In act 3, scene 3, of Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence meets with Romeo after he has killed Tybald. Their conversation is replete with figures of speech. Here are some of them.
Personification: The lines attribute human qualities to several abstract concepts. The priest says that Romeo is "wedded to calamity," and Romeo asks what sorrow wants to be his "acquaintance."
Hyperbole: In Romeo's excited state, he expresses his feelings by excessive exaggeration. He equates banishment with murder, stating that life away from Verona will be "purgatory, torture, hell itself." He speaks at length about how the flies that remain in Verona are better off than he because they will be able to touch and kiss Juliet, but he will not even be able to see her. The priest engages in some hyperbole himself, promising that eventually Romeo will return "with twenty hundred thousand times more joy than thou went’st forth in lamentation."
Puns: There are a couple of clever puns in this passage. Shakespeare plays on the sense of "doom," meaning judgment, in Romeo's line, "What less than doomsday is the Prince’s doom?" Another example from Romeo is this line: "Flies may do this, but I from this must fly."
Metaphor: Romeo tells Friar Lawrence that by telling him of his banishment, he cuts his head off with a "golden ax" that murders him. Later he compares his sentence to poison and a "sharp-ground knife." Explaining to the nurse why Romeo is lying on the floor, Friar Lawrence says that Romeo's tears have made him drunk. Friar Lawrence scolds Romeo with the following metaphorical language, which also contains puns:
"Thy tears are womanish; thy wild actsThe unreasonable fury of a beast.Unseemly woman in a seeming man,And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!"
Simile: Romeo and the priest both use similes toward the end of the scene. Romeo compares his name to a bullet that murders Juliet. Friar Lawrence compares Romeo's foolish thoughts of suicide to a person who uses gunpowder unskillfully.
This fast-moving scene is especially powerful because of Shakespeare's liberal use of figurative language.
At the beginning of the scene, Friar Laurence greets Romeo and uses personification to comment upon his clearly stressful state:
"Affliction is enamour’d of thy parts,And thou art wedded to calamity."
Here, two abstract nouns have been given the qualities of people ("personified") to highlight Romeo's agitated frame of mind. Romeo's reply also uses the same figure of speech:
"What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand, That I yet know not?"
The friar informs Romeo that he's been banished from Verona for killing Tybalt. Instead of being relieved at his being spared the death penalty, Romeo is crestfallen; banishment will keep him apart from his beloved Juliet. He uses a metaphor to describe how painful it is to be apart from her. Verona, where she lives, is depicted as heaven, implying not just that she is an angel, but also that Romeo's banishment from the city means that he's in a living hell without her:
"Tis torture, and not mercy. Heaven is here,
Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dogAnd little mouse, every unworthy thing . . .
There is no world without Verona walls,
But purgatory, torture, hell itself."
This is also an example of hyperbole. When the friar informs Romeo of his sentence, he uses a parallelism:
"Not body's death, but body's banishment."
Both clauses have the same grammatical structure. They are parallel.
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