“Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! | invocation He is terrified and is calling out for protection from the supernatural |
Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself. | metaphor He is scared and is asking whomever or whatever is approaching to make him/her/itself known, like a letter removed from an envelope would. |
Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy,And will not let belief take hold of him | personification He is fighting against belief in the ghost as if the notion of belief were a hoodlum that is trying to jump him. |
That if again this apparition come, He may approve our eyes and speak to it. | metonymy If the ghost comes he will agree with their testmony, which is associated with the eyes which gave them the image of the ghost. |
And let us once again assail your ears, That are so fortified against our story | conceit He refuses to hear, so we must insist on our story with as much strength as we would use to fight a battle/ |
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole/Had made his course to illume that part of heaven/Where now it burns, | personification The star was in that same spot last night when the ghost appeared. |
Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder. | metaphor it torments him like a rake does to the the soil, making him terrified and hypnotized at the same time. |
that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark /Did sometimes march? | metonymy He is afraid that the ghost has taken over the body of the dead king, who was closely associated with the State, which is figuratively buried with him. |
whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week; | personification The task itself is the persona that is failing to show proper religious observance. |
this sweaty haste Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day: | personification the need for speed is a taskmaster forcing a personified day to work side by side with the night. |
young Fortinbras, Of unimproved mettle hot and full, | metaphor The young prince is not battle tested, but is like hot boiling metal that has yet to be made into anything of use. |
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes, | metaphor This is a mixed metaphor in which his recruiting of troops is compared to the viciousness of a shark but at the same time is finding them in Norway as if hiding behind the folds of a mother’s dress. |
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted deadDid squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,Disasters in the sun; and the moist starUpon whose influence Neptune’s empire standsWas sick almost to doomsday with eclipse: | Hyperbole– He fears that the ghost is an omen like that foretelling the fall of Caesar, but the empty graves with gibbering dead bodies and astronomical pyrotechnics seems a bit far-fetched. |
A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. | metaphor- He compares the ghost, with its ominous form to an irritating dust speck that gets into an eye, but here the action is done to the brain. |
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy lifeExtorted treasure in the womb of earth,For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,Speak of it: | Metaphor– Uncertain of the purpose of the ghost’s visitation, he offers the possibility of some secret treasure that has been hidden in the ground, a child that must come out from its mother so that the spirit may rest in peace. |
Hamlet 1.1 Figurative language
July 29, 2019