusion.
Throughout Romeo and Juliet there are several allusions to Greek mythology.
ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (denoting a pun, metaphor, or parable): from French, or from late Latin allusio(n-), from the verb alludere (see allude) .
ExamplesMartin Luther King, Jr., alluded to the Gettysburg Address in starting his "I Have a Dream" speech by saying 'Five score years ago..."; his hearers were immediately reminded of Abraham Lincoln's "Four score and seven years ago", which opened the Gettysburg Address. King's allusion effectively called up parallels in two historic moments.
Season 5 Ep. 4 o Family Guy is entitled "Saving Private Brian. This is an allusion to the movie "Saving Private Ryan"
In Act 1 of Romeo & Juliet, Romeo makes an allusion to Greek mythology by saying, " she hath Dian's wit." In this line he is making a reference to Dian, the Greek Goddess of Chastity.
Gnomeo & Juliet makes many subtle references to William Shakespeare. For example, a newspaper ad shows a house for sale in "Stratford"...this is an allusion to Shakespeare's place of birth.
Gnomeo & Juliet also makes many allusions to the works of William Shakespeare. The scene below, for example, is an allusion to Hamlet's famous speech that begins, "To be, or not to be. That is the question."
The name of the street is an obvious allusion the the setting of Romeo and Juliet, Verona, Italy.
Visit Allusion for more examples
Simile
A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as.
Examples
“How like the winter hath my absence been” (Shakespeare)
“So are you to my thoughts as food to life” (Shakespeare)
Metaphor
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in “a sea of troubles”or “All the world's a stage” (Shakespeare).
One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol: “Hollywood has always been an irresistible, prefabricated metaphor for the crass, the materialistic, the shallow, and the craven” (Neal Gabler).
Oxymoron
A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist.
Examples:
Beautiful tyrant
Fiend angelical
Dove-feather'd raven
Wolvish-ravening lamb
Damned saint
Metonymy
A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, as in the use of the word "Washington" for the United States government or of the "sword" for military power.
"The Pen is mightier than the sword."
Washington passed a new bill today."
“These lands belong to the crown”. Since a crown is associated with or an attribute of the king, the word crown has become a metonymy for the king. "These lands belong to the king."
Examples
'He is a man of cloth', which means he belongs to a religious order.
'He writes with a fine hand', means he has a good handwriting.
'We have always remained loyal to the crown', that means the people are loyal to the king or the ruler of their country.
'The pen is mightier than the sword' refers that the power of literary works is greater than military force.
'The House was called to order', refers to the members of the House.