| pun | “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.” – Mercutio, Act III scene i |
| metaphor | “O, I have bought the mansion of love but not possessed it.” – Juliet, Act III scene ii |
| oxymoron | “O serpent heart hid with a flow’ring face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical! Dove-feathered raven, wolfish-ravening lamb!” – Juliet, Act III, scene ii |
| personification | “Come, cords–come Nurse. I’ll to my wedding bed, and death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!” – Juliet, Act III scene ii |
| personification | “Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say ‘death,’ for exile hath more terror in his look, much more than death. Do not say ‘banishment.'” – Romeo, Act III scene iii |
| hyperbole | “I must hear from thee every day in the hour, for in a minute there are many days. O, by this count I shall be much in years ere I again behold my Romeo.” – Juliet, Act III, scene v |
| foreshadowing | “O God, I have an ill-divining soul! Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails or thou lookest pale.” – Juliet, Act III, scene v |
| personification | “Happiness courts thee in her best array.” – Friar Lawrence, Act III, scene iii |
| light and dark imagery | “Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night” – Romeo, Act I scene v |
| light and dark imagery | “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp.” – Romeo, Act II scene ii |
| light and dark imagery | “Come night. Come Romeo. Come thou day in night,For thou wilt lie upon the wings of nightWhiter than new snow upon a raven’s back.” – Juliet, Act III scene ii |
| paradox | “Within the infant rind of this small flowerPoison hath residence and medicine power.For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart. To such opposed kings encamp them stillIn man as well as herbs-grace and rude will…” – Friar Lawrence, Act II scene iii |
| double-entendre | “‘Twould anger himto raise a spirit in his mistress’ circleOf some strange nature, letting it there standTill she had laid it and conjured it down.” – Mercutio, Act II scene i |
| simile | “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,My love as deep; the more I give to thee,The more I have, for both are infinite.” – Juliet, Act II scene ii |
| metaphor | “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.” – Romeo, Act II scene ii |
| personification | “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief.” – Romeo, Act II scene ii |
| oxymoron | “Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything of nothing first created!” – Romeo, Act I scene i |
| foreshadowing | “I fear too early, for my mind misgives some consequence hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin his fearful date” – Romeo, Act I scene iv |
| foreshadowing | “These violent delight have violent endsand in their triumph die, like fire and powderWhich, as they kiss, consume.” -Friar Lawrence, Act II scene iv |
| foreshadowing | “A plague o’ both your houses!” – Mercutio, Act III scene i |
| light and dark imagery | “And when I shall die,Take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fineThat all the world will be in love with night And pay no attention to the garish sun.” -Juliet, Act III scene ii |
| light and dark imagery | “Yon light is not daylight; I know it, I. It is some meteor that the sun exhalesTo be to thee this night a torchbearer,And light thee on thy way to Mantua.” – Juliet, Act III scene v |
| light and dark imagery | “It was the lark, the herald of the morn,No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.” – Romeo, Act III scene v |
| alliteration | “A gentler judgement vanished from his lips: not body’s death, but body’s banishment.” – Friar Lawrence, Act III scene iii |
Romeo and Juliet – Acts 1-3 Literary Devices
August 11, 2019