RJ Literary Devices

“Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health…”

-Romeo (Act 1, Scene 1)

• Symbolism

• Oxymoron

• Metaphor

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs...” 

-Romeo (Act 1, Scene 1)

• Metaphor

• Simile

• Personification

“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”

-Romeo (Act 2, Scene 2)

• Motif

• Classical Allusion

• Symbolism

“From forth the fatal loins of these two foes; 

A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”

-Chorus (Prologue)

• Alliteration

• Repetition

• Symbolism

It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden;

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be 

Ere one can say ‘it lightens.’”

-Juliet (Act 2, Scene 2)

• Foreshadowing

• Simile

• Imagery

“The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night…”

-Friar Lawrence (Act 2, Scene 3)

• Dramatic Irony

• Personification

• Allusion

“From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”

-Chorus (Prologue)

• Opposites

• Symbolism

• Simile

“I fear too early, for my mind misgives

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars

Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

With this night’s revels, and expire the term”

-Romeo (Act 1, Scene 3)

• Metaphor

• Simile

• Foreshadowing

“O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright,

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night 

As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear"

-Romeo (Act 1, Scene 5)

• Imagery

• Simile

• Simile and Imagery

“I dreamt my lady came and found me dead

(Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think!)

And breathed such life with kisses in my lips

That I revived and was an emperor.”

-Romeo (Act 5, Scene 1)

• Personification

• Foreshadowing

• Hyperbole